Ani mavteach lach — the promise
Ani mavteach lach, I promise you, my little girl, that this will be the last of all the wars.
That profound and beautiful song, made famous by Yehoram Gaon in 1973, proved itself to be far from predictive. That little child is now a mature adult who has seen war after war, killing, destruction, and unrelenting hatred.
It could have been sung to my own children. It became the theme song of the Yom Kippur War.
Our family spent the entirety of that war in Jerusalem. It was a unique and terrible time, and we prayed that a war would never again force our people into shelters and our soldiers into battle.
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That was not to be. The song was not prophetic. The lesson to children was to not always believe their parents’ promises, that their parents, who loved them, might express their hopes and dreams as promises that often remained unkept.
Many of those who were young children in 1973 have since seen their own children go to war. They have known the unspeakable terror, the sheer horror of the infamous knock on the door, a knock with a message from which there is no return, no waking from the nightmare. The family of Israeli chayal Michael Mordechai Nachmani heard the knock, after the war was declared over, after they had breathed again, after hope had been restored, and fear washed away by the assurance of peace. Another promise shattered.
Michael, 26, a reservist from Dimona, was killed after peace had been negotiated, on the morning of October 10, 2025. His death brought the total of devastated families and slaughtered young chayalim, mostly men, to 914. May their memories be for blessings. We mourn them knowing they gave it their all, but they will never complete their lives, never know old age or the love of children and grandchildren. May Michael be the last. If only I could say ani mavteach. I wish I could promise.
Each of us feels the immutable pain that these losses bring to our people and to Israel, our land. Each of us, without any doubt, yearns for an Israel fulfilling its vision of peace, vibrancy, and remarkable achievement.
Many of us here in our New Jersey Jewish community have sent our own sons to defend our land after the abomination, the Hamas attack that murdered 1,200 innocents. Many of us knew the dread as our beautiful children interrupted their lives to protect our Holy Land. They left their homes and universities and yeshivot and careers with remarkable courage and determination. They were mainly young, but some, like my nephew Noam, already 60, an officer in the miluim, the reserves, trudged to front lines so that, perhaps, his own treasured son Amit, already on the brink of adulthood at 16, always eager to do the right thing for the land he loves, might be protected with no need to endure a lifetime of combat. I hope the youth of Israel can believe in the promise made in 1973, and finally see it come to fruition, sof sof. That is my prayer.
The world’s reactions to the war are still to be reckoned with. The constant challenges of antisemitism can never be ignored.
Our own communities must share a bond. We need to cling to each other in spite of some differences in opinions, in spite of the often-pronounced threat of pernicious animosity. We have joined together to fight the war and now it is incumbent on us to fulfill the promises of 1973 and beyond+, that this WILL be the last of all the wars.
Rosanne Skopp of West Orange is a wife, mother of four, grandmother of 14, and great-grandmother of nine. She is a graduate of Rutgers University and a dual citizen of the United States and Israel. She is a lifelong blogger, writing blogs before anyone knew what a blog was! She welcomes email at rosanne.skopp@gmail.com