Ending the Never-ending While Beginning Again

How do I describe all the feelings coursing through me over these past days?

Was it coincidence that a ceasefire would take effect and the remaining live hostages would be returned just before the two-year anniversary of October 7th? Just when we were ready to celebrate the holiday of Simchas Torah, when we dance with the Torah, when the attack on Israel by Hamas took place?

Like many, as some began celebrating, I was still holding my breath, not even willing to entertain the possibility that this never-ending war might be coming to an end.

One of the first thoughts that actually came to me was one of relief that I would no longer have the obligation, as a Jew and a rabbi, to keep writing about this horrific war. What else, after all, do I have left to say if I don’t talk politics?

Like everyone else, I watched the videos of the hostages returning to their families. I cried for them. With them. How could I not? The thought that you might never see your child again, knowing they were languishing…I could easily imagine them as my children.

I wanted to celebrate, I really did.

I had listened to interviews that took place at Hostage Square before the imminent release. One woman had been released during an early ceasefire almost two years ago told of how she had lost her brother, father, and mother. Her mother had returned alive only to learn that both her son and husband hadn’t survived.

And she died, they said, months later “from her injuries.” But I knew it had to be as much from heartbreak.

I cried as I imagined it all. And with the thought this is what it’s like when any war ends. The suffering continues and people try to put their lives back together.

But then I heard her say a most remarkable thing.

With incredible clarity and groundedness, she said (and I’m paraphrasing), “I’m here, as hard as it is to be here, to support others who don’t know if they will see their family members again. But I also can’t forget what it’s like for the people in Gaza who have lost everything, with destruction all around them, and won’t be able to rebuild their lives yet.”

She said all this with such generosity of heart, and it stopped me in my tracks and stopped my tears.

Because this thought, too, was in the tears that poured from my eyes. The tears were about the pain but also about loneliness in thinking this, and suddenly I felt less alone.

The next day, on Simchas Torah, I went to synagogue for the last day of this seemingly never-ending string of Jewish holidays.

I wanted to celebrate. I really did. But some things got in the way. Like the idea of praying for God to save us, to help us succeed.

Because I don’t actually believe in a God that can save us. Where is the evidence? This is the work of our world, not God’s; the successes and failures, the destruction and peace, the hatred and love—this is the work of humans.

When I pray, it is to work on myself and my own heart. It is not to look to the heavens, it is not to look to an outside savior. Like we read recently in the Torah, it is not in the heavens or across the sea that you should say it is too far, or too difficult; no, it is right here, in your own heart.

This is what prayer does, the way I see it, if we do it “right.” It connects us to our own hearts. On the High Holy Days, we acknowledged that is it up to us to make the world what it is.

On Simchas Torah, we danced with the Torah, and we unfurled it and rolled it back to the beginning, to the very first Parsha, to Genesis, or Breishit. This concludes the cycle of the year, only to begin again.

For me this year, it was with joy that I danced with others to celebrate the ceasefire and the return of the last living hostages. But the joy was tinged with a deep sadness at all that has been lost and destroyed, and a feeling of loneliness at being among a minority, often a silent one, thinking the thoughts I was thinking. It could not be a full-fledged joy that others seemed to dance with while the precariousness of the ceasefire itself is at stake.

It was with sadness that I was reminded again that what Torah and Judaism mean to me are different from what they might mean to other Jews. Too often, one of the central messages of Torah and Judaism is equal love of all human beings by God as made in the very image of God: a message of universalism.

With that in mind, I pray that this message reach the hearts of more Jews and of more people around the world, so more of us can live with a generosity of heart despite personal pain.

With that in mind, I pray that all human beings that have been displaced, injured, traumatized, and deprived of their basic needs in this war receive equal treatment.

Because I am certain that with more generous, open hearts around the world, including and especially among those in power, we will come to a time when the seemingly never-ending cycle of violence, war, hatred, and destruction will come to an end.

Until that day, we will continue with our never-ending holidays and our never-ending study of these texts that are meant to instill the universal love of all humanity and of our responsibility in spreading this message around the world.

And say Amen and Shabbat Shalom.