As I stood at the carousel in JFK airport waiting for my luggage, I began to feel myself become annoyed. I, along with the other passengers on my flight from Los Angeles to New York had been waiting at least 10 minutes for the carousel to start moving, and then once it finally did, the same lone bag continued to make its way around with no others following behind. As my body tensed, and my foot began tapping the ground impatiently, I could not help but think of the three boys who were recently returned home dead. I pictured their mothers all standing in a row by the carousel, waiting for their boys. They were impatient and nervous, and the more the carousel turned, the more exasperated they became, the more tears they began to shed, and the more apparent worry became on all their faces. And then suddenly, out of nowhere, three bodies wrapped in talesim made their way around on the carousel.

I know; it’s a terrible image, one I wish I could erase from my mind. It’s not even real, yet it feels as if I was standing with these women waiting for their sons. Is that not how we all have been feeling? Like we have been waiting along with mothers, fathers, siblings, and friends, just to be punched in the gut with nothing but disappointment and heartache?

As disturbing as the thought was for me, it also brought me back to reality. My bag, my wait time, and the turbulence on my flight were all simply unimportant. They were minor setbacks, things I would barely remember the next day, let alone the next week. Which is when another thought occurred to me. Life is sort of like a carousel. We are constantly waiting, expecting, and hoping. Sometimes we are disappointed, and other times pleasantly surprised. The promotions, the graduation, the wedding, fill in the blank with whatever you’d like. We are all waiting for a different “piece of luggage,” but at the end of the day, we are all waiting. All at once I wished that I could remember to only focus on the important things. This isn’t to say that life doesn’t go on. That if we are not waiting for children to be returned to us by their captors then it is not worth waiting at all. Go ahead and wait, hope, pray for whatever you’d like to see come off that carousel, but just remember to keep it all in perspective. Don’t just look for one bag, look at the entire carousel, try and figure out which bags to keep and which to simply let go, understanding that life is bigger than one bag. In this time of mourning, when Am Yisrael is standing together as one, let us hold on to that. Let us remember that being brothers and sisters is most important, because there are some things we shouldn’t have to wait for, and in my opinion acting like a family is one of them. Standing together above all else, and supporting each other as we go through this terrible time.

Let us not allow the murder of three innocent boys become but a passing memory, something we deal with and from which we move on. Let it have a lasting impact. Let us avenge their deaths, not through violence, rather by becoming a better family and a stronger nation. Let us comfort those weeping mothers by letting them know that the death of their sons will not be another piece of baggage that merely passes us by on this carousel of life. Let it be a lesson we carry with us constantly. Let it be a game changer. Let the loss of these beloved boys bring us home, not for a week or even a month, but forever. Am Yisrael chai. 

*Talesim – Prayer shawls

*Am Yisrael chai – The people of Israel live