Chaverim y'karim - dear friends,

There are countless posts and blogs regarding the hoped-for, planned, on/off ceasefire and hostage negotiation. I have neither a personal blog nor long post today, though I have included a few below for your consideration and my mind cannot get off the emotional rollercoaster of the hostage story.

The last 15 months have been grueling in a thousand ways in Gaza from the desire to save the hostages to the battles in the field to eliminate Hamas' power. Achieving both goals has proven elusive and some would say contradictory and inherently impossible.

My desire for the hostages to come home is overwhelming and yet the cost will be exceedingly high given the number of "security prisoners" Israel will have to release - many of whom are convicted, terrorist murderers.

My empathy for the innocent of Gaza is high and yet the guilt for their impoverished reality lies ultimately at the hands of Hamas, particularly when it comes to the duration of the war and the lack of access to food.

My hope that a some kind of lasting ceasefire will hold is ... well, cautiously hopeful based on how the previous ceasefires have failed - most notably the last one which ended on October 7, 2023.

Hamas remains and has been the party with whom Israel has had to negotiate. How does a sovereign nation - let alone one that is the only majority Jewish nation in the world - negotiate with an Islamist terror operation that seeks Israel's destruction? We can often judge the success of an endeavor based on the other side's reaction. The Council on American-Islamic Relations' elation and wording should be deeply unsettling.

I pray the ceasefire is real and that many hostages will return home. But what of the hostages who are left in Gaza? What of the Palestinian terrorists who will be celebrated and elevated for the Jewish blood on their hands? And who will create a proper future for the Palestinians?

There are more questions than answers in this moment and it is with bated breath that we approach these coming hours and days.

I've long wished the slogan was "Let My People Go!" not "Bring Them Home, Now!" NONE of this should have happened - but alas, here we are. It is, as Michael Oren points out, the result of Israel's failures that Israel is in this horrible position to negotiate hostages. Far larger is this moment the result of having to negotiate with an enemy whose morals and whose values are markedly different than our own. Israel's enemies seek Israel's destruction at all costs. Whether it is how they have chosen to use civilians as shields or dug tunnels underground to save themselves rather than a burgeoning open society along the Mediterranean as their Jewish - and Arab (!) - cousins further up the coastline.

So now we wait ... and maybe we there will be a good ending, as Yoni Bloch, a popular Israeli singer-songwriter recently wrote and composed a song recently. This article and the song, "Happy Ending" brought me to tears - one of many times this week.

Sha'alu shlom Yerushalayim - שאלו שלום ירושלים - may there be peace for Jerusalem (Psalm 122) and for all who dwell within the sacred land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, what our people call the Land of Israel.

A prayer for the hostages' return - May It Be.

Rabbi Mark Cohn

rabbicohn@tsholom.org 

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Pictured above - one of the enduring symbols of the hostages has been the empty yellow chair. Likened to the empty Elijah chair at seder or just a chair that should be occupied at the Shabbat table, this chair sits in the lobby of the Tel Aviv Anu Museum as a sentry and symbol of hope that the hostages will return home.