A letter to our 100 – and to ourselves

Dear Liri. Dear Karina. Dear Na’ama and Shiri and Kfir and Ariel and Yarden and every single hostage.

I do not know you.

Or rather, I didn’t know you until our world fell apart and you were taken into Gaza.

But now, I do.

I don’t delude myself into thinking that witnessing the moments when you stopped being simply yourselves and instead became “hostages” gives me an insight into who you are inside, not truly. But in those moments, you stopped being strangers. You became ours.

Or rather, you, individually, became ours to worry about, ours to be responsible for, ours to cry and pray for, not only because of the horror that befell you, but rather, because you were ours to start with, ours all along. I, we, simply didn’t know you then, not by name, not by face, not as individuals. You were my fellow Israelis, my brothers and sisters, in an anonymous and vague and distant way.

But now I know your names, my brothers, my sisters.

And now, you – yourselves – are ours, mine, to fight for every day.

* * *

Once upon a time, a brother stood over his brother’s body and said, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

And all of Jewish history has been a journey towards answering his question, towards saying, “– but of course!”

Whenever we failed to do so, our fraying bonds made way for disaster.

When Joseph’s brothers sold him into captivity and slavery, the gates of the Egyptian exile and slavery opened wide beneath our feet.

When the Jews bickered over power in the Hasmonean Era, it was the Jews themselves who engraved the invitation that brought Rome and destruction to our door.

I cannot undo the errors of our forefathers.

I cannot undo the errors of our own past.

But I can — we can — strive to answer Cain’s question correctly in this present moment.

Are we our brothers’ keepers?

We can and must keep reminding ourselves that, yes, we are.

* * *

When the Kalmanzon brothers and their nephew Itiel came to evacuate the Fricker family from their burning home in Kibbutz Be’eri after 12 hours of terror and near suffocation, the Fricker daughter, Nofar, thought they looked like angels, come to pull her family out of a dark, black pit.

Did you note that, God? Did you see our people reversing our forefathers’ ancient sin?

When people later asked Menachem Kalmanzon why he rushed to help people from a different political and religious camp, the question pained him. “When your brother is in danger,” he said, as he received the Israel Prize, quoting Itiel, “you don’t have freedom of choice.”

Did you see this, God? Do you see us getting the answer to Cain’s question right?

But those moments are not enough, for the question is always asked, and must always be answered.

You are all our brothers. Our sisters.

Are we your keepers?

If we are not your keepers, then who are we at all?

* * *

So many of our shared spaces became an arena for disagreement this year. The Knesset and the public squares, the social networks, and even people’s shuls, and, in some cases, homes — everywhere I look, I see divisions. And you, our hostages, came to be at the heart of our disagreements. Not through your own actions, not through your own beliefs or thoughts, but rather due to the impossible questions your abduction forced upon us, and due to our uncertainty over the right way to bring about your homecoming, to pull you out of the dark, black pit.

The disagreement over methods is not, in and of itself, a problem. During the struggle for Soviet Jewry people disagreed passionately and stridently over the best way to bring down the Iron Wall, but their disagreements did not stop them from achieving their shared goal. My very existence is a reminder of this truth, for I would not have been born had my father, Natan Sharansky, remained in the Gulag, separated from my mother. Perhaps, as he often says, the disagreements actually helped the struggle, for by applying pressure on the USSR in many different ways, the warring factions that took part in the struggle weakened the USSR from many different directions all at once.

But when our differences of opinion translate into alienation, or even hatred, our very ability to stand against our enemies and save you comes into question. We risk unraveling our bonds and making way for horrible disasters.

And that danger is one we cannot accept.

* * *

When Tzvi and Sarit Zussman’s son, Ben, fell in Gaza almost exactly a year ago, they did not allow themselves to sink into despair. Instead, they picked up the dual causes of healing the way we talk with each other and pushing us to do our best for you, our brothers. Now, after a year of tireless work, they invite us to join them for the duration of one shabbat in their focus on all of you. They invite us to dedicate this shabbat, Parshat Vayeshev, when we will read of the sale of Joseph by his brothers, and their failure to think of each other as brothers, to you,  our brothers and sisters in captivity. The Zussmans call upon us to focus on the heart of the matter: you — and our collective hope to see you home.

‘We too are part of returning the hostages’: A flyer calling upon all communities to join the ‘shabbat for the hostages’ initiative. (courtesy)

Heeding this call, different communities all around Israel and beyond will place you at the forefront of their thoughts and prayers this shabbat, each community in its own way, colored by its own political and religious opinions, shaped by all the things that often set us apart. Through the very fact that so many different communities will do so simultaneously, we remind ourselves that the ultimate goal is one in which we are united. We disagree about a great deal, but at the heart of our disagreements stands one truth, one pain, one bone-deep credo:

You — every single one of you, our hostages — are ours. Ours to pray for, ours to fight for, ours to be the keepers of today.