It was this topic that the rabbi talked about in\u00a0his Kol Nidre sermon only days after the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks. A reminder that we must keep the memory of every person who died on that horrible day alive. All members of the congregation were asked to take home a small black polished stone inscribed with the name and age of a victim of the Hamas attacks and the Israelis killed in the war since then.<\/p>\n Congregants were asked to research the name engraved on their stone(s); learn their story,\u00a0their plans, and to even write a message on the stone if they so wished. They were then requested to bring their stone(s)\u00a0back to the synagogue by Simchat Torah, when the monument would be dedicated. Moskovitz anticipated\u00a0that the one-year anniversary that falls on the Jewish holiday, marred by the attacks, would be a time of sorrow, reflection and memory as the community gathered for what is otherwise a joyous holiday.<\/p>\n The sermon had a profound impact both in person and online. People wrote back from as far away as Thailand and the majority of synagogue members picked up a rock on their way home.<\/p>\n Inspiration for the\u00a0monument came from when Moskovitz was a teenager. He recalls wearing a metal bracelet with the name of a Soviet refusenik<\/i>, a Jew who was denied permission to emigrate to Israel. When the names of the hostages were gradually released, the rabbi said: \u201cThe idea struck me that we must hold on to the names of the hostages, share them and never let the world forget their torment and danger. I also wanted to do something to help raise money for the families and all of those in Israel forever changed and impacted by Oct 7. And so began the production and distribution of 10,000 bracelets engraved\u00a0with the name of each hostage, their age and where they were taken from in a project called Till They All Come Home.\u201d<\/p>\n As the anniversary approached, Moskovitz used the basis of the bracelet project to inspire the memorial stones. Temple Sholom Sisterhood provided the funding for the rabbi to purchase 1,000 pounds of stones and commission a five-foot-tall monument for the synagogue garden. Each stone was personally engraved by the rabbi and his family and the project took more than a month. Every victim was researched on the internet and often the entire family grieved as they reflected upon the age of the victim and the personal stories.<\/p>\n \u201cChana Kritzman\u2019s was the first stone I picked up,\u201d\u00a0said\u00a0Barb Halparin,\u00a0a Temple Sholom congregant. \u201cIts shape, a glistening black tear drop, attracted my attention. Chana\u2019s age, 88, was etched below her name and I felt the immediate kinship of senior womanhood. Googling Chana\u2019s name only intensified my sense of identification with her. I learned that, as a founding member of Kibbutz Be\u2019eri, Chana had established the kibbutz library, where she \u2018raised her children and grandchildren on a love of books, reading, and the art of storytelling.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been an avid reader all my life, and I earned my BA in English literature. I value my membership in the Isaac Waldman Library, and my favourite gift to my grandchildren is a book.\u201d<\/p>\n Kritzman was shot by Hamas invaders while being evacuated from her home. She fought for her life in hospital for two weeks before succumbing to her wounds.<\/p>\n Halparin expressed how reading about Kritzman, her life, her love of words, her senseless, suffering death was a deeply emotional experience for her, as was placing her stone beside\u00a0the memorial\u2019s larger rock dedicated to Kibbutz Be\u2019eri.<\/p>\n \u201cIt felt like I was in some small way bringing her home,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen Rabbi Moskovitz introduced the stumbling stone concept, I was deeply touched and eager to participate in such a meaningful project of remembrance.\u201d<\/p>\n Another Temple Sholom member, Reisa Schneider, said: \u201cOne of the stones I took home was of Tair David, who was 23 years old when she and her sister Hodaya, age 26, were murdered by Hamas terrorists at the Nova music festival on\u00a0Oct. 7, 2023. They were from the town of Beit Dagan. Their father, Uri, spent 30 minutes on the phone with them. He could hear blasts of gunfire nearby; he instructed them to lie on the ground, hold hands and breathe. Their connection was cut;\u00a0he never heard from them again.\u201d<\/p>\n On Instagram, their sister Liza wrote that Tair was \u201cjust like her name, a child of light, with a smile that could be seen for miles and a presence that is hard to hide.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI found it interesting, maybe even coincidental, that the name of the person who I was expected to remember meant light,\u201d said Schneider. \u201cWe gave our middle daughter the Hebrew name Orah, which also means light. Additionally, my maiden name is Smiley. I have tried to keep the name alive by smiling authentically and frequently. I have happily and intentionally passed that quality on to my daughters and grandchildren.\u00a0I plan to honour Tair\u2019s memory by bringing light into this broken world and by continuing to smile, despite these challenging times.\u201d<\/p>\n Synagogue member Louise Krivel wrote: \u201cAfter hearing Rabbi Moskovitz\u2019s amazing sermon on Yom Kippur and learning about the over 1,600 rocks that his family had engraved in memory of the victims of Oct. 7 and beyond,\u00a0I felt a tremendous sense of responsibility to honour the memory of the individuals whose rocks our family had been given.<\/p>\n \u201cI researched each one and reached out to a couple of Israeli families via Facebook to advise them of our synagogue\u2019s memorial and to let them know what Rabbi Moskovitz had been responsible for creating.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Yoni Znati,\u00a0the father of Matan Znati, a 23-year-old Nova festival-goer, who died protecting his girlfriend, was one of those grieving family members Krivel contacted. He\u00a0responded that he was very excited to hear about the memorial.\u00a0He appreciated it very much, requested photos and hopes that, one day, he can meet Krivel so that he can tell her more about Matan.<\/p>\n \u201cI can\u2019t think of a more meaningful way that we as a congregation could honour the victims of Oct. 7,\u201d Krivel shared. \u201cI am so proud of Rabbi Moskovitz and his family and our congregation for creating this meaningful and beautiful memorial. Am Yisrael Chai.\u201d<\/p>\n These are just three brief stories that Temple Sholom congregants researched from the horrific attack of Oct. 7 and those killed during the year since.<\/p>\n It\u2019s after Simchat Torah.\u00a0I am standing in the memorial garden.\u00a0It\u2019s now flooded with the\u00a0rocks.\u00a0Inside the synagogue,\u00a0there\u2019s\u00a0a bat mitzvah.\u00a0I can faintly hear the lively\u00a0sounds\u00a0of playfulness and laughter.<\/p>\n There will always be moments of celebration and sadness. As Kohelet (Ecclesiastes) reminds us, \u201cTo everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Jenny Wright<\/b> is a writer, music therapist, children\u2019s musician and recording artist.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A newly created monument in the garden of Temple Sholom Synagogue commemorates the victims of Oct. 7, 2023, and the Israeli civilians, soldiers and foreign nationals who have lost their lives since that day. (photo from Temple Sholom) There\u2019s\u00a0a newly created monument in the garden of Temple Sholom Synagogue \u2013 a serene and contemplative\u00a0space. It\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":45492,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[23651,3439,23650,23653,8894,7453,22725,23652,23649,1325],"class_list":["post-45491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","tag-barb-halparin","tag-dan-moskovitz","tag-learning-stones","tag-louise-krivel","tag-memorials","tag-monuments","tag-oct-7","tag-reisa-schneider","tag-stumbling-stones","tag-temple-sholom"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"photo](\"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/nov-29-monuments.29.Temple-Sholom-monument-rocks.jpeg\")
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