6 | AUGUST 15 • 2024 
J
N

1942 - 2024

Covering and Connecting 
Jewish Detroit Every Week

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Detroit Jewish community, reflecting the diverse views and interests of the Jewish community while advancing the 
morale and spirit of the community and advocating Jewish unity, identity and continuity.

DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
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 Founding Publisher 
 Philip Slomovitz, of blessed memory
 
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 The Honorable Bernard Friedman

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 Michelle Sheridan 

PURELY COMMENTARY

essay

As Dangers Loom, Our Ancestors Give Me Strength
O

n the first of Av, 586 BCE, 
some Jewish mother 
inside Jerusalem must 
have breastfed her baby, even as 
Babylonian soldiers were fighting 
against the last Judean defenders 
three streets … two streets … one 
street away.
A different Jewish 
mom was chang-
ing diapers (or their 
ancient equivalent) as 
the Romans stormed 
through Jerusalem cen-
turies later.
And yet a different 
Jewish mom sang her 
kids to sleep in the 
ghetto.
Someone might look at this truth 
and deem it tragic. How fragile life 
is, this theoretical someone might 
exclaim. How sad, that so many little 
acts of love were doomed to be swept 
aside and into death by the catastro-
phes that loomed above them.
I choose to look at this same truth 
and marvel at the tenacity of our 

ancestors, at their courage. And on 
this first of Av, 2024 CE, as I pack my 
Israeli son’s lunch for camp, I feel that 
ancient courage flowing through my 
veins.
I am not afraid today.
Nor shall I allow the possible future 
to stop me from living, loving, now.
And, what’s more, I can’t help but 
feel that my great-great-great-grand-
mothers, all those brave women who 

went on living, are looking at me 
— at us — with awe and pride and 
satisfaction.
Because we continue their legacy of 
living on even in the shade of possi-
ble catastrophe, but we have so much 
more power than they did to shape 
our national reality. We go on raising 
children as they did, but we also have 
a state, an army. Even an Olympic 
team.

I think of the ancient Jewish 
woman who saw the Roman coin that 
depicted Judea Capta, captured Judea, 
in the shape of a captive woman. I 
think of how she saw her own fate 
imprinted in that coin, in the product 
of her captors. I think of the courage 
she embraced when she chose to keep 
on living, even thus.
Her courage, and the courage of 
countless Jewish women and men 
like her in the millennia behind us, 
brought us to this day.
A day when our enemies no longer 
have the power to coin our future for 
us.
A day in which we will go on pur-
chasing the future we want to give 
our children with our little daily 
choices to keep on going, keep on 
living.
But also with a state’s, 
with our state’s, strength. 

Rachel Sharansky Danziger is a Jerusalem-

born writer and educator who’s in love with 

her city’s vibrant human scene. She writes 

about Judaism, history and life in Israel for the 

Times of Israel and other online venues.

‘Judea Capta’ sestertius of Vespasian, struck in 71, AD, to celebrate the victory 
in the Jewish Revolt. The inscription on the reverse says: IVDEA CAPTA, “Judaea 
conquered.” 

CLASSICAL NUMISMATIC GROUP

Rachel 
Sharansky 
Danziger
Times of 
Israel

