This week, as we sit beneath the open roofs of our sukkot, we gaze upward through branches to a sky that feels both vast and intimate. The world itself seems poised on the threshold of something miraculous.
We have reached the two year anniversary of October 7th 2023. Two years of heartbreak, devastation, and unbearable loss. That day shattered lives and forever changed the soul of our people. At last we have heard words we scarcely dared to hope for: Israel and Hamas have reached a negotiated peace plan thanks to our current US administration.
As we have all heard on the news, the first phase of this agreement is to be implemented this weekend. Twenty hostages, those who are still alive, are expected to come home on Sunday or Monday. In exchange, Israel will release 250 prisoners serving life sentences and 1,700 Gazans detained during the war. This is, of course, highly disproportionate. Yet as our tradition teaches, this is a Jewish law called pikuach nefesh, the saving of even one life outweighs everything else. We do what we must do to bring our people home.
The return of the bodies of the twenty-eight hostages who were killed will take longer, not because of negotiation, but because Hamas must first locate their remains, some of which may tragically never be found. Each body represents a life taken too soon, a family still waiting for the chance to lay their loved one to rest with dignity and honor. For each body returned, Israel will return 15 bodies of captured Gazans killed.
Perhaps, just perhaps, this fragile, improbable agreement will be more than an exchange of prisoners and hostages. Perhaps it will mark the first breath of peace, tentative and trembling, yet real.
One can dream.
As the founding father of modern Zionism, Theodor Herzl once said, “Im tirtzu, ein zo Aggadah, if you will it, it is no dream.” Herzl was writing about the rebirth of the Jewish people in our ancestral land, about the audacious vision of creating a modern Jewish state out of centuries of longing. Yet his words still ring true today. Im tirtzu, if we will it, if we truly desire peace, then perhaps we can find the courage, the imagination, and the faith to make it real.
However, I am also a realist. Hamas’s founding charter calls for Israel’s total destruction. I am not a political scientist, nor an expert on the Middle East. I do not know how to reconcile this latest peace negotiation with the ideology embedded in that charter, and I am not naïve. Yet our tradition calls us to hold both truths at once: to face the world as it is, and to dream of the world as it might yet become. So I live with this uncomfortable cognitive dissonance.
It is fitting that this peace agreement comes during Sukkot, the Festival of Booths, z’man simchateinu, the Season of our Joy. There is something profoundly spiritual about the convergence of this moment with this festival. On Sukkot, we step out of the safety of our permanent homes and dwell for seven days in temporary shelters. The walls are thin, the roof is porous, and the wind slips easily between the reeds. We are reminded that our security is never absolute, that life itself is delicate and transitory.
Yet Sukkot is not a festival of fear or mourning, it is one of joy. “You shall rejoice in your festival,” the Torah commands us, “and you shall have nothing but joy” (Deuteronomy 16:14–15). Even as we sit exposed to the elements, we are called to open our hearts in gratitude for all that sustains us.
This week, as we anticipate the homecoming of the hostages and the first fragile glimpse of peace, our joy is laced with tears, our relief bound up with memory and mourning. We remember the hundreds of families who will not be reunited, and the countless lives lost, Israeli and Palestinian, American, Thai, and other foreign nationals who were taken and killed. We hold them all in our hearts, for grief knows no borders and compassion no boundaries. We acknowledge the brokenness that no agreement, however hopeful, can ever fully repair.
Still, we rejoice. We rejoice because hope, once nearly extinguished, is stirring again. We rejoice because even fragile peace is better than endless war. We rejoice because our tradition insists that life, love, and renewal will always have the final word.
On Sukkot we read Kohelet, the Book of Ecclesiastes, which reminds us with haunting beauty:
“To everything there is a season,
and a time for every purpose under heaven.
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance.
A time for war, and a time for peace.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1, 4, 8)
Today is that "time for peace." For two long years, it has been the season of weeping and mourning. May this new dawn, however fragile, mark the beginning of the season for laughter and dancing, for peace.
The sukkah itself now becomes our prayer. It stands as a symbol of both our vulnerability and our faith. It reminds us that while we cannot always control the storms, we can choose how we respond, with compassion, with courage, with hope.
May this Sukkot truly be a season of joy, not naïve or fleeting joy, but a joy born of endurance and faith. May the coming days bring safety and homecoming to all who have waited so long. May this fragile peace, nurtured carefully and tended faithfully, grow into something enduring, a shelter of peace, a sukkat shalom, for Israel, for her neighbors, and for all the world.
“Oseh Shalom bimromav, Hu ya'aseh shalom aleynu, v'al kol Yisrael, v'al kol yoshvei tei'vel, v'no'mar, Amein. May the One who makes peace in the high heavens make peace for us, for all Israel, and for all who dwell on earth.”
Click here for the Reform Movement Statement on the Hostage and Ceasefire Plan
Shabbat Shalom!
Rabbi Sharon L. Sobel
Interim Rabbi
Temple Beth Or
rabbisobel@tboraleigh.org
