The Questions I Don’t Let Myself Ask

By Hindel Swerdlov

You don’t feel the most frightening parts of a roller coaster at the beginning. It’s only when you’re suspended upside down, heart racing, that the questions come rushing in: Is the bar really locked? Is the seatbelt secure? Why did I agree to this ride in the first place?

Yesterday felt like that moment.

For the past month, many of us here in Israel have been managing—holding steady in ways that, on the surface, seem almost ordinary. We’ve learned to live with alerts and sirens, to keep children at home without the structure of school, to juggle work while somehow providing three meals a day instead of one. We host, we clean, we smile. Between sirens and hurried trips to the safe room, we work to maintain a sense of calm, even as we find ourselves explaining words like destruction and loss to our children—words we wish they never had to understand.

We have been “fine.” But yesterday reminded us how fragile that feeling can be—how quickly the illusion of control can give way to the raw awareness that we are, in many ways, simply holding on.

They say we are a resilient people. So we stay resilient. We kiss our soldier sons (we have two in active combat) when they walk in the door—smelling of battle, exhaustion, and sweat-soaked uniforms. We put on our best face and act nonchalant about having them home, while quietly aware of what a miracle it is that they came back at all—whole, healthy. We are at war, on many fronts. That is not a given.

I got the news about Sergeant Moshe Katz of the Tzanchanim, killed in Lebanon. I cried as I read about him. I cried for his mother and sister, whom I know, and for the many people connected to them. I cried for every soldier who has to bury a brother-in-arms, and for every friend who will never see him, hear him, or hold him again.

And still, I chose to be resilient.

It felt like getting back on that roller coaster—looking manageable from a distance, telling myself I’d deal with the fear when I reached the top of the upside-down loop. I pushed forward into my day. Pesach preparations would be waiting for me at home.

Because sometimes, I have to step out of my own reality and enter someone else’s, just to remember that life continues beyond the tight, one-mile radius of my war-front home.

I went to visit a friend who had just given birth—two decades younger than me—and I held her baby for two and a half hours while she slept. She got rest. I got to breathe in new life—a quiet, steady reminder of how beautiful and precious this world still is.

A simple, fragile kind of win-win.

Just before heading back home, I got a text from a friend who is battling cancer. She had treatment that morning and said she was up for a visit. I felt honored. I sat with her for a bit in her Jerusalem stone living room, and we giggled about everything except death and war. Even cancer itself somehow became something we could talk about lightly, even joke about.

Then the siren went off.

The closest shelter is a seven-minute walk, and she wasn’t exactly up for a sprint. So we lined up two chairs in the most fortified space in her home and stayed put—talking, laughing, continuing as if this, too, was just part of the day.

Again, a kind of win-win for me. There is something deeply grounding about sitting across from someone and sharing pieces of life that rarely overlap. I felt enriched hearing her thoughts, our shared opinions, and even more so seeing the world through her eyes—someone two decades my senior, carrying a completely different set of experiences.

I came home for two hours, faced the disaster of pancake batter I had left behind for the five boys and their slumber-party breakfast, and gave them all—and I mean all—jobs for Pesach.

And then it started to catch up with me.

The grief had been hovering just beneath the surface all day, and the moment I slowed down, it began to rise. I let myself pause, just for a second—and the questions came. How does a person bury a child? I’ve done it. I know… and yet I don’t know.

How will this family cope?

A family from America, now burying their 22-year-old son, a lone soldier who chose this life. He built something here: new friends, a new language, a new culture, even a new kind of belonging within the army.

They’ve never been to a military funeral. They’ve never seen the hollow, vacant eyes of friends shoveling dirt onto their son’s grave. They’ve never witnessed thousands of strangers—people who never knew them, never knew him—show up anyway, filling every inch around the open grave, tears streaming down their faces.

They never signed up for this.

This is why I don’t let myself pause. It’s too much to sit with my thoughts. The roller coaster starts up again and suddenly I don’t feel safe—like I’m not strapped in, not mentally prepared. But I’m already on the ride, and it’s climbing in the tracks again.

And then, as it inches upward, I get a call from my son’s friend J’s wife, T.

J is in the army with Shaya, and just the night before, their unit had moved deep into Lebanon—taking over a Lebanese home to secure it as their new base. They’re moving toward the Litani River, toward whatever comes next, all in the name of keeping Israel safe.

T is on the phone. She asks if we can start learning together—a chavruta—in the merit of the boys’ safety. “Maybe after Pesach?” she suggests.

I say no. Today is a very good day to start.

Within the hour, I’m printing notes on Shaar HaBitachon—“Gates of Trust”—something I taught four years ago. I emailed her a copy. We read it to each other, back and forth, and we talk and discuss

And I can breathe again.

Another win-win.

We both needed that reminder—that being a “good Jew” isn’t just about being religious. It’s about feeling emotionally connected to Hashem. It’s about trusting that He runs the world, that everything—everything—is Divinely orchestrated.

So I move on to the next part of my day, even as the grief sits in my throat, threatening at any moment to break out into something loud and uncontrollable. I’m riding this roller coaster of emotions, witnessing life in all its extremes, and trying to stay anchored in that sense of connection.

I haven’t been this busy or worked this hard emotionally the entire month of war.

Someone very dear to me—32—is engaged to one of my dear students. I wasn’t the matchmaker, but as a dating coach, I’ve felt deeply connected to him for a long time. My heart is full of happiness as I get ready, consciously choosing an outfit that could easily be worn to an engagement party or a funeral.

Because that’s where we are.

The brain, in trauma, doesn’t compartmentalize well. War alone is enough to make simple things—lists, menus, schedules—feel impossible. And yet here we are, standing at the edge of grief for a soldier I never met, while somehow still trying to push past the heaviness and make space for life’s joys.

I’ve spent years balancing the two—joy on one side of the heart, sadness on the other. We show up the way we’re supposed to. Sometimes it feels like superhuman effort, but most of the time, I manage pretty well. Ask my friends. (Less so my husband.)

And so we said L’chaim with the happy couple, genuinely full, happy hearts. We gave hugs, offered blessings—and then continued on to the funeral.

I’m not a journalist. You can read the details of Moshe Katz’s funeral anywhere in the news.

But I am a momma.

I am a momma who buried a child 16 years ago—and also, somehow, yesterday.

A momma who has already placed a child into the holy earth of this Land—the very Land Moshe gave his life defending.

A momma of two sons currently in combat in the IDF—one a commander of tzanchanim in Gaza (most of his soldiers saddened by the death of a fellow comrade- 2 even left Gaza for the funeral. The other son is in the Sayeret Givati special forces, working with explosives and drones deep in Lebanon.

I am not a glutton for punishment. There is no martyrdom running through my bloodstream. (Actually, there is, but that’s another story).

And still, I go.

I go first and foremost to show respect to this beautiful family, who have sacrificed their eldest son for humanity at large, and for the Jewish people in particular—for me, for my family. I go because I cannot help but recognize pieces of the road ahead of them, the kind of brokenness that takes years to even begin climbing out of.

So I show up—though inside I feel like I’m suspended upside down. I show up to represent Jewish mommas everywhere.

And all throughout the funeral, I find myself muttering, almost chanting under my breath, that this will never be my sons—and therefore it cannot be anyone else’s.

It comes out somewhere between faith and protest, between trust and something that feels like emotional unraveling. I feel like I’m hanging in that upside-down loop again, whispering through tears as someone presses tissues into my hand:

“I will never come back here to Har Herzl again. We will never bury our children again.”

The G-d I am in a relationship with—the One whose people have trusted Him over and over and over again—would never take another of His children. How could He? Look at this generation. Look at Moshe—who chose to leave everything familiar behind to serve his country, his G-d, his people.

I watch the faces of his comrades. The tears. The empty, glazed eyes. The red noses. Some of them still smell like the battlefield—their boots, their uniforms, their guns marked with mud and soot.

I watch the mothers in the crowd, holding onto their soldier sons a little too tightly. They’re crying, whispering their own versions of the same chant: This will never be us.

And I know—what they mean is: This will never be you.

Slowly, I feel myself coming around the loop of the roller coaster, landing unsteadily, trying once again to gather myself—find some version of balance, of sanity, of resilience.

I step forward. I hug Moshe’s sister Adina, my daughter-in-law’s best friend. I hug his mother, Devorah, who was once my student.

And I stand there, watching this family take their first steps into a new life they never chose.

Jews don’t do roller coasters well. May Hashem bring calm and serenity like only He can. Now. With Moshiach. For the sake of Moshe. For the sake of all His children. This is what True Freedom will look like. Chag Pesach Kosher V’sameach.