How quickly will we jump back into the fray?
Now that the hostages are finally home and we’ve seen the hugs and the tears and the explosions of joy, how soon will we return to our comfort zone of skepticism and never-ending analyses?
Yes, we all took a time-out for our hearts. How could we not? Have we ever seen a cause in our lifetime that has captured more Jewish hearts than that of the Oct. 7 hostages?
How many times over the past two years have we seen people wear pins and other mementos in their honor?
How many hostage posters have been put up? How many videos of family members have we seen pleading for their release? Liberating the hostages was more than a cause, it became a global solidarity movement.
Then, on Oct. 13, after 738 days of “bring them home,” the hostages who were still alive came home. No more agony. No more primal screams. We quit the yearning cold turkey and started breathing again.
The reunion scenes were overwhelming. I saw a clip of a father who couldn’t stop wailing as he embraced his returning son. He knew he was being filmed. It didn’t matter. Just as was happening across the nation, he had surrendered to the moment.
There are moments when our hearts are forced to surrender. Oct. 7 was one of those moments. The grief, the shock, the horrors, the rage, drowned our hearts.
Our hearts seem to surrender more easily to tragedy. Death is finite. The thought of never seeing a loved one again can make us lose our minds.
It is harder to surrender to joy. Joy is ephemeral, conditional, up for grabs.
Oct. 13 changed that. This was no rudimentary joy. This was joy born from two years of shivering pain, the kind of pain that can’t be described because it is a pain of not knowing, a pain of imagining the very worst.
The wailing of that father who was in ecstasy carried that pain. His heart was helpless at the sight of his son. It could only surrender to the joy, a joy so intense it overtook the part of the brain that stops us from embarrassing ourselves in public.
I can’t recall seeing so many Jews awaiting with such anticipation one event, in this case a day of liberation. That alone should make the delirious Oct. 13 go down in the history books.
Fear, however, is stronger than even intense joy. We see fear as the instrument that keeps us alive. Fear is useful; joy is optional. Fear makes us watch our backs, face evil squarely, trust no one who hasn’t earned it.
Israel would never have come this far without the protective edge that fear provides. It is the fear of losing thousands of civilians from rocket attacks that created the Iron Dome.
Still, the miracle of Israel is not that it has figured out how to survive while surrounded by genocidal enemies. That is miracle enough.
The real Israeli miracle is that it never allowed the imperative of fear to drown out the sanctity of joy.
Israelis fight to the death in order to taste joy.
On Oct. 13, they didn’t just taste it; they gorged.
Now, with the gorging behind us, it’s tempting to move on and return to serious matters.
There is no shortage of serious matters: Who will rule Gaza? Will Hamas disarm? Is the war really over? Will Israel be handcuffed by the “peace deal”? Will new elections bring hope or pessimism? Can the Abraham Accords be expanded? Will antisemitism continue to rise? And on and on.
Those are issues that will dominate the conversations over the coming weeks and months, including my own columns. For now, though, it’s worth wallowing a little longer on Oct. 13.
Just as Oct. 7 darkened our hearts for so long, Oct. 13 has come to brighten those hearts and remind us why they beat in the first place.
Ultimately, our hearts beat not to fight our enemies but to hug our families. Our hearts beat not to bring anxiety to Shabbat tables but to bring joy and holiness.
It is divine timing that Oct. 13 has come at the end of Sukkot, a holiday when joy is not an option but an obligation. After a long month of penitence and atonement, Sukkot reminds us that finding the joy in life is a holy mission.
If Oct. 7 brought home the lesson of never taking fear too loosely, Oct. 13 brought home the lesson that joy itself deserves to be taken seriously.
If the images of Oct. 7 transmitted the fanaticism of a death cult, the images of Oct. 13 transmitted that we are fanatical lovers of life.
Oct. 13 will never make us forget Oct. 7. Nothing can. But because Oct. 7 was all about death and Oct. 13 is all about life, that will be the latter’s eternal edge.
I don’t mind spending a little more time with that.
