In the hills of Samaria, a young man stood before a grieving crowd to sing farewell to his second mother. Avigdor Gavish was no stranger to loss ā in 2002, terrorists murdered his parents Rachel and David, his brother Avraham, and his grandfather Yitzhak in their home in Alon Moreh. In the aftermath of that tragedy, Rachel Cohen opened her home to Avigdor and his surviving siblings, becoming a mother to the motherless.
Now, in a cruel twist of fate, Avigdor stood at Rachel Cohen’s funeral. She had been murdered by terrorists in the village of Funduq, torn from her family and from the children she had chosen to love as her own. Yet in this moment of grief, Avigdor did not retreat into silence. Instead, he lifted his voice in song, offering a melody that transformed pain into promise.
“Not all is black, there is some white,” he sang. “Not all is fear, the faith will grow.” His words echo an ancient Jewish understanding: that song does more than express – it transforms. Throughout Jewish history, song has served as a bridge between worlds of darkness and light, between despair and hope. At the Red Sea, the Jewish people responded with the Song of the Sea, transforming their experience into eternal praise. In his darkest moments, David turned to melody, using psalms to bridge the gap between suffering and redemption.
In Psalm 30:12, David declares:
“You have turned my lament into dancing.” When we face death and tragedy, it often feels like we’ve reached the end of the story. The pain is so complete, so overwhelming, that we cannot imagine the narrative continuing.
But David’s words reveal a deeper truth. He doesn’t say his mourning was eliminated or forgotten ā he says it was turned (hafachta) into dancing. The Hebrew word “hafach” implies transformation rather than replacement. The pain isn’t erased; it’s transformed into something new. The story doesn’t end; it takes an unexpected turn.
Avigdor’s song continues: “Not all is lonely, there is family / Not all is sad, there is consolation / Not all is detached, I hear a prayer / Not all is blocked, the ruins will rise again.” Each line acknowledges the reality of loss while asserting the possibility of renewal. Like David’s psalm, the song doesn’t deny the darkness but insists on the presence of light within it.
Rachel Cohen embodied this principle. When faced with the tragedy of the Gavish family, she didn’t turn away from their darkness but stepped into it, bringing the light of maternal love. Her act of adoption was itself a song of faith, a living testimony that declared “not all is lonely, there is family.”
The sages teach that the highest form of faith is “emunah sheleimah” – complete faith that encompasses both joy and sorrow, light and darkness. Avigdor Gavish’s song, offered at the funeral of his second mother, exemplifies this completeness. It acknowledges the reality of pain while asserting the even greater reality of hope. “A new day, I will rise with a happy heart / A great light shines on all,” he sings.
Through this lens, we can understand David’s words in Psalm 30 more deeply. The transformation from mourning to dancing isn’t a single moment but a process, much like the unfolding of a story. Each chapter of grief contains within it the seeds of the next chapter of healing. The dance emerges not despite the mourning, but through it, as we learn to move in new ways through our pain.
This understanding offers profound comfort when we face loss. It tells us that even in our darkest moments, we are not at the end of the story but in the midst of it. Our tears become part of a larger narrative of healing and renewal, just as Avigdor’s song of mourning became a testament to enduring love and faith.
As his melody rises in defiance of terror, it joins an ancient tradition of Jewish song that has carried our people through their darkest moments. In his courage to sing, in Rachel’s courage to love, we see an eternal truth: that through faith, through love, and through song, we can transform our greatest darkness into light, not by denying the pain, but by allowing it to become part of a larger story of healing and renewal.
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