Friday, June 25, 2010

Can you miss someone you've never met?

It's June 25, 2010. That means Gilad Shalit has been held in captivity by Hamas terrorists for four years.

Here in Israel, I often hear a phrase spoken by a family member, mostly parents, to describe another family member; they will say about the person, "our ________ ". So for example, when a mother talks about her daugher Keren, she will often say "קרן שלנו" ["Keren shelanu"]--our Keren. There's something very poignant about that to me.

Me, I can't believe our Gilad has been gone four years.

There is another soldier, an air force pilot whose name is Ron Arad. Arad was captured in 1986, and aside from some correspondence in 1987, has not been heard from since.

That's 24 years.

While tooling around the blogosphere, I found this video on Lion of Zion's blog. The song is "Keshetavo"--"When you will come back". On that day, the singer says "נשיר ברון" [NaShir beron]--"We will sing with Ron". "Ron", Arad's first name, in Hebrew means joy.

I think the song is appropriate today, as we remember and pray for both Gilad and Ron.

May that day that we sing with Ron--and Gilad--come soon.

4 comments:

AMRILUSAGUY said...

Your title is, "can you miss someone you have never met?"
My answer would be, can you not!

Shabbat Shalom

Mrs. S. said...

And don't forget about Zecharyah Baumel, Zvi Feldman, Yehuda Katz, Guy Hever, and Majdy Halabi.

May all of Israel's MIAs return home quickly and in good health.

Shavua tov and besurot tovot!

Gila Rose said...

Beautifully said.

in the vanguard said...

I have to say this again (as it appears on my blog):
Is it not incredible Israel does not invade Gaza and force them to hand over Gilad? Is it not incredible Israel continues to supply Gaza with food, water, electricity, medicine, money, even "good will", instead of shutting down these resources to extricate the poor boy? Is it not incredible they don't turn Gaza into a carpet?

They used to go into a neighboring country and deal it havoc when the other side did something stupid. Those were the days, back in the 60's and 70's. Now, all you get is, "we have to restrain ourselves". It's a very sick government and we can all see how even Eretz Yisrael today is in the depths of GALUT.