The Hostage Crisis and My Conversation with God

If worrying were an Olympic event, Jews would always carry home the gold like Kenyans almost always win the Boston Marathon. Most Jews have never met a piece of information that didn’t trigger acid reflux, dizziness, or at least, baldness.  

Of course, we have much to worry about—you don’t need a list. Our news media, both from the left and the right, are merciless super-spreaders of anxiety and doom. Whether sounding the alarm over the COVID variant of the week, political infighting, social divisiveness, inflation, crime, or supply chain stoppages, what good is a COVID booster when a shot of the news can give you a heart attack?  

Naturally, we Jews are hardest hit by all these dismal dispatches. Over millennia of being persecuted, our genetic code got reprogrammed with indestructibly robust nucleotides carrying worry and fear to every cell. (No supply chain shortages there!) 

But did you know that being Jewish isn’t supposed to mean living life clutching a bottle of Xanax? Even though we continue to face dire threats, including antisemitism and assimilation of existential proportions, God doesn’t want us to worry. From the time of Mount Sinai, He’s assured us repeatedly that if we follow His commandments and walk in His ways, He’ll take care of the rest. I know, this isn’t easy. The bar for good and ethical behavior has been set very high, and nobody — nobody — can do it all. But even with all our failings and rebellions, how many times has God delivered us from seemingly impossible odds? Too many to count.

Harsh times in history may have warped our DNA. Maybe today it stands for Distressed, Nervous and Anxious but it was meant instead to stand for Do Not Agonize.

Harsh times in history may have warped our DNA. Maybe today it stands for Distressed, Nervous and Anxious but it was meant instead to stand for Do Not Agonize.

The last two chaotic years have prompted millions of people to rebel against trusting authority figures at every level. Who can blame them? After all, so many people have been so spectacularly, arrogantly wrong about so many vital things. Today, we watch those in charge flailing around as they announce their new rules and ideologies, reminding me of the Wizard of Oz after Toto pulled back the curtain, revealing him as a hapless fake, pulling on the pointless levers of his pointless machine.   

I believe that God loves us and doesn’t want us to live in fear, sickness, loneliness, or any other forms of suffering. Nobody can know why God has allowed our current agonies and turmoil to menace the world, but I see a few silver linings. This includes seeing that more people recognize what God told us all along—that it is folly to trust in humankind. No human being, no matter their title or official powers, can offer our deliverance. There is one true helper and healer.  

When Shabbat ended on January 15 and I saw the horrible news about the hostage situation at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, I told my husband about it. We both stopped what we were doing, sat down, and started reciting some Tehillim together. Psalms speak to every aspect of the human condition, and we particularly turn to them in times of trouble. Our hearts moved along with our lips. 

“Save them, HaShem!” I demanded, imagining thousands of other Jews at the exact same moment also praying for the hostages. It should not take moments like this for us to be “as one person with one heart,” as we are meant to be. When we heard the ordeal had ended as it did, we thanked God aloud and relaxed. Reciting the Tehillim was a formal form of prayer, but I added my own inward, impromptu pleas. Praying made me proactive instead of reactive, anxiously waiting for news. It turned worry into a conversation with God and helped me feel empowered instead of helpless. 

We don’t have to wait for the next crisis to start the conversation.

Judy Gruen’s books include “The Skeptic and the Rabbi: Falling in Love with Faith.”