This week, JSL residents, staff and families continue to taste salty tears… tears both of sorrow and of joy. Last week we shed tears of joy while celebrating Sukkot, and we shed tears of worry and pain contemplating whether or not the hostages would truly make it home alive.   

We are born with salt in our blood and tears in our eyes. The first sound we make is a cry.  When we cry, our brains sound an alarm we can’t answer. The lacrimal glands flood our eyes with warm, salty water filled with hormones and stress relievers. The flood purges and cradles us.  Tears have a sacred place. They fall when our souls ache from sadness and when we cry with joy.  

Early Monday morning, sirens wailed as headlines and news updates flashed. Worldwide, Jews were connected in prayer for the return of captives. A mother in Jerusalem weeps for her son, a former hostage. A rabbi in Paris whispers psalms for an IDF soldier he’ll never meet. A teen in Detroit lights a candle and says, “Please G-d let them all come home safely.” 

A Jewish tear shed in 1943 Warsaw echoes in 2025 West Bloomfield.  Grief moves through us like an underground current, ancient, familiar, and impossible to contain. History doesn’t just live in books; it lives in our bodies. We don’t just remember. We feel. And in that pain, we find one another. That’s what binds us. This is what makes our people resilient. Ours isn’t a story of unbroken triumph, but of unbroken compassion. In every generation, Jews gather their tears and turn them into prayer, protest, poetry, and love. It’s not just shared beliefs that bind us.  It’s also shared grief. We remember slavery, exile, pogroms, and loss. And still, we choose life. Still, we hope. Hatikvah.  

A well-known rabbinic teaching states that since the destruction of the Temple, the gates of prayer have been partially closed, but “the gates of tears are never locked.”  Genuine tears of remorse, sorrow, or yearning can always reach G-d. In mourning our covenant is renewed, not just with G-d, but with each other. Together at Jewish Senior Life we mourn the passing of residents who have grown to be our loved ones and family. 

Jewish tears water the soil of memory. They tell us that pain will not have the final word. They ripple outward, softening hearts and stirring something long buried in the human spirit. Maybe this is how peace begins. Not with treaties, but in the quiet courage of those who still cry for a better world. Mothers in Gaza cry into pillows. Fathers in Israel weep as they fold beds that will never be slept in again.  In refugee camps, military cemeteries, bombed-out schools, and living rooms where the news plays on a loop, our tears fall like rain.  

Sometimes, in the aftermath of tragedy, former enemies stand at the same grave and weep. The wall between them dissolves… not in agreement, but in the recognition of shared sorrow. We can choose a world where grief doesn’t isolate us, but draws us together, not in anger, but in quiet remembrance. Peace isn’t just the silence after violence; it’s the highest form of empathy. Tears remind us that compassion still lives among us. In every tear, there is a vow: your pain matters, even if I can’t take it away. I’m a witness to other’s pain. 

The story is told that in the end, G-d won’t count victories, but tears. Maybe these tears will be enough. Enough to remind us how to be human again. Enough to bring peace, not all at once, but one tear at a time. Tears mean we are still feeling. Still hoping. Still human. And when enough of us cry not in hatred, but in profound compassion, something shifts.  In our fractured world, maybe peace will grow from the soil where mourners stand. 

So, we keep crying for our children, for strangers, for those we’ve lost, and for those we fear we may lose. We cry because not to would mean that we’ve stopped caring.  

Tonight, as we gather around Shabbat tables, some hostages will be home and held tightly by the families who never gave up hope. We whisper blessings through tears, knowing these reunions are nothing short of miraculous. But not all came home. Some tables will remain set for those who will never return. We hold space for both kinds of tears… for the joy and for the heartbreak.               

Here at Jewish Senior Life, and across the world, we carry their names, their stories, and their memories into Shabbos and beyond. May our candles burn brighter and may our prayers, rising with our tears, help bring comfort, strength, and peace.  

Shabbat Shalom