Today is the 38th day of Operation Epic Fury-Roaring Lion.
It’s the 912th day since Oct. 7.
It’s the 4th day of the Omer.
The status of these three numbers, of these three date, seem to interconnect.
What a Pesach.
After two Passovers in a row, when we not only spoke of the bondage of our people in the past, but lived through two Passovers knowing that our brothers and sisters were bound to the ground, in Hamas tunnels, the celebration of freedom was incomplete — and also truly painful.
This pain and awareness for our captive hostages was translated in different ways. Empty seder seats. An extra Shabbat or holiday candle. Yellow tulips. Yellow ribbons. A yellow looping pin. Or, with no particular external act or symbol, just carrying their heavy plight within us — including through the two Passovers whose motif is freedom.
How could we celebrate freedom when the captives were chained? When their, unknown?
Just like the seder is inaugurated with a broken matzah, invoking the layer of brokenness that is, perhaps, often, the prelude to freedom, our Passovers indeed felt somewhat broken or cracked.
Thankfully and miraculously, after two such agonizing Passovers, this year we blessedly sat down to our seders with all the living hostages returned.
That broken matzah that perhaps speaks to the shards of pain and loss that are not inseparable from a process of freedom — perhaps that cost remained within us. And always will.
But now, finally, a Pesach without empty chairs, and with living hostages returned. Now, the freedom of the Exodus from Egypt celebrated alongside our hostages’ homecoming — a Pesach like no other. Yet also, a Pesach of the eternally and heartbreakingly empty chairs of those hostages who did not return.
And the empty chairs of the precious heroic soldiers whose lives were sacrificed so that chairs of the captives around the seder table could be filled.
That circle of pain of the past two Passovers was different this year. Hearing from former captives such as Alon Ohel or Ram Braslavski speak of it was truly surreal.
Yes, it’s Pesach. But yet, we are still at war.
Are we on day 38 of this war with Iran? Or are we on day 912 of the Oct. 7 war?
After all, it was Iran — the head of the snake — that funded and cultivated the massacre of Oct. 7. It is Iran that swears on its plans to destroy Israel, G-d forbid.
Gratefully, the captives are back, but now the war continues. Roaring fighter jets penetrate the skies, zigzagging between Iran’s ballistic missiles and cluster bombs, so as to assure that Israel will never have to endure so catastrophic a massacre, a trauma, a hostage crisis, a cruelty, ever again.
To usher in Pesach amidst air raid sirens, in bomb shelters, under ballistic missiles — those eternal words of the Haggadah could not have been more true and visceral: “Ve-hi she’amda, in every generation someone has arisen to exterminate us, yet the Holy One Blessed be He, saved us from their hands.”
We are on the 4th day of the Omer of our daily, 49-day count from Passover to Shavuot, counting toward receiving of the Torah.
The thing is, this year, it feels like we started counting the Omer before Passover. What seemed like a break once we were able to stop counting the days the hostages were captive, we had to start counting again, day by day, the days of the sirens and missiles, layered before and alongside the blessing recited to count the Omer. So now, on day 4 of the Omer, we are on day 38 of the war.
It’s easy to lose track of time in war. Days and nights bleed into a no man’s land of sorts.
To count one day at a time is a way of staying grounded and keeping at bay the feeling of being swallowed up by fear.
When we count the Omer, it’s a piecemeal experience, as well as adding up to a special unit in time.
I pray that these tentative days of day-by-day survival will soon be seen as the final chapter in a unit of war we’ve had to endure.
I pray that our recent sharper awareness and counting of days will soon transform into the more neutral, natural experience of the passage of time, as when our annual count toward Shavuot is imbued with meditative hope and the anticipation of joy.
I pray that by next Passover, those who currently seek our destruction will be vanquished, and there will be no more need for soldiers to fight for our safety, and no more sirens piercing the warm spring Israeli air.
For now, I continue praying for the safety and successful conclusion of the war, as we face day 39, and look toward the 5th day of the Omer.
© IJN 2026
