After the Release of the Remaining Hostages

Many of us awoke this morning to see the joyful, emotional scenes from Israel – as the 20 remaining living Israeli hostages, who had been held in Gaza in Hamas captivity for 738 days, were at long last reunited with their families. In images and videos from all across Israel – and, indeed, from all around the Jewish world – the feeling of relief was palpable. Over these past two years of war, the fate of the hostages and the worry of their families has been a shared pain felt by the Jewish people. At last, it has come to an end.

Meanwhile, on Friday morning, the Israel Defense Forces withdrew from the urban centers of the Gaza Strip, and a cessation of combat took effect. A ten-fold surge of humanitarian aid – including 600 trucks from Israel, and 400 trucks from Egypt – have been entering the strip on a daily basis.

This moment – the return home of the hostages – is exactly what the overwhelming majority of Israelis have been hoping for. When I visited Israel last November as part of a Westchester interfaith delegation, there were posters and billboards all across the country reading not only “Bring Them Home Now” (a common political refrain here in the United States), but also, a more politically directive slogan: Nitzachon Hu HaShavat HaBanim, “‘Victory’ means the return of our children” – a statement from the Israeli public that between the two sometimes-conflicting strategic goals of the war (dismantling Hamas and freeing the hostages), the latter was top priority. Indeed, this past Saturday evening, Israelis gathered at Hostages Square in Tel Aviv – as they have been doing every Saturday evening for the past two years – to celebrate the government’s official approval of the hostage-release deal. More than half-a-million Israelis showed up.

It is true that the Twenty Point Plan is still in a fragile state. Although all parties have signed on to the agreement, the thorny, critical issue of post-war governance of Gaza – and, specifically, Hamas’s stated intention to play a role – remains unresolved. Nevertheless, a major hurdle has indeed been cleared: the means of the dispute have shifted – with the parties no longer using military force and hostages as the tools of negotiation, but rather, relying on political and diplomatic processes. That is to say: the means have shifted from the tactics of mutual destruction to the tactics of mutual possibility.

Beyond the Twenty Point Plan, there is tremendous work that will need to happen in the months and years ahead. Massive cracks have surfaced in Israeli society between two differing visions of the Jewish state; these will need mending. Gaza has been utterly destroyed, and its civilian population devastated; these will need rebuilding and rehabilitation. The souls of Israelis and Palestinians – and, to a different degree, of Jews around the world – have been deeply wounded; these will need healing. And most of all, if all these things and more can happen, then perhaps a sense of neighborly tolerance – if not trust – between Israelis and Palestinians can be built and nurtured.

These past two years of war have sometimes been reminiscent of another period in this conflict. In 1973, Israel was caught off-guard (like it was on October 7) when Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on the morning of Yom Kippur. That war led to a political and psychological shift in both Israel and in Egypt – a recognition that perpetual war would not solve the Arab-Israeli conflict. Just six years later, Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Menachem Begin of Israel signed a peace-treaty between the countries – Israel’s first with any of its neighbors. The peace treaty has lasted ever since.

Two years ago, the most recent and deadliest chapter of the conflict also began on the morning of a Jewish holiday. October 7, 2023 was the morning of Simchat Torah. Tomorrow – October 14, 2025 – it will again be Simchat Torah.

Simchat Torah is the time on the Jewish calendar in which we complete one cycle of reading our Torah story, and immediately rewind the scroll to retell the story from the beginning. It is a time of starting again. And although we will reread the same story that we have read every year for thousands of years, nevertheless, with each new retelling, we understand the story differently. We find new insights. We make new observations. We highlight different angles. In this way, it is not the same story repeated over and over again. Rather, it is an opportunity to understand our old story differently.

This Simchat Torah, we pray that what is true of our sacred story might also be true for our people’s lived experience. Let us hope – and let us do the work that is needed – that this might be the beginning of a new chapter.