When I was a child, if I woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, I would often run into my mother, pacing in the hallway. When I’d ask her why she was up, she would offer some excuse, that she had leg cramps or that she wasn’t that tired.
I only realized the real reason she was awake when I was older.
My mother had survived Auschwitz. It left her with memories that continued to inhabit her dreams decades later. These nightmares would shake her to the point that she needed to walk around the house to settle herself. My mother was an easygoing woman; but at night, the trauma of her past would unsettle her sleep.
I was reminded of this when I read a Wall Street Journal article about how the Released Gaza Hostages Face Long, Wrenching Recoveries. The authors quote Luis Har, 71, who was rescued in February, as saying “I don’t sleep much at night anymore. My head is filled with thoughts.” Luis can’t sleep after his experience as a hostage. And that reminded me of how my mother paced the hallway in our home at night.
Trauma feels insurmountable. Horrific memories remain etched in one’s memory, and they reappear involuntarily at random moments. You feel out of control, as if your mind has a mind of its own; and you become a prisoner of your own thoughts. One of the former hostages, Mia Schem, told the reporters: “People think you are out, you are safe, and that it’s over…But it’s not. Every day is a battle to get up and fight.”
There is enormous trauma in Israel right now. Right after the war started, a cartoon circulated, with a caricature of the map of Israel lying on a couch while Sigmund Freud listens. The caption reads: “How does one find a psychologist for 9.3 million people?” This cartoon is even more relevant today.
Survivors and first responders are still overwhelmed by the unspeakable barbarity they witnessed. So are heartbroken family members who had their beloved children torn away from them. All of Israel mourns the fallen soldiers. And the entire Jewish world has been emotionally scarred by these horrible attacks.
On Thursday, this pain came to a crescendo with the return of the bodies of Oded Lifshitz, and Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas. Hamas staged the handover in the ugliest fashion possible, with gun-waving terrorists and cheering crowds.
It felt like the nightmare of October 7th had returned.
Contemplating the horrors the sweet young Bibas boys endured before being murdered by Hamas is too much for the heart to bear.
We are all traumatized.
But we can meet this challenge, just like our ancestors did.
Judaism teaches that we inhabit a fragile and imperfect world. Exile is an unavoidable element of the Jewish experience, from Pesach to Tisha B’Av. Even at the heights of joy, we never forget what we have lost; we break a glass at every wedding, a reminder of the destruction of the Temple, and more generally, the broken, unredeemed state of the world.
Exile is not just about events in Jewish history; it is part of the human condition. The first couple, Adam and Eve, are exiled from the Garden of Eden into a difficult, cursed reality. The Kabbalistic doctrine of “shevirat kelim,” “the shattering of the vessels,” is that the world came into existence after the breaking of the receptacles created to receive divine light. This idea is a metaphor for the inherent imperfection of being. Everything is broken. Trauma is the rule, not the exception.
Yet even in the worst of times, Jews had the will to live on.
What philosophers call “the will” is a powerful force. They debate if the will is subordinate to the rational faculties or independent of them. But, to take a side in this debate, it would seem clear that not everything we choose to do is rational or self-interested. In Willful: How We Choose What We Do, Richard Robb argues that much of what we do has no rational utility. There are “for-itself” behaviors such as artistic and creative pursuits, game-playing, and altruism that are done without any purpose.
But where does the desire to do “for-itself” behaviors come from? Is it merely instinct?
At the end of Parshat Mishpatim, we have a famous episode of willful behavior. Even before receiving the Torah, the Jews declare “All that the Lord has said we will do, and we will understand.” In Hebrew, the term is “naaseh v’nishmah,” which becomes an oft-repeated slogan. The Jews committed to the Torah without even knowing what they were committing to. The Talmud explains that the Jews’ willingness to do so was otherworldly. It says:
When the Jewish people said “We will do” before “We will hear,” a Divine Voice emerged and said to them: Who revealed to my children this secret that the ministering angels use?
The Jews cry out naaseh, We will do, without having a reason why; they are listening to an inner voice, much like angels do. This will is always there, a divinely inspired desire to do what is right for its own sake.
Naaseh v’nishmah has guided us forward in the worst of times. A Holocaust survivor once remarked to me: “You know, I just wanted to live”. This may seem like a pointless comment; doesn’t everyone want to live? But what he meant was that he refused to give up no matter how long the odds and how painful the journey. Others gave up. Yet this man kept going, despite suffering, despite pain, despite loss.
Like so many Jews throughout the generations, this man had the will to live on, an inner drive that doesn’t make sense and doesn’t have to. It is a glimmer of divine inspiration in the darkness, exhorting us to keep going, that the Jewish mission must continue, because we have to fix the shattered vessels.
Jews have kept going because we’ve always had dreams that are larger than our nightmares.
Heroically, these released hostages are taking on life with a Naaseh v’nishmah attitude. Trauma surrounds them, but they keep going.
One of the hostages interviewed for the Wall Street Journal article was Moran Stela Yanai, a jewelry designer.She shared her fear of enclosed spaces and the irrational guilt she feels. But Moran just wants to live. The article explained:
Yanai said she vowed during captivity that she wouldn’t let her abductors ruin her life. “When I am not doing well, they win,” she said. “If I can recover fully, I win.” She also decided she would try to become a mother, despite being single at age 41. “That’s going to be my revenge.”
Moran’s words are a testament to the Jewish will to live on. And when her child is born, it will bring a little bit of redemption to a world that desperately needs it.
Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz is the Senior Rabbi of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in New York.
