At the Nova Festival site
Where 364 Israelis were massacred
By Hamas on October 7, 2023
There’s a tent off to the side of the
Forest of Faces –
A memorial for the victims
Each one displaying their portrait,
Last words,
Photos of happier times,
Mantras and stories that gave their lives meaning.

In the tent is a scribe
Writing a Torah scroll
For the merit of those killed.
You can hold his hand
As he writes this sacred text.

Unless you are a woman.

As a Torah reader in my synagogue,
My heart leapt when I saw the tent
Then fell just as fast
Because I remembered: in Orthodox Judaism
Women cannot sit next to men lest they touch.
So I surely can’t hold the scribe’s hand as he writes.

In the meantime, our tour’s security guard
Taps my Irish-Catholic husband Joe on the shoulder
And motions to him – sit in the visitor’s chair.

Joe does, bewildered
Looking to me for guidance
As his silver crucifix dangles from his neck
(Which no one seems to notice).
I shrug and say, Be my agent.

Joe repeats the Hebrew words of intention
When writing a Torah scroll —
I am writing these words of Torah
In memory of those who perished
And for the glory of God.
The scribe nods, shakes Joe’s hand, and
we leave the tent.

Would the scribe have accepted Joe’s prayer
Knowing it came from a non-Jew?
Personally, I think God sees all.

God saw my desire to perform the mitzvah
Of imprinting the memory of those murdered souls
Onto living text that
Will be used for generations
So that their memories are bound up in blessing.

And God saw the desire of my husband
To show his deep love for his wife
In her people’s ancestral homeland
By enduring a ritual he did not understand,
Parroting words in the foreign tongue of her religion,
And sitting in a place that she could not.

For my beloved, on St. Patrick’s Day 2025.