People grieve in Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square on Feb. 20 prior to the handover of four bodies; three have been confirmed to be hostages taken by Hamas during the Oct. 7 attack, including Ariel and Kfir Bibas. Photo by Amir Levy/Getty Images

Carly Pildis February 20, 2025

Telling my 8-year-old daughter that the Bibas children are dead was one of the most devastating moments for me since the Oct. 7 attack.

For more than 500 days we have been living in the first stage of grief — denial. I never gave up hope. I prayed every day. When Hamas announced that Shiri Bibas and her two young children, Kfir and Ariel, had died in November of 2023, I believed it was a lie — part of the terrorist group’s campaign of psychological torture. When the recent ceasefire was announced, and Yarden Bibas, Shiri’s husband and the children’s father, came home shortly after, I envisioned the family together again in Israel, perhaps gathering around a Passover table to celebrate our upcoming holiday of liberation.

Now that the final glimmer of hope has been crushed, denial can no longer keep us safe. And so we are collectively entering the second stage of grief: anger.

As the mother of two young Jewish children, I am enraged that 80 years after the Holocaust, the world is still not a safe place for Jewish babies.

I feel hatred, like I never have before, for the people who tore down hostage posters featuring Kfir and Ariel, and called them propaganda. I despise my neighbors who hung “Ceasefire Now” signs when it was trendy, only to replace them when a new cause of the day arose, never acknowledging all those still suffering the consequences of the misery that Hamas’ 2023 attack unleashed.

I am irate when I walk past a sticker, glued to a lamppost by my house, that celebrates Hamas’s “revolution” and the “liberation” of that massacre. I stuck pictures of Ariel and Kfir next to that sticker to shame whoever left it there, but they came off in the rain. I am mad at whoever hung the sticker, for having better glue.

But really, I can no longer make dark jokes about people who hate us. For today, at least, I hate them back.

The list of those for whom I feel hatred, in this second stage of grief, feels almost like the Yom Kippur Viddui. But instead of a list of my own sins, it is a list of all those who sinned against our hostages.

I am angry at the United Nations for their gutless moral failings and systemic targeting of Israel.

I am angry at the Red Cross over their failure to serve the hostages in any way — to provide medicine, food, or proof of life. They have been, at best, useless.

I am angry at those protestors against the war who denied Jewish humanity.

I am angry at every college professor and student who tried to justify the violence that claimed the Bibas children’s lives, alongside so many others.

I am angry at friends who argued that Israel’s walls, checkpoints and border patrols were signs of racist apartheid — never mind the function they served in trying to keep Israeli kids safe and alive.

I am angry at those who marched for a ceasefire, but never said a word about the babies Hamas had brutalized and ripped from their homes.

I am angry at too many friends, or former friends, than I can count, for their silence and equivocation.

I am angry at Hamas for all of their evil — the rapes, tortures, burnings, beheadings, and murders. Most of all, I hate them for sowing in me deep doubt, for the first time, that peace could one day happen. I hate that my doubt marks a victory for their evil.

Worst of all, I am mad at God.

I am mad at God because, with yesterday’s confirmation of the Bibas children’s deaths, I had to tell my 8-year-old, for the first time in her young life, that God did not answer our prayers. She cried. I held her close. I told her she was safe and that Mommy would always keep her safe.

I looked at her curly hair and wide eyes, full of sadness, and wondered why God lets our kids die.

But I didn’t tell my 8-year-old that I am furious with God.

Instead, I leaned into our rituals and history. I told her that the most important way to honor the Bibas children is to devote ourselves to the values of our people. I sang her songs, telling her that every Jewish baby is a miracle. I told her what I have always told her — what I have always known — that in difficult times we need to lean into our Jewishness, and focus on tefillah, tzedakah and mitzvot. That if we do what our grandmothers and great-grandmothers and their grandmothers did, it will somehow preserve and keep us.

Light candles on Shabbat. Bake a challah and a brisket. Sing a song of yearning and love. Study. Pray.

But I felt like a liar. I am miserable and heartbroken. I want the comfort of my Judaism. I want to feel the warmth of tradition and prayer wrapped in a tallis. But how can those traditions bring me comfort when I am so angry at God?

How do we comfort our children when we want to scream at God? You have let our children die too many times! Every Jewish mom has cradled their babies and thought about Anne Frank. Now, forever, we will also think of Ariel and Kfir Bibas.

But I know my fury at God is, itself, a way of celebrating my Jewishness.

Our people were made to struggle with the divine. Our whole identity is built, for better or worse, on Jacob wrestling with the angel. I know, in my soul, that in a low moment, I can scream at God, and God will still love me. I know when my rage passes and sadness consumes me, our ancient prayers will lift our spirits.

I will say those prayers at synagogue this Saturday: My little girl wants to go to honor Kfir, Ariel, and all the hostages. It is my job to give her what she needs to feel solace in our tradition. So like millions of Jewish moms before me, I will prepare for this Shabbat, shopping, cooking, and washing clothes for synagogue, hoping and praying that the world and the God I am so angry at will somehow, against all evidence to the contrary, change.

Update: A photo caption in this story was updated to clarify that only three of the four bodies sent to Israel by Hamas this week have been confirmed as hostages.

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