This past September, we were reminded once more that sometimes God says no to our prayers. That was when we learned that the IDF had found the bodies of six hostages in a terror tunnel under Rafah. Among them was Israeli American Hersh Goldberg-Polin. He had survived 11 horrifying months in captivity only to be brutally and senselessly murdered just before the IDF would reach him and the other five hostages.
Hersh’s face became a familiar sight across Israel, if not the world, during his long captivity. This was especially true in our Jerusalem neighborhood of Baka, where his family lived. His kehillah, where I often attend services, actively supported the family during the whole ordeal. Signs and posters with Hersh’s picture, and pictures of all other men, women and children taken hostage on that black Shabbat that we displayed in our windows and walls, on storefronts and bus stops—even in Ben Gurion Airport—reminded us why we had to keep fighting.
The posters are still up. Even Hersh’s poster still remains on many walls. No one is coming around to tear them down.
But the real story goes beyond Hersh. For the past year so many of us bonded together in a unique show of solidarity and support. In Israel, we marched along the main thoroughfares. We demonstrated in front of the halls of power and near the homes of our leaders. We called on each other to do more acts of kindness. We prayed. We gave tzedakah. We promised to mend our ways. We even dedicated a new sefer Torah in Hersh’s name! But it was not enough. And now we are defending ourselves on more fronts, calling on our leaders to end this already. Our soldiers continue to die, innocent civilians are injured and displaced and still the world blames us for perpetuating the fight.
The promise of seeing these hostages alive died as summer ended. Meanwhile, the war continues. Protests against Israel persist. Jewish hatred grows stronger. Hostages are still in Gaza and the somber sense of mourning continues to cast a pall on the holiday season.
On the evening before Hersh’s funeral, our community center in Baka held a memorial public service. Hundreds of people packed the field surrounding the center. Hundreds more spilled out into the surrounding streets. It was a communal catharsis, marked by tears, prayer and song. But when they began singing Naomi Shemer’s Al Kol Eleh (For All These Things) and came to the chorus Al Tishkach et Hatikvah (Don’t forget the hope”) I felt betrayed.
What hope? For months we had been doing all the “right” things. At the end of the year, it didn’t seem to help. How is it that last year’s Simchat Torah ushered in a year of grief for all of us. How can we still keep the faith?
In his profound work, “Faith After the Holocaust,” written at the time of the Six Day War, when another existential crisis threatened Israel, Eliezer Berkovits offers the following explanation. The problem of Jewish faith is not a conflict between Jewish teaching and historical experience. The conflict is actually between two historical realms: the realm of the Is and realm of the Ought. The history of the nations, enacted in the realm of the Is—a naturalistic, power history. The history of Israel belongs chiefly into the realm of the Ought—a faith history, which says what ought to guide human life, what should and will be. Faith history is at cross-purposes with power history, but it is history. “As long as Israel lives. the Ought proves its vitality as a this-worldly possibility,” writes Berkovits. More importantly, there is hope for the ultimate merger of the two realms, when the Ought is fully real and the real is identified as the life which is the Good.
October 7 is not the first time we have faced existential threat. It is the most recent in a long history of such threats. We remind ourselves each Passover when we say that in every generation nations arise to destroy us. The difference is that having been spared such existential threats for quite some time we have grown complacent, thinking that peace and brotherhood are the norm, that Jew hatred on a global scale is a thing of the past, something our parents and grandparents experienced. The events since October 7 remind us that, as we saw in last week’s Torah reading, we must not let complacency make us forget that we still have a lot of work to do to bring the mysterious reality of the Ought and the powerful reality of the Is together.
For if we fail to do that, that would be a true existential threat.
Rabbi Sid Slivko, who made aliyah in 1997, is community relations coordinator for Olim Paveway, which assists Anglo olim as they navigate their way through the Israel absorption process as they build a new life in Israel, offering guidance, practical advice and moral support. Their web site is www.olimpaveway.com. Rabbi Slivko can be reached at [email protected].
