The Value of Each Life

Paula R. Stern
A Soldier's Mother
08 August '10

In Israel, each life is precious...to a magnitude that is foreign in most countries. We hear on the news about each traffic death, most criminal murders, EVERY terrorist incident that leads to injury. After we hear about the injury or the death, we learn about the person. It is as if we cannot let them go, until we know them better. For those of us who did not have the opportunity, the privilege of knowing them in life, we meet them in death.

It is agony. It is painful. It is sad. It is so right. Their lives had values. They were loved. Their families mourn for them today and forever. We too have lost something precious and so it is only right that we meet them after parting, if not before.

Elie was reading the newspaper and came across the latest statistics of casualties in the ongoing Iraq War. He was stunned by the numbers. He read them off to me.

"Four thousand, four hundred and thirteen American soldiers," he said.

I was shocked by the numbers. If you do not live in Israel, you cannot imagine what that number means to an Israeli. We mourn for a single loss, we agonize over more, we are broken in pieces by three or four, or, God forbid more. "Four thousand, four hundred," I repeated back to Elie.

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