In the slowness of the rising sun on the morning of Oct. 7, as the first of many sirens pierced the stillness of the sky punctuating the breaths of the birds that flew above, the yawns of the early risers, and the songs of prayer from the mouths of those who had woken up early to rejoice in the holiday of Simchat Torah, a foreboding feeling crept into the stomach of Tirtza Rosenthal.

She had only arrived two days before, in the midst of the bustling Jerusalem frenzy, to visit her sons, their wives and two baby grandchildren for the remainder of the holiday. It was supposed to be a short trip of snuggling the babies, delectable food and laughter around a table, but the trip turned out to be much longer as Tirtza is still in Israel.

Tirtza and her daughter-in-law were about to set the table, preparing for the day’s festivities, when Gabi, her middle son, returned from his early morning prayer with the news that he must turn on his phone to see if he was called back in for army service.

He was.

The dishes were still in neat stacks, not yet put out. The tablecloth, hanging. The food, cooked lovingly the day before, in foil pans in the fridge, untouched. Tirtza silently escorted Gabi down the narrow stairs of his apartment building, clutching his arm, half holding him back and half afraid to be left behind. A mother never loses that feeling of pain in separating from a child, no matter how old he gets, no matter that he was born 27 years before; the chord of connection forever remains. She placed her hands on his head, her whispered blessings as a measure of security as she relinquished him to the grips of God. From one set of hands to the next.

He quietly drove off in his car, proud to return to serve in the IDF but sad to be missing the rest of the much longed-for holiday.

The apartment felt changed, with the silent cries of Gabi’s wife, alone with her child, and the louder cries of the baby, a choir of yearning. And a few days later, when Tirtza’s older son Zachy was called in for army service, she decided to stay on and help her daughters-in-law, filling some of the spaces that her sons once occupied.

Tirtza, who works for Cross River Bank, manages to balance her career with a steady stream of volunteering around Israel and helping with the two babies. On Sundays, she goes down south to help at a large barbecue at a checkpoint in which many soldiers cross. They grill 10,000 hamburgers and distribute them freely, a hot fresh meal that all are eager to indulge in. She scans the sea of seemingly identical soldiers, clothed in the familiar color of Israel’s fruit, the olive, searching for a face she knows, a face of one of her sons.

They are disheveled faces, drawn and exhausted with fatigue spilling from their eyes. They are faces with stories of loss and unimaginable sorrow. But they are also the faces of hope, of determination, of an iron will to win. Of utter and complete devotion to the land of Israel. She sees it, the darkness and the light. She sees their sparks, the sparks that burn brighter and hotter than the coals of the barbecue. Their fire lights up the night.

They are all her sons. They are her brothers. They are her people. It is as if the crowd merges into one strong being, and she feeds them as only a Jewish mother could. It is the redeeming of the Simchat Torah meal that never was. The table is now a long table, a table that serves 10,000, a table with simple foods of hamburger, onion and tomato, and it’s a meal that stretches on for days and weeks on end. A meal that will nurture them physically, as if to say, If I can quiet your primal urge of hunger, if I can make your belly comfortable and full, if I can nourish your aching, exhausted limbs with my food, then maybe you can feel me with you. Maybe you will embody my act of love. My sons. My brothers. My people.

Week after week, amid her other volunteering efforts, Tirtza goes back to the barbecue to contribute. And then one Sunday, amid the crowd of sweating bodies, one pushed its way through. Looking up from behind the table where Tirtza lovingly handed out heaping plates of food, stood Gabi in his radiance, his olive-green brotherhood.

But the volunteering isn’t just about helping the soldiers and the displaced families. As Gandhi once said, “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” We are all finding ourselves in this process, repairing the brokenness of our people from before, slowly sewing us back together, the stitches measured and precise. On an individual level, we are stretching and growing and on a national level the ripples of kindness fill the air, like music, drowning out the choir and the haunting screams of the sirens.

Sarah Abenaim is a writer, life coach and journaling workshop curator who lives with her husband and kids. To be featured in one of her “Out There, In Here” stories, reach out to her at [email protected] or to David Siegel at [email protected]. To learn more about how you can make an impact in the war effort, check out tinyurl.com/rinat-volunteeringinIsrael.