Yesterday was the anniversary of my father’s and stepmother’s deaths, which I marked with the lighting of memorial candles, a good cry and, for the fourth consecutive year, a Facebook post. By the end of the day, the post, and accompanying photographs, had garnered more than three-dozen comments and “likes.”
Beth Kissileff, in a Sisterhood post published on the same day, comes out against this sort of virtual outpouring. She writes that those prone to expressing “internet empathy” may be fooled into thinking that “their quota of meting out kindness to another has been fulfilled, that they need not do more.”
It wasn’t my Facebook post that prompted Beth’s piece. Rather, it was the story of little Ayelet Galena, whose battle with a rare bone marrow disease was chronicled online by her parents, and followed closely by thousands around the world — myself included.
If you want to show someone you care, you need to show up. Virtual empathy does not replace your presence; it is merely the easy way out of trying to be kind to a fellow human. Writing a few words on a website or tracking the progress of an ill person are certainly thoughtful gestures. The problem is that there are those who, having made those gestures, will believe their quota of meting out kindness to another has been fulfilled, that they need not do more.
This is where, for lack of a better term, “internet empathy” can be dangerous. Jewish tradition teaches that some things have no limit; kindness is one of them. So why am I worried about the supplanting of real chesed (loving kindness) with the virtual brand?
I’ve been following some of the articles — including one by Sisterhood editor Gabrielle Birkner — that have appeared in the aftermath of the tragic death of 2-year-old Ayelet Galena to a bone marrow disease. The authors of these pieces write about how they have become better people by reading, along with 14,000 others, of the progress of this critically ill child. If the family chose to share their lives with others in such a public way, and get support from them, that is their choice. I hope it helps them to know so many take an interest in their suffering and tragedy.
Where I, and I hope others as well, become disturbed is not in the impact on the family but on the gawkers, who believe they are assisting.
“With unstoppable tears and broken hearts we regret to announce that last night around 5AM, after hours of fighting and holding on, our precious Ayelet - the heart of our world, the light and strength for so many, could not fight any more.”
With those words, Seth and Hindy Poupko Galena shared the news of the January 31 death of their 2-year-old daughter, Ayelet Yakira. The little girl, suffering from a rare bone marrow disease, had received a transplant 154 days earlier.
Many of the thousands of those mourning Ayelet today knew her only through the Tumblr blog where her parents chronicled, with remarkable compassion, eloquence and humor, the toddler’s courageous fight.
It is, perhaps, no surprise that were able to laugh through their tears; Ayelet’s dad runs the popular “kosher comedy” website Bang It Out.
In Genesis, when Jacob sees Joseph’s coat covered in blood, and thinks that his precious son is dead, he tears his clothes and begins to mourn. The act of tearing, keriah, is encoded in Jewish law as part of the ritual of mourning —whether expressing personal grief for a loved one or a national grief for the people’s destruction.
The act of tearing, of destroying clothes, is a visceral action full of rage and violence, physically expressing some of the many strong emotions one feels when one is bereaved. I also see it as making a symbolic break in personal identity. As a mourner, you are no longer the person you were. Something has shifted, something has ruptured in your life, and the experience of loss and grief can have a profound effect on identity. And so your clothing, that which represents your old self, is destroyed.
Grief can be also be a very lonely experience, isolating and alienating, and affects personal relationships and engagement with the world. For me, this is beautifully expressed in a piece called ‘Widow’ by the artist Susie MacMurray. There is something compelling and attractive about the shimmering silver, and yet up close you realize that this effect comes from rows and rows of large sharp pins sticking out of the leather dress. It is prickly and dangerous.
I am enjoying the ultimate luxury vacation. Am I in a villa on the mountainous shores of Lake Como? No. Wading into startlingly clear turquoise waters in the Caribbean? Nope. In a south Tel Aviv boutique hotel in newly hip Neve Tzedek? I wish.
I am simply… in my house… quiet and alone. My husband and Boychik are off camping, and Girlchik and Rockerchik are away at overnight camp for the month. The lead-up to their departures was frenetic weeks of shopping, packing, organizing, entertaining, cooking and baking, and then some more shopping and packing.
Not only did my children conclude what was, for each of them, a good school year, Boychik graduated from high school, with a graduation party a day earlier. Because a couple of friends couldn’t make it at the last minute and I am neurotic, I was convinced that no one would actually show up to the party. But dozens did come in the end, and it was wonderful. A few weeks earlier I accompanied Boychik to Los Angeles, where he participated in a national opera competition (in which he was a finalist). That came on the heels of sitting shiva for my father, which followed his funeral, death and the last months of his illness. It was an emotionally and physically draining few months.
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