<em>Shemot.[dropcap] Names. The name of last Shabbat’s Torah portion.
As we entered into Shabbat, our emotions stretched from the tense roller coaster ride of “will there or won’t there be a hostage release” and if there is, “will they or won’t they return alive?” And will they or won’t they return the children? Will Israel or won’t Israel stand its ground in the face of Hamas dictating the terms? Will Israel or won’t Israel leave sufficient IDF troops on its southern border to secure Israel’s future? Will Israel or won’t Israel release terrorist monsters . . . the list of inner turmoil goes on . . .
All I could think of were the names. So many names came to my mind. Of Israelis over the years whose lives ended in the tragedy of murder at the hands of Palestinian terrorists. All I could wonder about were whose names were going to “make the cut” on this current piecemeal list of names of hostages whom Hamas will release from captivity.
And within this list, which names are alive and which are dead?
As we tremble at the release of these monsters from prison, who, G-d forbid, would be the future names, the future victims, the future tragedies?
Such were my thoughts . . .
[dropcap]Then on Shabbat I focused on the content of the Torah portion, beyond the title word “Names.” The more I read the well known narrative about about Pharaoh’s decree that all baby boys to be drowned in the Nile, andabout the unlikely survival of baby Moses, I began thinking . . . maybe those hostage Bibas children will be alive after all. Maybe the unlikely survival story of baby Moses is a good omen, a reminder, of the impossible survival of Jewish children in the face of evil decrees aimed at destroying Jewish babies, Jewish families, the Jewish people.
How can a baby survive in captivity? A baby requires constant care. And a baby cries and weeps at will and doesn’t remain quiet, which may well be a primary demand of the evil captors. How could a baby survive?
The Torah records that when princess Batya opened the basket floating on the River Nile she saw a child, and behold he was crying. She took pity on him and said, “this must be one of the Hebrew children.”
Weeping is normally audible, yet the Torah records that princess Batya saw Moses’ tears. He was but a baby, yet the Torah describes him as a lad. And what made her certain that he was one of the Hebrew children?
Baby Moses cried, not like a baby, but like a lad. In other words, he cried silently, with maturity, a silent weeping, which is why Batya saw baby Moses’ tears as opposed to hearing his cry, and why she intuitively sensed that he was a Hebrew child. For only a Hebrew child living under a death decree would cry silently. He needed to learn to cry in silence.
I had lit the Shabbat candles with tears in my eyes, wanting — or daring — to have hope, and yet also trembling for all the terrifying pieces of this “deal.”
The next day in shul, just as the children’s prayer service ended and the kids had left with a treat in hand, I was speaking with the rabbi of this special service, which takes place in the bomb shelter of the shul, when a pre-teen kid ran in breathless, informing us there was a siren!
Within two minutes the remaining congregants from the main sanctuary upstairs filed in. Men in their tallesim, grandfathers, young mothers, children, parents, just about everyone who makes up a shul. As soon as the bomb shelter was full, the Ark was opened and the voice of a sweet young boy filled the room. Apparently they had been in the midst of the concluding “Anim Zemirot” upstairs, typically led by a child. Without a skipped beat, the responsive prayer continued as usual. We all answered in unison the sweet boy’s call, with just enough of that albeit gentle, but very palpable, defiance.
On cue, as soon as “Anim Zemirot” ended, someone strongly launched into singing “Hoshi’a et amecha u-varech et nachlatecha . . . Save Your people . . . carry them forever . . . ” We all joined in, and as the song swelled with emotion. We sang it for at least three more rounds. I thought to myself, look at us! We continued just where we left off. There may be pain, wounds and sorrow. But we pick up where we leave off. Maybe in a different place, a different way — in this case, in a bomb shelter — but we just pick up and continue. I thought to myself, the Jewish people will be OK.
Shemot, it’s the name of the Torah portion, but it is also the name of the Book of Exodus itself, which we had just begun that very day in shul. Although I’ve known the most famous phrase from this sacred book since I am a little girl, never did I understand it until this past Shabbat, and my understanding deepened the next day upon the homecoming of the three hostages. The seeds of my understanding began dawning on my last year during the first hostage release, but now it has come into even sharper focus. “Let my people go!” Moses says to Pharaoh. Let all my people go is the meaning.
Pharaoh begins negotiating with Moses. Pharaoh says he’ll let the men go. But Moses is insistent. No, “Let My People Go!” All the people, including the men, women and children, he specifies.
Only now do I realize Moses’ insight. His leadership. “We’re not splitting families up,” he was saying. We’re not leaving this exodus, this deal piecemeal, in psychological terror and torment, cutting through families, cutting through communities, leaving some people free and leaving others behind, sentenced to wait. Sentenced to the unknown.
I’d read this narrative so many times. Only now do I understand the wisdom and pain and emotion behind those famous words: Let My People Go.
Even so.
We are grateful for the homecoming, for the reunion, of any hostage who returns.
But it’s tormenting. The remaining hostage families waiting, not knowing, witnessing a reunion, not knowing if they will live to have one of their own. Then the other families, who know they will never have a reunion, knowing that their loved ones were murdered in captivity. Then the families of fallen IDF soldiers, who also will never have a reunion. And the families who have been destroyed by past terrorism, watching as the murderer of their loved one is unjustly released from prison to have a reunion with his or her family, as they are left to re-grapple with the void that murderer punctured their lives with.
There is so much relief and joy at the reunion of these three girls who are back in the bossom of their families. Yet also so much sorrow. Grief and sorrow, for what they endured, and for what so many others have endured and suffered on Oct. 7 and since Oct. 7; for so much that has been lost and forever altered. There is so much worry for the present, for the consequences of this deal, and worry about whether the other hostages will really return or not. And so much pain and worry about the future too — what will ultimately be with all of us as a result of this deal?
“Mommy, can I cry now?” Natan Alterman wrote a poem by that title, inspired by the words and story of a little girl who survived the Holocaust, who emerged from the Vilna Ghetto. After years of fear, anxiety, silence and supression, starvation and abuse, she turned to her mother with that question.
This past Sunday, after over 400 days, these young hostage girls, came home. They could cry. Not silently. But audibly. Unbridled. Without fear for their lives. Not silent Hebrew Jewish crying, exiled in a foreign land, knowing there’s a death warrant for you just because you are Jewish. But the cry of safety, the cry of coming home, in the intimacy of your inner sanctum, and with your greater family and people.
As we await the list of the remaining names, the remaining captives, as we pray fervently that this disturbing release of terrorists prompts new policies that will make such hostage “deals” impossible to repeat, we hope that the released terrorists will soon be neutralized, leaving no opportunity to add even more Jewish names to any Holocaust-esque list.
“Ve-eileh ha-Shemot” — the name of this week’s Torah portion —“and these are the names” of the remaining hostages whose homecoming we now await.
© IJN 2025
