Reflections by Lena Katsnelson, campaign director, UJA's Lawyer's Division, delivered at a staff gathering.

I needed to take a day or two before writing because, in all honesty, I felt blank and empty after hearing the news about our six beloved brothers and sisters who were executed over the weekend. I know that each of you felt the stabbing loss in your own deeply personal and acute ways. I also know that knowing that you are not alone, that others are hurting, is an important part of grief.

I wanted to take a minute this morning and just say, “I am here. I am with you.”

It felt different and difficult to come in to work today. Different even than on October 7, when my presiding thought was Go help. Go in, do your job, help them — help the people who need it right now and don’t think about anything. Just help.

But today, I am not sure how to help anymore. I know our work is vital. I know millions depend on us waking up, putting one foot in front of the other, opening the emails, making the calls. I know it matters. And yet, tears stabbed the back of my eyes as I walked in and a knot formed in my throat — how can we help in a world that feels unrecognizable?

We are grieving the loss of the world we thought we knew. Of course, we are grieving for those six that we lost this weekend — Alex, Eden, Carmel, Ori, Almog, and Hersh. But we are also grieving for the loss of the world as we had previously understood it to exist.

Until Saturday night, the world that I lived in was one in which Hersh was coming home. Not because his life mattered more than the others, or because he was uniquely deserving, but because I could not fathom a world in which he didn’t.   Because I could not believe that the story of Rachel and Jon and their fight could end in a coffin.

Because the world I lived in would not allow their efforts, their grace, their resolve, their endless pursuit of their son’s freedom with love and thoughtfulness and dogged determination to end with his execution at the hands of the monsters who tortured and maimed him.

What kind of world would allow that?

How could that be the ending to Hersh’s story? Not in my world, no way. But my world is gone. The world I thought I lived in was torn away. Just like it was on October 7. And February 22, 2022. And quite a few times before that. I am sure you have each had your world shaken, overturned, and broken apart in various moments of both personal and communal tragedy.

Each of those times, you have been asked to grieve the loss of both your personal tragedy and the world you thought you knew, that you thought you understood. But most of those times, you were given the space and understanding of those around you to mourn those hurts. This time feels different. I know so many people mourn for Hersh and for the five other innocent souls torn from us, but there is also widespread apathy and antipathy.

Seeing our fellow New Yorkers marching in the streets yesterday waving the flags of their murderers was another knife in our chest. Explaining to friends and neighbors why you can’t stop crying over the deaths of six people you have never met felt so deeply alienating and isolating. Watching to see if any of this will change, if it will be the final spark that lights the fires of change and knowing that it likely won’t, that the world will continue to spin and that most people will be none the wiser — it's banal but it’s also heartbreaking.

So what do we do today? What do we do tomorrow? How do we move forward when every so often the world we have such a firm grasp on is wrenched from our fingertips and torn to shreds in front of us? We help.

On Sunday, someone I follow posted that the idea of Rachel waking up the next day and not putting on the numbers broke her heart. But of course, that is not what our Rachel did, is it? Her son, her sweet boy, is gone.

But she woke up on Monday, and she put the numbers on her chest. Because even though her world is in tatters, she refuses to stop fighting for the 101 families still waiting for their world to return to them — many of them hoping against hope that they will come back alive. That their story will have a different ending and that our world can look slightly more like the one we wish it was.

Rachel Goldberg-Polin didn’t ask to be our teacher or our spiritual leader, but, unfortunately for her, she was thrust into this role. And from her, I have learned every single day for 333 days.

So I will take her lesson again today. I will get up. I will walk in. I will get to work. And I will help.

Sending all of you my fondest wish that me sharing my grief has given you a small place to rest yours, and that we can carry it together and in doing so make it just a bit lighter for all of us.