| The Clock Stops Shortly after the Gaza War exploded, a large electronic countdown clock was installed in an area that came to be called Hostages Square. As the time accumulated on the board, it served as a haunting reminder that, for the families of the captives held in Gaza, and for much of the country, time had effectively stopped on October 7, 2023. Countless demonstrations took place at Hostages Square. Endless tears were shed there. Arguments about the government’s response were constant. People went there to meet hostage families, to shower them with loving support, to promise them their loved ones would not be forgotten. A friend of mine said he’d go there whenever it felt like the world was returning to normal. Israelis have learned the brutal skill of resuming life amid ongoing trauma. During the height of the second intifada, when buses were being blown up along with restaurants and clubs, there was a concerted effort to clean up as soon as possible and carry on. But this horror visited upon innocent Israelis refused to fade into the background. The hostage families and their supporters would not be silenced. This past Tuesday, the clock showed 843 days, 12 hours, five minutes and 59 seconds when it was deactivated. The body of the last hostage, Sgt. Ran Gvili, was officially identified and returned to his family. All over the world, Jews removed the yellow ribbon lapel pins. It felt like the moment a mourner removes the black keriyah ribbon at the conclusion of shiva—a sense of resolution, a hope that rising up from loss we might find ourselves able to be back in life, among the living. Ran, who worked with an elite anti-terrorist group in the police was on medical leave on October 7th, scheduled for shoulder surgery. But when he got word of the Hamas invasion, he rushed out to fight the terrorists attacking Kibbutz Alumim. In the midst of a raging gunfight, he was killed. Shira Gvili, Ran’s sister, said on Tuesday that with all of the hostages home, “Our duty as a people is to strengthen and hug one another… to cleanse [Israel of] all those who did wrong and to bring new people who will begin working on our behalf.” Shira’s words point beyond relief to reckoning. As grateful as she is, along with her family and Israel at large, this saga has not run its course. October 7th shifted the Jewish world off its axis, and we still haven’t regained our balance. There are questions we cannot avoid, issues with which Jews everywhere must now wrestle. For Israel itself: What comes next in Gaza—its governance, its reconstruction, the welfare of its children? How does the next generation of Gazans learn to see Hamas as the nihilistic force for evil that it is? Without a two-state solution, what are the alternatives? What kind of leadership does Israel need now? For the Diaspora: How do we contend with the resurgence of antisemitism and anti-Zionism? How do we begin to heal the internal rift between those who are disaffected with Israel and those who defend it without reservation? How do we bridge the generational divide in how we understand and support Israel? What’s next? For all of us? I wish my questions were practical. But they’re rhetorical and profoundly existential. I don’t have answers—only the questions themselves and the conviction that we must ask them together. In this uncertainty, there is something deeply Jewish: to live faithfully in the questions, to refuse despair even when clarity eludes us. In the meantime, I send my condolences to Ran’s family. I pray that his memory will always be a blessing. And I pray for the day when nations will no longer lift up swords against nations, when no one will study war again—even as I confess I cannot see the path from here to there. Perhaps that, too, is faith: to pray for what we cannot yet imagine, and to keep working toward it anyway. rebhayim |
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Before Shabbat 