Lisa from Naples, FL, a board member of Americans for Ben Gurion University, wrote: “I am an American. I am a Jew. I am a Zionist. I say this proudly and publicly. This past week has shaken me to my core. I knew immediately that I wanted a tattoo between my shoulder blades. (It is not my first). I want it to incorporate… Am Yisroel Chai and from Kol H’Olam Kulo the part that means “The important thing is not to fear at all” I would also like perhaps a menorah or more likely a lion of Judah.”⁠ Lisa from Naples came to us in the days after October 7, carrying grief and rage, with a very clear sense of where she stood.

She wrote, “I am an American. I am a Jew. I am a Zionist.” Proudly and publicly. She had lost friends and family in Israel, and through her work with Americans for Ben Gurion University, she was seeing the pain up close. What was usually a place of research, medicine, education, and hope had become part of the emergency response.

At first, she thought of Am Yisrael Chai, along with Rabbi Nachman’s words about fear. But as the conversation deepened, it became clear that her relationship with Israel needed a text that carried more of her own voice. She spoke about Israel as home and necessity, the one Jewish state in the world, and about the responsibility to speak when silence feels impossible.

The verse that finally held it was from Isaiah:

לְמַעַן צִיּוֹן לֹא אֶחֱשֶׁה

וּלְמַעַן יְרוּשָׁלַיִם לֹא אֶשְׁקוֹט

For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent,

and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest

For Lisa, the verse became more than a declaration of support. It carried the refusal to look away. The refusal to become quiet when Jewish life feels threatened.

Gabriel felt that a Lion of Judah was right for this piece. Calm and strong. Peaceful, but not weak. The work could not belong only to the rage and despair of that moment. It had to hold something that would still be true in six months, in a year, in ten, and in twenty.

For Lisa, the piece became a way to stand inside her grief without being consumed by it. A mark of loyalty, voice, and presence. A refusal to be silent.