Editor’s note: This was written in advance of the news of the completion of the ceasefire negotiations.
In these moments, it feels like a collective holding of our Jewish people’s breath as we await the news about the actualization of the hostage deal. A part of us, collectively, has been stuck in Oct. 7 these past two years. Suddenly there is the possibility that the hostages can come home by early next week.
That the soldiers can come home for good this week, if the war officially ends.
That this holiday of Sukkot will transform into a modern meaning of “z’man simchateinu, season of our joy” like never before.
Of course, there’s the painful pinch of the heart for all the hostages and all the soldiers whose lives were sacrificed, who are no more part of this world.
Right now it feels like the fate of so much of the Jewish people’s heart hangs in the balance.
We pray that after all the psychological machinations of yes-no that Hamas has inflicted on us, this time it will be real.
There’s hope — intertwined with profound skepticism.
I think of the famous Russian animal fable about the scorpion and the frog.
The scorpion wants to cross the river, but he can’t swim. The scorpion asks a frog, who can swim, to carry him across the river. Initially, the frog hesitates, for fear that the scorpion will sting him. However, the scorpion promises the frog that he will not sting the frog, saying that if the scorpion would sting the frog, the frog would then drown in the river and so would the scorpion. It’s a convincing argument that hurting the frog makes no sense because it would hurt the scorpion too.
After the frog hears this sensible argument, he agrees to transport the scorpion across the river.
As the frog and scorpion are crossing the river, the scorpion stings the frog, dooming them both.
The dying frog asks the scorpion why it stung him despite knowing that it would lead to his (the scorpion’s) own death.
The scorpion replies. “Because it’s my character, it’s my nature.”
While I believe in the power and possibility of human change and even transformation, this fable carries a truth, a teaching of its own. While the human being is endowed with the potential to change and repair, the Hamas human have chosen their character. It’s like that of the scorpion who won’t change.
Nonetheless, I am praying for this deal with Hamas to go through and for the hostages to return home.
I hope we are not being toyed with again, because this time I can practically see in my mind’s eye a convoy of the captives returning to Israel.
Although I am in Denver for the holidays, I can still feel the presence of the dedicated Kikar ha-Chatufim, Hostage Square. I can still see that tree with all the pleas and messages of hope hanging on it, notes scribbled in a variety of handwritings as different as the many people who wrote them.
I can still see and hear the guy playing at the piano, a homage to Alon Ohel, the hostage whose musical soul and essence had him, in the delirium of his Hamas-tortured hostage state moving his fingers on his own body, “‘playing” one of Beethoven’s symphonies on his flesh.
I can still see a group of yeshiva kids sitting in the middle of the square, singing and strumming pre-Rosh Hashanah spirited songs.
In the corner was a group in deep conversation, seemingly planning their next Hostage Square rally.
Being there, there was a certain healing. Presence alone, without words spoken, expressed the troubled feeling we all felt.
We all chose to come and be there for the same reason.
That Hostage Square, I hope it will become a relic of the past, not a space for the present.
This is front and center on our minds. The question of the fate of the hostages. Of the soldiers. Of the war.
And yet. Just like that, since last week another layer of our world has changed, facing a new threshold of anti-Semitism.
A shul in Manchester — attacked. Of all days, on Yom Kippur.
These days, as we approach the synagogue door and pass the security guard to our shul, by now a familiar face and friend of the community, it strikes at a voice inside, a voice that raises the possibility of G-d forbid an attack on us Jews, on our shul, on our place of worship. That worst fear became a reality at a shul in Manchester.
To see Rabbi Daniel Walker’s blood-stained kittel. To learn of the Jews who were murdered in cold blood-for being Jews. For worshiping in their place of prayer. On the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. This is where it’s at. England, Yom Kippur, 2025.
As the police were trying to take out the terrorist in order to prevent this tragedy from becoming worse than it already was, the police mistakenly shot and killed a father, a man who was heroically with all his might pressing the door shut so as to keep the terrorist out of his synagogue and keep his fellow congregants safe, but he was killed too.
The target was the terrorist, but heartrendingly, the person nearby was killed too.
This is not a perfect analogy to the war in Gaza, where the terrorists intentionally hide behind innocents so as to invite their deaths. But after much of the world — including England — has been hammering Israel for fighting an unwanted war in order to protect itself, a war that was barbarically imposed on it, and after manipulating Israel’s precision attacks that unfortunately have also killed some innocents, here you have a similar scenario, hundreds of miles away, not in a war zone but on a quaint England street.
The police’s goal was to remove the threat of the terrorist only, but along with eliminating the terrorist threat, the police also tragically an innocent, indeed heroic, man and father.
There you have Israel’s dilemma on a micro level.
See, dealing with these terrorists who attack civilians, it’s not so simple, is it, England and world?
Israel has been dealing with this for who knows how long. Sadly, we understand this. All too well. This lesson and reality has been written in blood.
Unfortunately, now this lesson is starting to ripple out elsewhere in the world.
It was never going to only be confined to Israel.
This is who and what the Israeli soldiers have been fighting for two years now — and in the Gaza military operations that preceded it.
If — and Let It Be So! — the fulfillment of this prospective Trump deal brings the return of the hostages on Sukkot, in tandem with the fullfilment of the condition of a demilitarized Gaza — if all this comes to pass, let it be clear:
With G-d’s help, this was and is all in the merit of the soldiers who fought in this war with indescribable pain and honor and heroism and sacrifice.
It feels like in our times new Ushpizin have joined the august mystical guests we have known and welcomed into our sukkot until now.
Each of those mystical guests, consequential leaders, model and bring a core quality of character that molded them and thus our Jewish nation, qualities we constantly strive to make a part of ourselves. Avraham, the quality of chesed, kindness; Isaac, gevura, strength and discipline; Jacob, unvarnished truth and faith; Moses, profound humility and quintessential leadership; Aaron, peacemaking; Joseph, forgiveness; David, regal responsibility and a warrior.
After this protracted war, we know on an even deeper level that we have new Ushpizin, heroic warriors of Israel living among us, continuing the legacy of the last of the Ushpizin, King David.
May it be that we welcome these soldiers home as our Ushpizin this year.
May it be that we welcome the hostages home as our Ushpizin this year.
These two years have molded our nation anew in this chapter of Jewish history.
© IJN 2025
