Bound by Love: Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas

Mishpatim and the Law of the Baby

Shabbat Friendly Print Link

**I edited the essay below in light of the devastating news we received on Thursday, 2.20—the unbearable confirmation that Hamas returned the murdered bodies of Oded Lifshitz, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas (h’yd), while Shiri’s fate remains unknown. The anguish of not knowing, the relentless waiting and praying, continues.

After days of collective grieving, we are left with anguish and heartbreaking uncertainty. Ariel and Kfir Bibas were brutally murdered—and Shiri’s fate remains unknown. No one knows where she is.

A part of me is numb. Many of us expected this. But so many of us hoped, against all reason, for a miracle: Shiri and her two redheaded boys stepping into the light.

And now I cannot stop thinking about Yarden Bibas. His body recovering from cruel captivity. His heart crushed under a grief no human should bear.

The weight of this sadness rests upon all of us who are part of this extended Jewish family. This same jagged grief tore through us on October 7th, and we have carried it ever since. And once again, we ask: How do we live with this? How are we meant to respond?

These past 500 days have convinced me that our grief must shape us—that we must hold onto the pain fiercely, refusing to let it make us numb. Because imagine—just imagine—a Jewish people without shared sorrow, without shared love. It is unthinkable.

This, too, is Torah. This, too, we received at Sinai.

---

This week, in Mishpatim, we continue the revelation that began in last week’s portion, Yitro—the moment that transformed us into a people.

Yitro described a battered mass of escaped slaves standing together as something new. As God spoke from the mountain, we were transformed from a wandering family into a covenantal nation.

It was overwhelming—lightning, fire, a voice that cracked the sky. Rashi tells us that in that moment, we were "as one person with one heart"—a people who did not yet know how to build, but knew we would build together.

But after the poetry and passion of Sinai, we step into Mishpatim. Gone is the inferno. Instead, Moses receives a different kind of revelation: rules, details, case studies—the fine print of civilization.

I always found this transition jarring. How did we go from revelation to legal disputes over oxen? From ecstasy to the minutiae of civil responsibility?

Then I became a mother. And I understood.

I learned that love is not just passion—it is obligation. Not grand gestures, but the repetitive acts that sustain another: feeding, holding. Love is duty. Love is labor.

This is the heart of Mishpatim. It is not only the legal scaffolding for Jewish society. The Torah takes the logic of parental love—unyielding, obligated—and insists that we expand it beyond the walls of our homes, to our entire people.

Mara Benjamin, in The Obligated Self, argues that motherhood teaches us what it means to be obligated, what she calls “the Law of the Baby.” She writes:

"The law could not be fulfilled in abstract, but only in active, embodied, material actions: soothing, feeding, cleaning, comforting, distracting, smiling, and wiping."

This is why the heartbreak of Shiri’s unknown fate and her children’s murder feels unbearable. She embodied Mishpatim—the kind of love that is not a one-time grand event, but utterly and constantly binding.

We know, deep in our bones, what it means for a mother to care for her child. And so we can imagine—God help us, we can imagine—what Shiri must have done in the depths of Gaza to protect her sons. To comfort them. To make them feel safe, even in hell.

This is what makes all this unbearable. It is not just the monstrosity of her captors—it is the image of a mother holding her innocent children, trying to shield them with her body and a flimsy blanket, trying to love them even there.

This is what makes it cut so sharply.

---

One way to honor Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir is to live the lesson of Mishpatim: to ensure that the love characterized by the logic of a parent’s care does not remain private but extends to include our entire people.

For over 500 days, we have lived this kind of love. We have worn hostage pins, protested, shared stories, donated, and called our representatives. We have cared for one another. We have acted as if each hostage were our own family.

Through this labor, we have turned strangers into family. We have created love.

Against all odds, we have carried a love that binds and obligates across generations. A love that aches and endures. This is Am Yisrael Chai.

This is why we are grieving now for Ariel, Kfir, and Oded Lifshitz—why we will not stop fighting for Shiri and our remaining hostages. Because Mishpatim has shaped us into a people who refuse to let heartbreak belong only to those who suffer directly.

Yes, this love hurts us. Yes, it makes us vulnerable.

But we must never forget: this love, this so-called weakness—
It is our greatest power.

---

May this Torah learning be in loving memory of Oded Lifshitz, taken hostage at 83, Ariel Bibas, stolen from his family at just 4 years old, and Kfir Bibas, only 9 months old when he was taken (H’yd).

May their memory be a blessing and inspire us to do good.

May Hashem comfort their families, and may we know no more sorrow.