On this day of mourning for the Jewish people, the name of the Bibas must be mentioned.
The family consisted of the father, Yarden, the mother, Shiri, and their two children, Ariel who was then 4 years old and Kfir who was barely 9 months old. They lived in Kibbutz Nir Oz, in the south of Israel, very close to the Gaza Strip.

The first to arrive in Israel was Jose Luis Silberman, Shiri’s father, an Argentine. Jose Luis was a visual artist. The love for art probably comes from Jose Luis’s father who dedicated himself to music. He was an orchestra conductor and composed most of the songs for the program “Titanes en el Ring”, a very popular choreographed wrestling program that used heroic and funny characters that my mother forbade me to watch when I was a child.

Jose Luis immigrated to Israel in 1976. That was the year that a brutal military dictatorship took place in my home country.
More than 30,000 people were kidnapped from their homes and never returned, many of them targeted for being Jews.
José Luis left a very violent Argentina to seek peace in Israel.

There he began cooperative work in the Kibbutz and was able to immerse himself in a community life closer to his socialist ideals. The young José Luis worked in the fields of the kibbutz and developed as an artist in one of the cooperative houses of Nir Oz. He met a young Peruvian woman, Marguit Schneider. They married and had two daughters, Dana and Shiri. The girls grew up in the kibbutz.

Shiri dedicated herself to education. From the classrooms she always tried to integrate the young Palestinians who often crossed the border to work near her home in the kibbutz.

On my trip to BA just a month ago, the names of the Bibas continued to be mentioned on the radio and television media after several requests for their release were made by the Argentine consulate.

Yesterday, the image of Shiri with her two children was projected on the iconic symbol of the city of BA, the obelisk. Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, declared 2 days of national mourning for Ariel and Kfir. All public buildings are being illuminated in orange until tomorrow.

Our hearts, are orange as well. To me, this will be forever the “Orange shabbat”. 

Instead of the regular Matir Asurim prayer that we included among with R. Ross since we started working together, we’d like to have tonight the prayer of the state of Israel.

We ask God to protect Yarden as he endures a grieving process that we could not imagine being more difficult. For Shiri, wherever she may be, that her body may be returned to where it belongs, the Land of Israel.

We ask for the prompt recovery of all the hostages who have been returned, for the recovery of their physical and mental health and for the well-being of all the health professionals who work with them. 

We demand that every last hostage be returned home!

We pray for all the children of the world. May God grant that future generations will inherit a world with more justice, mercy and peace. May children only have to worry about playing and having fun. 

May our children be safe under the protection of the Shekhinah, the divine presence in our lives.

May God protect and sustain the Israeli Nation and all the Jewish people in times of horror and despair like these.