Rabbinic Reflection: Rabbi Eliza McCarroll

In Psalm 126, it is written: b’shuv Adonai et shivat Tzion, hayinu k’cholmim – “when the Eternal restores the returnees to Zion, we are like dreamers”. 

Indeed, these last few days have felt like a dream, as, thank God, we have seen our hostages returned home, to the Land of Israel. 

Yet, the Psalm continues: hazor’im b’dima, b’rina yiktzoru – those who sow in tears, will reap in joy.  

We experienced the purest form of unbridled joy, reaching this moment of our prayers being answered after such an extended time of heaviness. 

We have been elated at the miraculous release of all twenty remaining living hostages. Seeing the photos and videos of their reunions with loved ones has allowed us to feel like we can breathe again for the first time in two years. We are delighted in this new day arising, and this opportunity for the hostages to heal, embraced in the arms of their families and their nation. 

We celebrated with wholehearted happiness last night at Simchat Torah, where we danced with our scrolls in the hakafot, and danced around an enormous maypole that Rabbi Splansky envisioned, which she made of yellow, blue, and white ribbons. 

This alludes to the other side of the coin, the rollercoaster of emotions that still exists within us. 

We have also been saddened at the news of the 24 remaining slain hostages, not all who have been returned for a dignified burial. A piece of our hearts are with their families as the cloud of uncertainty still hangs. What about their families? Has the war truly ended? What next? 

We commemorated these souls during the Yizkor piece of our Shemini Atzeret services. 

Precisely because we are Jews, we held the complexity of the moment, tears in one eye and the crinkle of smiles in the other.  

Precisely because we are Jews, we held this complexity through ritual. 

At Shemini Atzeret services we took down the chair on our bimah, the one with a yellow ribbon on it, the one we have been saving for the hostages. We moved it to be the chair on which our Torah sat, and tied the yellow ribbon around the podium, from where Torah would be read. It looked like a larger version of the yellow pins we have all been wearing since Shemini Atzeret two years previously. We also recited an extra “El Malei” to remember those who had fallen since October 7, including the slain hostages who remain in Gaza. 

At Simchat Torah, we used the large yellow cloth that we had set on top of the piano in our Atrium, in honour of Alon Ohel (now, thank God, freed) as the chuppah under which we read Torah, to end the Book of Deuteronomy and begin the Book of Genesis. Alon is a cousin of our previous Shinshinit, Noa Ron, and a piano virtuoso. One circle closed, another opened, in a way that we felt would honour Alon, and honour this time: with words of Torah, and with incredible music and energy. 

Psalm 126 concludes: 

Haloch yelech u’va’cho, noseh meshech hazar’a, bo yavo v’rina, nosea alumotav 

Though he goes along weeping, carrying the bag of seeds, he shall come back with songs of joy, carrying his sheaves. 

As we carry it all with us, we know that, in the journey ahead, we will continue to turn our sorrow into joy, and our mourning into dancing. 

It felt so good to dance again.