By Leah Garber
Written by Rabbi David Lau, Israel’s former Ashkenazi chief rabbi
Like a pendulum, the volatile weather mirrors Israel’s mood. Heavy rains and floods, followed by warm eastern winds. Nothing is permanent, there is no stability, no security. Four-hundred-sixty-six days ago everything we believed in vanished, dissolving like autumn leaves in desert winds. We thought our borders were secure, that innovative surveillance technology would warn us in time, prevent infiltration. We thought the eyes of Israel’s intelligence were open, vigilant, protective. We thought our home was our fortress, our warm bed was meant for sweet dreams, and the only hand to slip beneath the blanket would caress and comfort.
But the Israel of October 6, 2023, is not the same country 466 days later and will never return to what it was before the great darkness took hold here. On October 8, 2023, the morning after, the first question I sought an answer to was this: “Have the hostages been returned yet?” In my naivete, I couldn’t conceive of any other possibility. True, they were brutally kidnapped and severely tortured, but what enemy could be so cruel as to hold children, women, human beings captive?
Since then, for 466 mornings I’ve asked the same question, and for 466 nights I’ve gone to sleep praying for their return—for the living to be back in the comforting embrace of home, to receive physical and mental rehabilitation, and above all, to ask their forgiveness for taking so long to bring them back. As for the dead, I pray for burial in their homeland’s soil and for their eternal rest.
And now, it seems the embrace is closer than ever before. Perhaps, perhaps the nightmare we never imagined, the one that no human could conceive, is about to end. Will a deal be signed, and will the hostages return home?
This coming Saturday, Kfir Bibas will celebrate his second birthday. Kfir, with his laughing eyes and radiant hair, was kidnapped as a baby, and for 466 days, his fate and that of his brother Ariel has remained unknown. Kfir was taken from the innocent, protected, happy world of an infant into the maw of the cruelest of enemies. What has become of him? Did he take his first steps in the darkness of tunnels? Were his first words in Hebrew, or perhaps in Arabic, pleading with his captors? Has the light radiating from his curls kept its glow, or has it dimmed, along with his smile? Kfir, are you alive and will your family get to embrace you and your brother Ariel in a few days, celebrate your second birthday, compensate you for a stolen childhood, or are you already among angels, alongside far too many victims of great evil, dropping tears of sorrow from above?
Israel is divided, hearts torn, minds confused.
Are we facing a deal that would bring home 33 hostages—women and children first, then elderly men and some younger ones? As far as Israel knows, none of these 33 captives is classified as deceased, but some may be. Would such a deal, a life sentence for those 33, be a death sentence for the remaining 22 Israeli hostages who are believed to be alive and not included in this first deal? Should Israel demand the immediate release of those agreed upon, knowing that those left behind might die with each passing day? Eleven men kidnapped from the Nova Music Festival. Four soldiers and seven who were kidnapped from their homes, including two pairs of brothers. Young men condemned to pay the price of their youth and strength.
Israel’s streets are turbulent. Protests call for the return of all hostages in exchange for ending the war; cries demand the country bring home as many as possible now; and families of the fallen in Gaza ask in their sons’ names not to abandon Israel again. Hamas must not be allowed to rebuild before we can ensure that never, ever will the organization rehabilitate to carry out its monstrous plan to repeat the October massacre. These families implore in the name of their sons who paid with their lives that their deaths be not in vain. They fell to protect Israel; ending the war now, when Hamas hasn’t been destroyed, essentially negates the long months of war and the painful price paid, including nine soldiers who fell in Gaza just this week.
Who is right? Whose voice will be heard? Parents and family members from both sides will watch images of the hostages’ return, some knowing their loved one remains behind. In deals with the devil, there is no right or wrong. In such deals, the most terrible kind, the heart that makes the decision is broken, and the hand that signs it trembles.
An impossible reality. Commentators from all sides present the options, laying out arguments in which families are divided against one another. These families, recognizing the gravity of the hour and knowing the fate of their loved ones is being sealed imminently, come to the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, daily. They wear shirts adorned with their loved ones’ portraits, carry signs, and plead: “Don’t abandon them again.” And the decision-makers, divided themselves, know that never before has an elected official in Israel, and perhaps anywhere in the world, been required to decide fates and the future of a people as they are required to do today.
And on the day the deal is set to be signed, on the very day the five soldiers killed yesterday in Gaza are being buried, politicians are busy legitimizing the continued inequality in bearing the burden, whitewashing the draft-dodging of entire communities, purely for political survival. Israel in 2025, 466 days after a great darkness blackened the country’s skies, remains true to form: The political realm remains still and solely concerned with its own survival.
Israel is scarred and will remain scarred forever. The failure of October 7 will forever be inscribed in our history pages. The great stain that blackened Simchat Torah will never disappear and will echo forward for generations—the price of abandonment, the price of life here, the terrible rupture in which we have existed for 15 months.
From the darkness of grief and through fragments of hope, we look westward together, toward the skies of Los Angeles, engulfed in flames, and we whisper a prayer that the flames will subside. At least may the forces of nature have mercy on us and not add their fury to the existing pain. God willing and with wise human decisions, may the coming days bring tidings of freedom to all our brothers and sisters in distress, and may birdsong return to play here in Israel and above burning Los Angeles.
Together, united, we will overcome.
Leah Garber is a senior vice president of JCC Association of North America and director of its Center for Israel Engagement in Jerusalem.
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