Our hearts hurt. Our pain is real. It feels like failure.
For 330 days, Hersh Goldberg-Polin languished in the dark. For 330 days, he fought back against despair and kept striving for life. For 330 days, he suffered, waiting for rescue. For 330 days, his was the face and name we recognized. For 330 days, our thoughts were with him in the muck and the dark. Our thoughts were with Hersh in the tunnel, in the hot oppressive air with yelling and the pounding of artillery in the background. Our hopes were with him. Our sense of righteousness was with him. We girded our strength with him for 330 days.
That’s why on day 331, when we found out that he, Eden Yerushalmi, Ori Danino, Alex Lobanov, Carmel Gat and Almog Sarusi were all murdered by Hamas within 48 hours of their discovery by the Israeli military, we felt like we failed him.
“I apologize on behalf of the State of Israel that we failed to protect you in the terrible disaster of Oct. 7, that we failed to bring you home safely,” said Israeli President Isaac Herzog in Hebrew at Hersh’s funeral. “I apologize that the country you immigrated to at the age of 7, wrapped in the Israeli flag, could not keep you safe.”
It’s easy for us to feel failure in this moment; we see it everywhere. We feel like we fail when we can’t end this war with victory and bring our loved ones home. We feel like we fail as 60,000 Israelis are still living in hotels and hostels instead of their homes in the north. We feel like we fail when children playing soccer are eviscerated by a rocket. We see failure in the United States, where our universities do not protect Jewish students and faculty. We feel like the media has failed us by allowing hate-filled disinformation to libel the Jewish people. We feel like the world has failed us, again, by blaming Israel for its own existence, blaming Israeli women for their own rapes and Israeli youth for dancing with the sunrise.
We can easily feel like failures in a world that has failed itself.
Ours is a long history; we are not strangers to catastrophe, crisis and tragedy. We’ve lost our land; we’ve been tossed about. We have lost so many of our children to killing fields, gas chambers and now tunnels underground.
Every prophet in our tradition has given us tochecha, or “rebuke,” warning of our failures and their consequences. Each of them used their fiery rhetoric to excoriate us over our failures of faith, our failures of fidelity and our failures of love.
The greatest failure, however, would be letting failure define us as individuals and as a people. There are forces at work that seek profit and political capital by dividing our community, turning what feels like a catastrophe into bitterness, enmity and hatred for each other.
Division emboldens our enemies.
Enmity imperils our future.
Effrontery endangers our homeland.
Useless hatred for each other threatens to destroy us.
This moment in our history must not define our generation as a failure. Our long path as a people is one of tears—of coping, of hoping, of achieving a better future together.
The Midrash relates that Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai and Rabbi Joshua were walking near the ruins of the Temple in Jerusalem, its rocks were smoldering. Rabbi Joshua said: “Woe to us, for this sacred place is destroyed—the place where all of Israel’s sins are forgiven!” Rabbi Yochanan said to him, “My son, do not be distressed, for we have a form of atonement just like it. And what is it? Gemilut chasadim, acts of lovingkindness.” (Avot d’Rabbi Natan, 4:5) What Rabbi Yochanan teaches is what we must all learn: When the world smolders around us, our only path forward is to love each other—abundantly.
The moment is daunting, but we shall not be daunted.
The moment is overwhelming, but we shall not be overwhelmed.
This moment is despairing, but we must not despair.
The moment is exhausting, but our love for each other must not be exhausted.
No prophecy ends in rebuke. No portion of the Torah ends without hope. It is our turn to act as the prophets and the rabbis and perform the sacred alchemy that turns our sadness into love, darkness into light and division into unity.
Only together can we overcome.
Only together can we move forward.
Only together can we be one people and one nation.
Am Yisrael Chai.