The Tao of Steve

Back in June, I had the pleasure of attending my cousin’s beautiful wedding in Tel Aviv. It was a glorious day full of joy and laughter and it was a real simcha.

But all that kind of flipped for me, waking up the morning of October 7th and realizing what was happening in Israel. 1200 Israelis were slaughtered and 240 of them were taken hostage by brutal Hamas terrorists.

I was thinking back to that wedding and wondering how many of the people that were in attendance are now serving in battle positions in Gaza and elsewhere putting their lives at risk for defending the State.

Who could have imagined such a thing back then? But that’s the reality we find ourselves in these days.

I can’t tell you how many friends and relatives have told me stories about their sons and daughters going into combat situations, being drafted and being taken away from their families their jobs and everything else.

I’ve been immensely proud of the protest leaders that seemed to turn on a dime on October 7th and rather than going out into the streets protesting the judicial power grab that was consuming the country. They switched to organizing volunteer drives to help families that were displaced from the southern communities, organizing people to go to the farms in the south to pick produce and to tend to the livestock, and providing aid and comfort to the brave soldiers that were going into battle.

Astounding! But that’s Israel for you.

Then the ground campaign started in Gaza and we were confronted with horrific pictures of dead civilians and the Israeli Army doing their best to uproot Hamas and their infrastructure from in and around the Northern part of Gaza.

We saw sickening images of tunnels honeycombing the area under hospitals and mosques and in schools. We saw revolting evidence of arms and ammunition being stored under the beds of children in Gaza. We asked ourselves what kinds of people could hide behind innocent civilians like that?

And then of course there was the scrolling and doom-scrolling throughout all the news sites trying to get the latest news on what was happening.

I was fortunate enough to be able to gather a lot of information from an Israeli news Channel 11, which I have access to on my television set. It certainly gave my Hebrew a workout which is a good thing I suppose and I also felt that I was getting my information more from the horse’s mouth by watching the news from Israel, as opposed to watching the sickeningly unreliable sources of news that we were getting here in the States from places like the PBS NewsHour which is just been atrocious in its coverage of the conflict.

I’ve been making daily phone calls to my congressional representatives urging them to do everything they can to bring about the release of the hostages. That and the defeat of Hamas as a military power are they top two priorities in this war as far as I’m concerned.

And then we have the last 48 to 72 hours.

There was a website that I subscribe to that was encouraging people to symbolically invite one of the hostages to my Thanksgiving meal table. And so I was randomly assigned Shanni.

I was only able to discover in the last day or so that she in fact was not a hostage, and that her body had been discovered at the site of the Re’im music festival in the South and only recently have been identified in the last day or so.

So what to do about Shani?

Whiplash, right? What am I supposed to do with that? Well I did The only thing that I could do which was to take another person and invite him as my symbolic guest of my Thanksgiving table.

And finally, we have last night. News came across that 13 innocent women and children were slated to be released initially on Thursday but then delayed till Friday. All of my Israeli friends said they sat on pins and needles waiting for a ceasefire to take place and then an agonizing few more hours waiting for news on the fate of the first batch of hostages to be released by Hamas.

When will they come, what will happen to them when they’re released? What psychological and physical damage has been inflicted upon them? And one of the other 227 Israeli hostages that are unaccounted for so far?

It’s sort of like slow drip torture.

Doron Katz-Asher and her two daughters Raz, 5, and Aviv, 2, were kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz. Father Yoni is a key figure in the movement to free the hostages held in Gaza.

Emilia Aloni, 5, and her mother Danielle, 44, were kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz while visiting family. Danielle was later seen in a Hamas propaganda video — her sister, brother-in-law and their twin three-year-old girls, remain hostage in Gaza.

Ohad Munder-Zichri, 9, his mother Keren Munder, 54, and his grandmother Ruti, 78, were kidnapped when they came to Kibbutz Nir Oz from Kfar Saba to visit their family for the Simchat Torah Shabbat. Ruti’s husband Avraham, remains in Gaza. Ohad turned nine while held in the Strip.

Yaffa Adar, 85, was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz. Video surfaced of Adar being driven in a golf cart in Gaza, wrapped in a pink-flowered blanket and looking stoic — in an image that became one of the symbols of the October 7 catastrophe, the terrorists’ readiness to harm anyone regardless of age, and the courage of the victims.

Adina Moshe, 72, was kidnapped from her home in Nir Oz on October 7. Her husband Sa’id was murdered. Adina Moshe was seen in images from that day seated on a motorcycle between two terrorists, in Gaza.

Margalit Moses, 78, was also seen in footage being kidnapped from her home in Nir Oz

Hanna Katzir, 77, was kidnapped from Nir Oz. Her husband Rami was murdered and her son Avraham is believed held hostage in Gaza. Last month, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group said she had died in captivity in a gruesome example of psychological warfare. Katzir’s release indicated that there is cooperation between Hamas and other terror groups who took Israelis hostage, and that separate negotiations might not be required to release all of them.

Channah Peri, 79, was kidnapped from Nirim. Her son, Nadav Popplewell, is still held in Gaza

So, once it was confirmed that the first 13 had been released, I recited the following two blessings. The first praises the Almighty for redeeming the captives, and the second is a blessing that is traditionally said on happy occasions, the “Shechiyanu.”

The reaction to the second blessing was kind of all over the map.

One respected Rabbi friend said that the situation was complicated, and that one should not recite that blessing when there were still 227 innocent hostages being threatened with death by Hamas terrorists. On the one hand, 13 people are free and safe and Israeli hands,

Steve, the situation is complex; I understand; I would recite this blessing at the conclusion of the total release!

For whatever it’s worth, the first one is, in my mind…perfect. I absolutely understand folks not responding well to the sh’hech’eyanu. That said, I also would include it. Lives were saved and more to come, we hope, but I’ve never thought that this prayer was for only uncomplicated and ‘finished’ situations. I really appreciate that you asked me, thanks.

So What do I do with that?

I have thought a lot about this in the last couple of hours, and I think I come down closer to what the second rabbi said. You have to recognize the good. And though the task is not complete I think it’s appropriate to give thanks for what good we do have in the world even if it’s not exactly the way we would want to see it.

So now the waiting game continues. Will there be another release of hostages tomorrow and the next day and the day after that?

And what will happen after this first phase of hostage releases is complete?

It seems obvious that the ground campaign will begin again and this time the target will be the South. And we will be confronted with the same horrifying images that we’ve been seeing on our TV screens since the beginning.

Many people have asked me how could I be so steadfast in my support for Israel. And my answer since the beginning has been 1200 dead Israelis and 240 hostages have changed my calculations.

And please do not follow the trap of calling the redemption of today’s captives a “humanitarian release.”

Hamas is sickeningly responsible for taking these innocent captives in the first place and they get zero credit for returning them now.

In my thinking this war will only be over when EVERY SINGLE ONE of the Israeli captives is redeemed from this torture. And I also think that Hamas needs to be defanged as a military and political entity in the Gaza Strip so that it can no longer be the threat to Israel that it has been since 2006.