It's Passover today, which is a holiday that I normally really love. I still love it, but it is of course harder to celebrate this year. Each year I edit a haggadah (heavily edited, and adding many secular and humanist interpretations to the idea that we are free people to make our own choices in this world, and that we are obligated to behave in that manner). I will be in a very small family Seder instead of the traditional friends Seder, as it is dangerous to drive with all of the missiles and sirens.
This is one of the texts I added this year, by Merav Roth. She's a psychologist and psychoanalyst who specializes in traumatic grief and is one of the people who are leading the response team by mental health professionals since Oct. 7th:
"Reality needs us – to remember and remind all of this, to mourn all the beauty that is corrupted by us, humans, but not to let the reality that comes from outside overwhelm us. There is no negotiation that I can have with the next missile. There is a negotiation that I can have with myself about expanding my perspective beyond it – to what is indeed under my control [...] The harder our reality is – the more it needs us. The more God is hidden from us – we are more entrusted with the good and the beautiful in his world. We need to help the world look different. To strive against what we do not see and to cultivate what is important to us. A reality of war is very contagious and dangerous in that for all of us – hatred is contagious, fear is contagious, the false division into a world of absolute evil and absolute good infects us with vengeful and violent worldviews [...] This is the defeat that we must not accept. [...]
Reality needs us, to be fully present, attentive, aware of the dangers and refusing to be infected with all these difficult materials of life. [...] Reality needs us – to provide an alternative. We are entrusted with the good and the beautiful in our world, always, and today more than ever."