Should I invite my brother to my wedding?

The Rebbetzin's sukkah was filled with women. Her invitation said a night of cheese and wine in honour of those we’ve all lost since last Simchat Torah. I held her seventh baby in a quiet corner. He breathed softly, looking through the darkness, seeking the source of merriment. His breathing a comfort, a soothing metronome of life. It took me an hour to coax him to sleep.

The Rebbetzin welcomed us and urged us to eat and said quietly that if I wanted to address the crowd, they would welcome words of hope from me. She asked if I wanted to put the baby down, which I did, and the baby immediately woke, without a whimper. I went to mingle with the women.

One of them was a teacher at my school. She had just arrived after years as a combat soldier in the IDF. She was engaged to an Australian who wanted to settle near family. The wedding was very soon. But the bride had a dilemma.

I sipped sparkling water. The Rebbetzin approached to say that the women had their fill of food and drink and were hoping for words of hope, and did I have any?

Words of hope don’t spring spontaneously from my back pocket. I have to look for them and turn them over before delivering them. I asked the Rebbetzin for some time.

The soldier bride kept talking. She asked if she should invite her groom’s militantly anti-Zionist brother, who has testified against the Jews before the government, saying antisemitism is a myth and a hoax. He campaigns for the elimination of Jews in Israel, and the expulsion of non-Natives from Australia. Should she allow this man - her groom’s brother - into her wedding?

I did not have an answer for the soldier bride. That day I had heard the scholar Elana Stein Hain speak about remembering and forgetting and I stood up under the palm leaves and the stars of the sukkah, and spoke to the women.

God forgets what we remember and remembers what we forget, Elana Stein Hain taught, in the name of Eliyahu KiTov. If we remember the good we've done, God forgets it. God detests the high and mighty showoff. But when we forget the good we've done, because the deed is natural and inevitable, God remembers for us. What we mourn of our errors, what we carry and cannot let go, that turns and turns in our minds, God forgets. What we dismiss of our bad behavior - oh it was nothing to insult her, just a passing word - that God remembers.

I asked the women in the sukkah what they would do if they were this bride? Would they remember the insults of their brother or would they let it go, leave it to God? Do we need to embrace our brothers in this time of rupture? Or, as teachers and mothers, do we put the line down and say - till here, no more?

I left the question with the women and sat down.

The bride approached and thanked me for my words. When she was in the IDF, she was protecting villages on the border. I asked her what happened to the army on October 7. Why did they leave our communities to the terrorists and didn’t protect them? Why had ordinary citizens driven down in their own cars to save their families? Why did an old lady have to entertain a clutch of armed thugs with charm and cookies until she was relieved?

The Rebbetzin’s baby was being handed from arm to arm as people were saying goodbye.

The soldier bride told me that in the military every person and every unit has their role, they practice and practice till they have it perfect, then they move into the field. They are professionals. But they hadn't practiced a mass invasion, so they were sitting outside Be'eri while the terrorist army burned it. Waiting for orders. This woman isn’t a military strategist, and who knows if she’s right, but her message was good.

In the last year I've walked into a classroom of children every day without a map and without instructions. I told the school I'm not good at ad lib. I like to practice. But they said there was no one better to do the job.

We cannot always be practicing for knowable outcomes. We walk forward without a map, and find our way. We invite our brother to our wedding because he is our brother, and prepare as well as we can for what might happen.

The baby I held was conceived after October 7 in answer to October 7. He was born on July 4. He is called Amichai, my people live. And equal and opposite to us, our brothers have conceived and birthed and named their children too, names as portents. Our children will face one another at a wedding or a battle after we are gone. We get to choose, right now, which one.

The soldier bride drove me home. She liked what I said in the sukkah and invited me to speak words of hope at her wedding. I have time to practice, but I won't. Between now and then the world will be created many times and the words must be new in our mouths every day.

I will be ready because our brother will be there, listening. Of course he will be there, he is our brother.