October 7, 2023 was my Shabbat Kallah.

I was so excited to dance with the women in the evening, celebrating Simhat Torah and my wedding together.

However, in the morning we woke up in a different reality. The singing and dancing became endless sirens and running to the mamad. My little brother Ephraim went back to the army to fight. Happiness became fear, anxiety, and dread.

Shabbat and Simhat Torah ended. Our wedding was scheduled for October 9th, but there was so much uncertainty. As expected, our venue canceled because they had no mamad or bomb shelter. Members  of the band had gone to miluim, but our photographer said he would still be with us. On Sunday morning, we decided we wouldn’t postpone the wedding.

We decided to get married in the basement of Shimon Hatzadik, because it was safe as the hall was a basement, which is like a מקלט (shelter).The band found replacements. Someone I didn’t know gave me a kallah chair, and another anonymous person decorated it. My grandmother bought flowers to decorate, and someone brought blue and white balloons. We found a caterer that could prepare the food last minute, and a special chuppah that was used by Holocaust survivors. The wedding was like a corona wedding, 50 people, and the rest on Zoom. 

The night before the wedding, I went to my first mikveh immersion. It was a spiritual, self-nurturing experience. I had a great balanit, and instruction from my Ima. However, for the rest of the evening I was up the whole night extremely anxious about my brother Ephraim, who was in a base near Gaza. I was really afraid he would die, or that there would be a terrorist attack, or a bombing. I stayed up all night praying he would survive, and that we would survive.

At five in the morning, I felt spiritually uplifted, and something in me knew that I would get married that day.

I was photographed in a park in Katamon. Many women stopped me and asked for a bracha, either for their boyfriends in the army, or to get married. Other people just said “kol hakavod! Am yisrael chai!” We had a siren at the beginning of the wedding, when my husband and I still weren’t allowed to see each other. So I went to a corner in the mamad, and my friends and the waitresses made a wall so we wouldn’t see each other. Afterwards, while I was sitting on the Kallah chair, I was thinking about how sad I was that my brother wasn’t there, and then suddenly he entered the room! I felt that my happiness was complete. My sister in law’s husband, Uriel, also surprised us; he came from fighting in the Kibbutzim in the south, arriving in his uniform. He got a special blessing from our Mesader Kiddushin. 

The wedding was over, and we started our life with at least two sirens a day, for two months. We also felt a lot of anxiety about Ephraim and Uriel, who were fighting in Gaza.

On December 19, 2023, I received an urgent phone call: “Come back from work.” I went home, sat on the sofa with my husband, and he told me the terrible news: “Uriel died.”

I spend the next week helping at the shiva and being supportive. My sister-in-law is now alone with two young daughters, a 2 year old and a six month old.

On the same day the shiva ended, on December 26th, 2023 my husband and I got home, and were sitting together and choosing our wedding pictures, when suddenly we got a phone call. “Ephraim is severely injured,” we were told. In shock, we somehow got to the hospital. The doctor took us to a room and told us that they operated, but didn’t succeed. Ephraim is dead, and now I find myself sitting shiva, only two months after my wedding. So many people said “Mazal tov” and “Hamaom Yenachem etchem…” in the same conversation.

It is very complicated and hard to have your first year of marriage be at the same time as such a harsh war, and with so much grief. I had a hard year; I was very close to my brother, and it was, and still is, very painful for me to lose him. I was blessed with a sensitive and kind husband that has been there for me, and gives me love and stability while I’m going through this infinite pain. 

I’m not the only one. I hope we can be more sensitive to all those who lost loved ones in the war, or are waiting for them to come back from Gaza, and try to be supportive.

A few tips:

  1. Don’t pressure grieving people to be happy. They need to feel pain, anger and sadness, in order to process the death. They only need you to be there for them. Ask them what they need, or how you can help, and if necessary let them be on their own.
  2. Don’t pressure grieving people to be strong. Right now, they aren’t, and that’s ok. Loss is not something you can just ignore, and overcome really fast; most people go through a process. Instead be empathetic, and accepting.
  3. Reach out to them. Don’t wait for them to ask for help or to call you –  they might not have the energy for that. Just ask them how they are doing. Listen; don’t judge.
  4. Don’t guilt them, or say “your brother/mother/sister would have wanted you to…” First of all, if you know what they want, because you contacted them, teach me how, because my brother doesn’t talk to me. Second of all, it doesn’t help to try to instruct someone to keep the memory of the deceased alive. It’s often part of acceptance, which takes time, and most people know when they are ready to do this in their own time.
  5. Have confidence in the process, and don’t worry too much about the pain, unless the mourner is not functioning at all. Then try to get professional help.

Hoping for better days.