Things I Want to Write

Today I want to write about hope.

Last month I wrote the newsletter and called it, “Things I Don’t Want to Write. I wrote about (no surprise here) the unwritable. There are still so many things I don’t want to write. It is over 40 days since the horrific attack where 1400 people were not just murdered, but brutally tortured and then slaughtered in ways I not only do not want to write about, but in ways I cannot physically write about. I don’t want to write about the evil of Hamas and how they force their people to be human shields. I don’t want to write about how killing Jews is considered an honor for them. I don’t want to write about how random people with no idea of the conflict are posting on social media demanding a ceasefire, not realizing that Hamas violated every ceasefire that was made, and a ceasefire is a sure way to cause more destruction to innocent civilians. (Israel never asked for this war that Hamas started). I don’t want to write about the 240 people including 30 under the age of 12 who are still held hostage by these terrorists. I don’t want to write about the baby nearly my own baby’s age, kidnapped from his crib. I don’t want to write about how worried I am for him. I don’t want even to want to write about how I walk by destroyed posters of these hostages near my own home in Brooklyn.

I don’t want to write about that, and I feel guilty not writing it. Mothers like me are living for forty days already with the knowledge that their babies are in the hands of the most brutal terrorists, and I cannot even write about it.

This past month has been the hardest since the Holocaust and I don’t want to write about it.

A few days after the Hamas attack, my mom spent the whole day cooking. She said she could do nothing else. It made us think about a story my grandmother told us. Towards the end of the war, she, along with 750 other girls taken out of the gas chamber moments before the gas was poured in.  They were allowed to live because the German’s were desperate for workers. The war was ending, and the allies were winning. They were taken to an ammunition factory in Germany. In the factory, they would hear the American bomb planes overhead. The Nazis would lock the girls in while they ran for cover. One time they heard the plane closer overhead than ever before. As the Nazis fled, the girls knew their end was imminent. They were in a German ammunition factory. They were going to be bombed. As my grandmother tried to break through the locked door so she could escape, she heard the other girls calmly talking about recipes, pretending they were going to go home that night and cook it all. She said she couldn’t calm down, but through the noise of planes circling, as she rattled and pulled the locked door, the other girls spoke about kokosh cake and chicken soup and potato kugel.

What is it about cooking that calms us when the world is falling apart? Maybe it is because we want to provide life, or at least the fuel for life, when so many people want death. Maybe because we want to nourish when so many people want to destroy. Maybe we want to comfort when so many people want to terrorize. Maybe what I am trying to say is that I feel like a girl in the ammunition factory talking about cooking and hope while danger circles overhead. Maybe I am saying that isn’t a bad thing. Maybe it is the orchestra playing on as the titanic hit the iceberg. Or, maybe it is because we know there is more good than bad in this world, more love than hate and that deserves to be spoken of too. Maybe because we believe even better is coming.

 My husband was recently on a flight and lady in his row put her bag on the middle seat. As she started to move it, my husband told her she can leave it there. She said it is a full flight, there’s no way she will get an extra seat, but my husband told her to try it. When the plane took off with that free middle seat, she told him, “You should have prayed for world peace!” My husband says he does every day, and he believes it’s coming. His uber driver back from the airport was an Arab man. The yarmulka wearing Jew and bearded Arab Muslim shared a pleasant smile and pleasant ride and wished each other well.

There are so many worries on my heart, but I want to write about the better days I believe are coming. I saw a quote (source unknown), “the only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen all at once.” thinking of time in that way makes me think hope may be your future self, telling your present self that everything is going to be ok. My grandmother never lost hope in the Holocaust. She washed herself with lye in Auschwitz. She dropped the bullets she was supposed to wash to the bottom of the barrel in a German ammunition factory. She found pretty dresses to give out to the girls at liberation. All her life she taught me to keep going, to stand back after every time you fall down and to know better days are coming. All of her life she taught me that there is joy to be found even in the hardships. So here is what I want to write, what I think my grandmother would want me to write: keep hoping, even when it is the hardest thing to do. Better days are coming. And let’s share some recipes for comfort food. We need a lot of it.

If this article shared some of my grandmother’s hope and strength with you, feel free to share it with someone who may benefit.

Let me know in the comments what you’re cooking (or what you think of this).