My husband and I celebrate our birthdays a month apart. We are currently in that time period, but as we’ve got older, the jokes about our respective ages have diminished, except when one of us hits a new decade. Our children, however, are now enjoying teasing each other about ageing as more of them move towards hitting 30. The excitement about an arbitrary change from one number to the next seems to pall once one has moved from a child to a teenager, and a teenager to a fully fledged adult, although I’m loving experiencing it vicariously through my granddaughter. Her parents decided not to tell her about the possibility of Hebrew and English dates for birthdays in case she thought she might gain another year just two weeks later.
The first time I realised that birthdays actually signify the passing of time was the day before my eighth birthday, when I realised that I would never be seven again. This may sound trite but at the time, it was a major step for me in my understanding of the world: time only flows one way. To mark this revelation, I decided then that seven would be my “favourite number”. Of course, it has been a long time now since anyone has asked me for my favourite number, but in primary school, it was useful to have one ready. Since I’ve grown older, I’ve tended to use my birthday as a time to reflect on any particular achievements of the past year and the blessings bestowed on me. This is perhaps in contrast to the rabbi who was found crying on his birthday because he had caused his mother unnecessary pain on that day!
The tradition of reflection on one’s birthday is an ancient one. The Midrash tells us, in the name of Rabbi Joshua ben Korcha, based on a comment from Isaac that he did not know the day of his death: “When a person reaches the age of his parents’ death, five years before or five years after, he should be concerned about death.”
While this sounds somewhat morbid, I think that many people will experience this feeling, as they approach the age at which their parents or grandparents died. It must be strange to wake up to a day that one’s parent never saw in their own life.
Stranger still to wake up to a day that one hoped to see, but thought might never come. One of the most poignant pieces of information on the many hostage posters in our area is when people’s ages have been crossed out and replaced by a higher number. For some people, two birthdays have passed in captivity. It is impossible to imagine what the hostages have been through, even as some details emerge from those who have been released. The efforts of the hostages’ families to keep their names, faces and stories alive and very much in the world’s consciousness are starting to pay off, and the young women released so far have become household names, at least in the Jewish world. It seems that some of the hostages, at least, were aware of their families’ lobbying, and even heard their voices on the radio, while in captivity. The positive messages that they sent, affirming that their relatives would come home, helped to give them the strength to hold on, and we can hope that they heard the birthday wishes they sent them.
Whatever one thinks of the terms of the current ceasefire deal, there is no questioning the courage, strength and grace of these young women, and sharing the delight of their families that they are home. Their bravery is even more impressive when considering how very young some of them are: three of the female soldiers released last weekend are now 20 and one is still only 19. When people say, “age is just a number”, they generally mean to cheer up someone who is unhappy how high the number is (although a rising age is better than the alternative). But here, these very young women have shown maturity well beyond their age, which really is only a number.
In the same way as some concentration camp survivors celebrated their liberation as a second birthday, perhaps in time, the released hostages will come to do the same, and mark two birthdays a year. They certainly deserve them.
