Rabbi’s Message: Oct 14, 2025

Yesterday, as we watched the return of the 20 living hostages, many of us felt the swirl of conflicting emotions rise and crash within us. 

This is a season of unbridled joy – there is dancing in the streets and in our hearts that the ceasefire begins with stability and most especially, the return of our beloveds.

This is a season of heartbreaking grief – grief that this happened in the first place, grief that there are only 20 returning alive in this moment, grief over the destruction that war of any kind reaps, grief over the trauma of the past two years. 

This is a season of palpable relief – relief that Israelis will no longer need to regularly run to their bomb shelters and question the structure of their saferooms. Relief that it will be possible to travel from place to place within the country without consideration for where the gas-station’s or bus stop’s re-enforced spaces might be.

This is a season of anxious worry – fear for what will happen to those Palestinians who Hamas now has the greater opportunity to terrorize, deep-felt worry for what this means for long-term peace and meaningful, much-wanted partnership in the entire region. Worry for our own people and the likelihood of the recurrence of such terror and security failures.

This is a season of courageous hope – hope that the ceasefire is long lasting and leads to significant peace talks. Hope that recovery from this level of trauma is possible. Hope that healing is within our grasp.

During Sukkot, we traditionally read Ecclesiastes, a book of our Tanakh that emphasizes the fragility of every moment in this world. As Kohelet writes: 

There is a season is set for everything, a time for every experience under heaven:

A time for being born and a time for dying,

A time for planting and a time for uprooting the planted; 

A time for slaying and a time for healing

A time for tearing down and a time for building up; (Ecclesiastes 3:1-3)

Ecclesiastes teaches that our lives are big enough to hold each of these things. We are big enough to embrace the difficulty, the complexity, and the beauty of each season.

So, as we feel the ripples of this moment in history, we breathe in the reality that our hearts are big enough. Our hearts are big enough to hold all of these feelings – feelings of hope and despair, feelings of grief and joy. Our hearts are big enough to be able to still dance, still sing, still rejoice while tenderly holding the tragedy and trauma that began two Simchat Torahs ago, and comes to one level of closure as we enter into the Simchat Torah of 5786. Our hearts are big enough for the fragility of this season and all it brings.

May we give one another permission to feel it all — to celebrate, to weep, to breathe, and to begin again – as we roll our Torah to its beginning once more.