I’ve been reading article after article, listening to multiple NPR broadcasts and podcasts, watching the news, and searching for a thread, a cogent narrative. I want to answer the question, What’s going to happen next? I want to know what to expect. But, as Amos, the 8th century BCE prophet, famously said, “I am neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet.” [Amos 7:14] I get what he meant.
There’s so much flying at us, like a plague of locusts. I want to find redemption in the facts and the fury. But all I can see is sadness and grief. And more anger.
And so I worry—all the time. I worry so much about my friends in Israel, their children, and their grandchildren. Everything is upside down. Right now, many stores are closed because of security concerns as well as a shortage of workers. After all, over 300,000 Israelis have been called up to active duty. All kinds of jobs are currently vacated. Schools are closed. People are volunteering to assume positions that must be filled. For those of us who have been to Israel before, none of what’s happening computes. It’s so surreal and so scary.
Survivors of the kibbutz massacres, whole kibbutz communities, are holed up in hotels in Eilat and at the Dead Sea. They hang out and cry together. They try not to consider the past but press the Israeli government to get the hostages home.
I’m not sure they talk much about the future. For the folks whose homes were destroyed, looted, and burned to the ground, where the floors are stained with blood and the walls riddled with bullet holes, they must wonder if they have the fortitude to return. Can they ever feel safe again? Or will they knock down the existing properties, burned out or not, and build all new homes and structures?
These are impossible questions to answer right now. And it’s all filtered through the central lens of the war. Who moves next? When does the ground offensive begin? Will Hezbollah out of Lebanon get more involved? Will the West Bank go unhinged? As Thomas Friedman wrote in today’s New York Times, If this is the season of war, it also has to be a season for answers about what happens the morning after.
It feels dangerous to hope. What, if anything, can keep hope alive in this moment? The smoke has not cleared from the battlefield. The tears are still flowing. Israeli children have been brutally murdered and taken hostage. Gazan children have been crushed by rubble and killed by shrapnel. In the haze of grief and anger, all we can do is hang on and wait. I am not a prophet. I’m not gifted with a crystal ball. All I have is a breaking heart and a prayer for every parent who has lost a child. I wish I had more to give.
Before Shabbat 