The Color Orange

Kresha Richman Warnock and Lisa Schreiber on the horror of loss and the duty of remembrance for the Bibas babies and their mother.

Editor’s Note: The murder of Kfir and Ariel Bibas, along with their mother, Shiri, left Jews around the world in grief and rage. In their memory, orange has become a symbol—not just of their red hair, but of mourning and the refusal to forget. In these pieces, Kresha Richman Warnock and Lisa Schreiber bear witness to the sorrow, the cruelty that took their lives, and the ways we hold on to them—through ritual, through remembrance, and through the simple act of saying their names. — Howard Lovy

The Orange Earrings

By Kresha Richman Warnock

When I got dressed this morning, I put on the little bird earrings my son gave me for my birthday when he was ten. He and his sister had gone to a street fair with a friend, and he was proud of the gift he’d chosen – little child-finger-nail-sized birdies carved out of stone, peaked beaks, a black dot for an eye, barely distinguishable wings. It is extraordinary that I haven’t lost one—so many one-only earrings in my jewelry box—but these are still a pair

The birds are orange. Today is the day the little red-headed hostages, Kfir and Ariel Bibas, were buried in the same coffin with their mother, Shiri, in Southern Israel. Orange is the color Israelis are adopting as the symbol of remembrance.

I have been somber and raging, writing angry screeds in my head and on paper since last week when we were told the babies were definitely coming home in coffins. And then we learned how they died, strangled by the hands of their captors. Those murderous hands…dismembered in my mind from a human being because what human could strangle a ten-month-old, a four-year-old in cold blood?

What humans can then parade their little coffins victoriously in front of a crowd of cheering, gleeful Hamas supporters, many of them children? What humans can send the wrong keys home with the locked coffins, send the wrong body home, not the mother’s, Shiri, but some victimized Palestinian woman, unwittingly masquerading as the mother’s corpse.

I fight allowing the hatred to take over my heart. I make no judgments about what other Jews feel.

And, as the day moves on, the earrings, the little free birds dangling from my ears, give me a tiny bit of joy. I imagine the baby, Kfir, if he were with us, swatting at them, grabbing them as infants do. I imagine the four-year-old, Ariel, laughing at them. I would lay them in his little hands so he could see the tiny wings. Then maybe we’d take orange markers and paper and draw crude pictures of magical birds.

I imagine their mother, Shiri, telling the kids to be careful, but relaxing with a cup of tea while I entertain her little ones for a minute.

I need to keep careful track of these earrings. I have to save them for my own tiny granddaughter, our own red-haired mensch. By the time she’s old enough to get her ears pierced, she will sadly already know the stories of Kfir and Ariel, just as I knew the stories of the Holocaust long before I got my own teenaged ears pierced many years ago.

Their murders are now part of her Jewish story, like the tales of Queen Esther, the Passover, the miracle of the Hannukah lights. I wish it weren’t so.

Kresha Richman Warnock and her husband retired to the Pacific Northwest right as the pandemic hit and Kresha began her writing adventure. She is currently working on her memoir, comparing her life as a campus radical in the 1960s to that of being the mom of a Seattle police officer in the present. Her words have been recently published in Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, the anthology Proud to Be, where her essay “The Survivor” won an honorable mention, Being Jewish Today and The Brevity Blog. Follow her, Substack, “My Back Pages,” or check out her website for an almost up-to-date listing of her essays.

Five tiny delights

• The pictures my son sends me every morning of my one-year-old granddaughter. She's pulling herself up in her crib at night and can't get back down. (He did that too!)

• My quiet workspace in our townhouse, overlooking the big Douglas Firs outside my window.

• The calm comfort of being in a forty-eight-year marriage.

• The texts and phone calls I get from my grown kids and their spouses, making me both proud of them and letting me know I am loved.

• Playing with aforementioned grandbaby and reading her our favorite book, "Ten Little Fingers, Ten Little Toes."

Five tiny Jewish delights

• Watching the wonder in my granddaughter's eyes as her mother lights the Sabbath candles.

• Feeling a connection to Israel, especially Jerusalem, in my heart and bones and dreaming of our next visit.

• Pride in having navigated an interfaith marriage and love for my husband's integrity and support of the Jewish people.

• Consistently preparing the lightest matzo balls, the richest chicken soup for holidays and just because.

• The strength I have gained from others in the Jewish writing community since October 7.

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Bibas

By Lisa Schreiber

I will never look at the color orange the same way again. Last week I sought out orange flowers at the store, settling on a dozen bright roses of the color, a twinge of fuchsia on their delicate edges. I carried them home like precious cargo and laid them out with care on my kitchen counter. As I cut each one and placed it into water, I whispered the Mourner’s Kaddish in Hebrew. Nobody else was listening but, perhaps, the Almighty herself, but there I stood, alone in my kitchen in a meditative state cutting gorgeous orange roses in a small, so very small, attempt to honor or bear witness.

I put the vase of brilliant color in my front window. The light hit them directly and it looked as if a match had lit them on fire, twelve brilliant flames sitting under the Israeli flag that has been hanging in the same window for over 500 days. A statement, or memorial, I am not sure which, that I have displayed in a useless but hopeful attempt to get anyone walking their dogs, delivering the mail, or shoveling snow to give a damn about what I care so very deeply about.

Everything orange takes on new meaning now. The soft spray when my nails dig into a mandarin feels like I’m digging into flesh. My morning juice, as sweet as it is, has a tinge of bitter now. A simple traffic cone, of a color used to warn of potential hazards, now glares and pulsates its message of caution to me at high volume. A color which, frankly, was never my favorite other than when embedded in a glorious sunset or falling from peak foliage, takes on a visceral connection now every time I see it.

I saw that students at NYU, which has had a troubling year with campus antisemitism, gathered to release bright orange balloons on white ribbons into the sky. I imagined standing in Union Square Park and squinting into the brilliant blue to see the orange orbs float to the heavens where those sweet boys now are. I guess it took the vicious murder of two babies with vibrant ginger hair, Kfir and Ariel, for people to finally unite?

The viral video of their mother, Shiri, clinging on to them for literal dear life as masked armed terrorists pushed her around and shoved them into a truck in the direction of Gaza wasn’t enough? The anguish of Shiri’s poor husband, Yarden, returning from over 500 days of captivity to the knowledge that his children and wife remained in Gaza but were coming home dead, wasn’t enough?

But now the world has seen video of little coffins, emblazoned with the date the deceased children were “arrested”, being denigrated while being celebrated by hoards of the radicalized. The world now knows that the IDF had to scan the coffins for bombs before opening them, which they couldn’t do easily anyway because Hamas did not provide the keys.

Now the world knows the forensics report that confirms the children were killed in cold blood by bare hands and then stoned to make it look like something else, for even the depraved terrorists knew they had taken it a step too far for the world to digest. Not that they relished in it any less, in fact, they sent the wrong body home in place of their mother, deploying psychological warfare for one more day on a nation and a grieving father.

The world now knows the terrorists brought two other hostages still in captivity to watch the sick spectacle, to get a taste of freedom they had no intention of giving them, within feet of the International Red Cross, only to be returned to the tunnels. That the mind is capable of such grotesque depravity, that this torture could be implemented human to human, is still something I will never be able to comprehend.

Yet, as time has shown throughout millennia, the Jewish diaspora rises from hell to reveal resilience, connection, and love. Yarden Bibas, wearing an orange kippah and standing at a podium adorned with bright orange Gerber daisies eulogized his wife and two children at their funeral this past Wednesday.

He spoke directly to his beloved by telling her in front of the world, “Please stay close to me and don’t go far. Shiri, this is the closest I’ve been to you since October 7^th and I can’t kiss or hug you, and it’s breaking me. Shiri, please watch over me. Protect me from bad decisions. Shield me from harmful things and protect me from myself. Guard me so I don’t sink into darkness. I love you.”

To his sons he said, “I hope you are enjoying paradise. I’m sure you are making the angels laugh with your silly jokes and impressions. I hope there are plenty of butterflies for you to watch, just like you did during our picnics. I have so many more things to tell you all, but I’ll save them for when we’re alone.”

Drone footage and photos from the miles-long funeral procession show thousands of Israelis with orange balloons, flowers and teddy bears standing together to pay respect to the family and mourn beside them. A sea of orange, wrapped in the blue and white flag, swirling in grief, singing songs of resistance, and showing the world what unity and solidarity look like at a time where those qualities seem so elusive.

As the Bibas family were dual citizens with Argentina, 15,000 took to the streets in Buenos Aires for a National Day of Mourning to honor the memory of the family by waving orange handkerchiefs, covering the street in orange as a brilliant sunset blanketed the sky.

Crowds released balloons at an Eiffel Tower resplendent in orange lights. Myanmar’s only synagogue was draped in an orange banner, the Empire State Building was lit up orange as well as buildings in San Francisco, Rio de Janeiro, Belgrade, Beijing, Berlin, and Rome. All of which is heartening, however, despite these displays of light, the world was largely silent.

At my rose altar in my window, my world was quiet. None of my non-Jewish friends reached out, except for the one who is a singularly special empath. Not one state or national leader who I have looked up to even took the time to post in honor of the Bibas family.

The campus protesters continued to protest, either oblivious to or fully aware of the savagery they were promoting. Only my Jewish friends posted orange squares or tributes to the family on their social media accounts.

That day I felt like I knew the Bibas family. I felt like I had held those boys in my arms too. I felt like we were all part of their family, as I do with so many other hostages that remain in Gaza, dead or alive, or who have been returned to the arms of their families or returned to be buried into the ground of their homeland.

As Yarden Bibas traveled through the crowds on his way to the funeral, the throngs of people screamed they were sorry. Sorry they could not do more. Sorry they could not bring his family home alive. Sorry they could not have fought by his side to save his family. Just so much sorrow for what was lost and for what could have been.

As for Shiri, she was buried in a coffin with her two baby boys, the way the world first came to know her, arms wrapped around them, their shocks of orange hair on her chest, clutching them close, this time for eternity.

Lisa Schreiber is the mother of three teenagers and holds a bachelor's degree in Child Development from Tufts University and a master’s degree in Social Work from the University of Chicago, where she focused on public policy and nonprofit management. She lobbied for policies benefiting children and families, particularly child abuse prevention legislation, during the Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama administrations. She also directed a national child abuse prevention program called Healthy Families America, but gave up that role when her own children were born. She is now a community advocate against antisemitism, having been personally impacted in her community and a Board Member of the Anti-Defamation League of Philadelphia. She is new to the writing world and appreciates your interest!

Five tiny delights

• A New York bagel with lox, scallion cream cheese, capers and thinly sliced red onion.

• My puppy's bounce in the morning as we walk together to her food bowl.

• An Instagram post my daughter put up on my birthday calling me her best friend.

• The deep stretch of my legs in a Pilates class.

• A pink velvet couch my husband let me buy for our living room, even though he didn't love it.

Five tiny Jewish delights

• The chunky candle sticks my parents brought me from Jerusalem.

• The mother of pearl and wood backgammon set gifted to me from an exchange student I hosted from Tel Aviv.

• The Mi Sheberach hymn on Shabbat that brings me to tears every time.

• When the matzoh balls float to the top of the soup.

• The look on non-Jewish friends’ faces after Shabbat prayers, and they realize what an amazing tradition it is.