After Shabbat services, we filed out to the social hall and gathered for kiddush, to bless the wine and challah before eating lunch. It was a hot day, and the air-conditioning wasn’t working. I felt sweat on the backs of my knees and hoped I didn’t have a mark on my dress where it folded at my stomach while I sat. It was a silly thing to worry about, to think anyone would notice, because this Shabbat was the one that marked nine months since October 7, 2023.
Nine months. The timing made me sick to my stomach. I knew I wasn’t the only one, because almost every woman I’d spoken to that morning had already mentioned it. Every week during services we read the names of every hostage out loud. This week as we read them, one person added the question What can happen to a woman in nine months?
In the social hall, we said kiddush and motzi and I went through the buffet line for a bagel. This week the synagogue had ordered whitefish salad. It’s usually my favorite Shabbat treat, but I wasn’t sure I could eat anything. I took only a little.
I sat down with two girlfriends, women I sit with almost every week after services. We have children the same age and usually talk about how we’re trying—and failing—to balance career and kids, or politics and books. We chat about things that matter and things that don’t. But we’re quiet.
“The women?” I ask.
They understand my question, that I’m asking if we’re all thinking about the women and the nine-month marker. Nine months is loaded with meaning for every woman. We’d started talking about it four weeks earlier because at least one of us had given birth at eight months. We’d seen this coming.
“What can happen to a woman in nine months?” I asked. “Have you seen the campaign on social media?”
They all nodded.
“I don’t know if I can talk about it,” one said.
I’d known this friend long enough to know why she didn’t want to talk about it, but I couldn’t let it go.
“If we don’t talk about it, who will?” I asked.
What can happen to a woman in nine months? Rape. Birth.
I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I looked at my friends. We’d all lived the cycle, all had children.
“There could be more Jewish hostages now than there were nine months ago,” I said.
According to Jewish law, if your mother is Jewish, you are Jewish.
“It makes me sick that the world denies it,” one friend said. I felt the same way.
“#BelieveWomen apparently only applies to non-Jewish women,” my other friend said.
Rape. The hostages were raped. There was no question about it. I’d watched the images of Israeli women being taken on October 7. I saw blood on their pants, the way it stained the fabric between their legs. And I cried. I still cry when I think about it. Blood doesn’t just appear between a woman’s legs, not like that.
I knew it the minute I saw those photos. My children looked, too, and they understood. I was crushed when I didn’t have to explain it, when they told me they knew the women had been raped, that they could see it. None of us needed more evidence than what we saw to know what we were looking at.
I wished I could look away. I wanted to hide it from my children, but I didn’t dare. If I won’t look, who will? If my children don’t know what happened, who will?
“What can happen to a woman in nine months?” one of my friends at the table said, again. None of us had touched our food. I felt guilty for that, too. We were sitting in a synagogue, safe, with plates of food. What do the hostages have? Where are they?
You have to live. My great-aunt and grandparents used to tell me that when I was little. Over and over. Survive. It was an order, a way of life. I took a bite of my bagel.
“If there’s a baby … there has to be a baby, right?” one friend said. She shook her head, wiped away a tear. “Who will love that child?”
It was a question you can ask only when you are with people you love and trust. Of course every child deserves love, but who will hold a child born to a hostage, and feed them, kiss them, comfort them? That’s what she was asking. I didn’t want to think about it, but I had to. If I don’t think about it, who will?
What can happen to a woman in nine months?
In nine months in America, you can make dreams come true. You can graduate, get a job, marry, or have a child. You can make choices that will change the rest of your life. In nine months, if you’re a hostage in Gaza, the unthinkable can get worse. Why isn’t the entire world listening? What can happen to a woman in nine months?
RACHEL BARENBAUM is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Atomic Anna and A Bend in the Stars. She is a prolific writer and reviewer. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Harper’s Bazaar, and more. She is the founder and host of the radio show Check This Out, a literary show that airs on NHPR.