This whole week has felt like a big inhale - continuously holding my breath - waiting for this deal. This deal that will - please God - bring home siblings and children and spouses and parents that have been held captive for months and months on end. The deal that will hopefully lead to the end of this excruciating war. The emotional roller coaster of this week has felt like an eternity, with so many ups and downs in my own thinking of what is good, what is right.
There are things I know. I know that we are an incomplete people if we are not all free. I know that this war has gone on for far too long, with too many people killed. Too many soldiers killed in their fight to protect Israel, too many innocent Palestinians without protection, too many Israelis constantly running to shelters. I know now - perhaps I didn’t before - that there is no ‘deal’ that will feel complete. I know that there is no way to get out of this war that feels fully right. I know now that it all feels hard.
There are things I so deeply hope. I hope for safety. For peace. I hope for people to be reunited with their families. For a world in which no one is worried that they’ll have to run into shelters in the middle of the night. I hope for a future for the people of Gaza that isn’t crumbled by war. I hope for a world in which shared society seems possible.
And there are things I can’t imagine. I can’t imagine how you calculate the value of a person’s life; how you determine the price worth paying. I cannot imagine the anguish that families have endured - suffered - waiting for their loved ones. I cannot imagine what it was like to be in the deepest caverns of hell for 15 months. I cannot imagine what it feels like to be a child in Gaza, not knowing if there will be food or shelter or an explosion.
I know that the next six weeks will feel long and drawn out, even if everything goes according to plan. And I hope that we are closer to bringing our people back together, to giving life back. But I can imagine what our future looks like, maybe, in some way, because our people is one that looks to the future. Perhaps we will begin to exhale. Hospitals in Israel have started to prepare for the return of hostages. The rooms are ready, with plush couches and colorful comforters. Signs on doors and posters throughout the hospital say, כמה טוב שבאתם הביתה- kama tov sh’batem habayta - how good it is that you’ve come home. And at the bottom it says, תקווה ללא גבול - tikvah l’lo gevul - hope without limits.
I think that’s who we can strive to be as a people. Embodying endless hope, even while we feel excruciating pain. I hope that in the coming days dreams turn to realities. I hope that the coming days bring a beginning of the end to this devastating war. May we see our people begin to come home, such that we can say, כמה טוב שבאתם הביתה, how good it is that you’ve come home.
