Matzah Balls
Colorado's Jews just showed us their's
If you’re like me, you probably hadn’t heard much about the group Run for Their Lives until last Sunday, when we all saw the reports of an unhinged lunatic named Mohamed Soliman hurling Molotov cocktails at the Boulder, Colorado chapter’s weekly march at the Pearl Street Mall.
The attack injured 15 people and a dog, with 6 of the event’s participants requiring hospitalization, including 88-year-old Holocaust survivor Barbara Steinmetz.
In the fall of 2023, shortly after the October 7 attacks in which Hamas killed over 1,200 people and took another 250 hostage, San Jose attorney Shany Klein launched the grassroots initiative as an apolitical movement designed with the singular aim of keeping global attention focused on the plight of the hostages being held by the terror group in Gaza.
(The estimated 56 who remain in captivity, including 33 believed to be dead, have now been held by Hamas for 613 days.)
A few weeks after the attacks, Run for Their Lives held its first “run/walk for hostages” event in Silicon Valley, and word quickly spread.
Today, there are about 230 chapters worldwide, including Canada, Europe and Latin America, as well as over 100 in the US.
Each week, participants walk or run about one kilometer over the course of 18 minutes.
The distance doesn’t matter—it's the duration that counts.
(I learned most of what appears in the next few paragraphs over the past 24 or so hours.)
The 18-minute duration of the walks is meant to represent “Chai,” the Hebrew word for “life.”
Chai (חי) is composed of the Hebrew letters Chet (ח) and Yud (י).
In Jewish numerology, each Hebrew letter has a numerical value:
Chet = 8
Yud = 10
8 + 10 = 18
So, the goal of the 18-minute walks/runs is to express gratitude for life and to honor those who can’t walk or run for themselves, namely, the hostages still held in Gaza.
Rachel Amaru and Bruce Shaffer organized the Boulder chapter, which held its first walk on November 12, 2023, with 24 people in attendance.
For the 16 months since, the crowd has never been much more than about 40. In fact, the turnout for the ill-fated June 1 event was just around 30 people.
Now, I gotta figure that following a horrifically unnerving event like the one that befell the Boulder chapter that day, any organization would have to think long and hard about the wisdom of resuming their weekly observance.
Well, not only did the Boulder chapter of Run for Their Lives resume it. They didn’t miss a beat.
Without any sort of hesitation or delay or postponement, they just showed up, as scheduled, a week later.
From where I’m sitting, that decision took a massive amount of balls.
Returning to the scene of the heinous attack —that could have turned out so much worse— demonstrates an incredible degree of tenacity and resolve.
It was something that I felt compelled to experience.