A few weeks ago on Simchat Torah, we as a community saw our finished ceramic kalaniyot for the first time. They were arranged in temporary flower boxes in the front of the sanctuary, each one uniquely shaped and painted by different hands.

Each flower is different and yet you know they are all kalaniyot. Each shaped by our hands and experiences, gathered together as community, yet allowing our uniqueness to be expressed.

Much like our grief. When we began forming the flowers, the weight of Tisha b’Av and all of October 7th was there on us. Each day we counted, we davened, we found ways to support each other even on those darkest hardest days when it felt as if hope was lost. We found strength as the clay flowers gained strength in the kiln. It was so difficult, waiting for the hostages to be returned and not knowing if they ever would.

Until they¹ were home.

Now the kalaniyot are near the main entrance. I walk by them daily. Each time, I’m awestruck. This powerfully visual reminder is not just of collective loss, but of how we came together as a community and showed up for each other and K’lal Yisrael. How we found a way to create beauty while in the depths of grief. How they fostered hope.

Perhaps the flowers listened as we shaped them, absorbing what we whispered into the clay. Now I listen as I walk by them, and they listen to me. They’re flowers, and are nonjudgmental. This wordless exchange, daily and ongoing, is its own form of showing up.

This is what I keep learning through Intentional Yarn Therapy and through participating in my community. We come together because showing up matters. We (or at least I) create because the rhythm of making holds us while we process what we can’t always put into words. Beauty and grief can exist in the same space. Both/And. Always.

The kalaniyot are there without judgement when we arrive and when we leave. They’ve shown up. This art installation, made stronger through fire, shows a vast planting of individual flowers that only makes sense together—a memorial that is also about hope.

Optimism and hope are not the same. Optimism is the belief that the world is changing for the better; hope is the belief that, together, we can make the world better. Optimism is a passive virtue, hope an active one. It needs no courage to be an optimist, but it takes a great deal of courage to hope. The Hebrew Bible is not an optimistic book. It is, however, one of the great literatures of hope.

~ Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, To Heal a Fractured World, p. 166

1. As of this writing it is Day 767 and four families are still waiting for their loved ones to return home for burial. We must not forget them: Ran, Dror, Meny, Sudthisak 🎗️ ↩︎