Fires of Rockets: Fires of Hope 

“Someday when peace has returned to this odd world, I want to stand outside my home here in Israel. And standing there, I want to tell somebody who has never seen it how Israel looked on a certain night in the year 2025.

For on that night this old, old land – even though I must bite my tongue in shame for saying it – was the most beautiful sight I have ever seen. It was a night when Eretz Yisrael was ringed and stabbed with fire.”

Ernie Pyle, the famed American war correspondent whose words about London I used above, was writing about the dreadful fires of the London Blitz. His poetic imagery captured the strange and evil beauty of fire glowering through that old city. 

In his words, he echoed Samuel Pepys, who wrote in his famous diary on Sunday, 2 September 1666: “I did see the houses at that end of the bridge all on fire, and an infinite great fire on this and the other side the end of the bridge.”

Here in Israel, the fires are also burning again. But it is not only the fires of the imams’ rockets. Yes, those angry and twisted men have lit fires of destruction. Fires burning with desperation. The desperation of men eager to stay in power against the will of their people. The desperation of men seeking a paradise that forever eludes them.

These men have also lit other types of fires without meaning to. They have lit fires of hope and holiness, fires that lead to good.

The Talmud writes of the great fires used as a signaling system to send news of when the Jewish month was to start. Fires were lit on mountaintop after mountaintop, forming a chain from Jerusalem all the way to Babel. 

These fires were used to announce the start of the new Jewish month, the new moon, which forms the basis of the Jewish calendar. The Rabbis of the Talmud saw the moon as a symbol of eternal hope and of the people of Israel.

Just as I dance before you and cannot touch you, so may my enemies be unable to touch me.” These words from Kiddush Levana, the blessing on the New Moon, echo the Rabbis’ comparison of the Jews to the moon. 

The Rabbis explained, “Just as the moon waxes and wanes, so too Israel is sometimes exalted and sometimes brought low, but will renew like the moon.” The fires that sent word of the New Moon were fires that brought hope and holiness.

Fires of hope go out sometimes. Edward Grey, British Foreign Secretary at the beginning of the First World War, referred to the collapse of the peace in Europe as “lamps going out.” The fires of hope for Europe were extinguished, not to be lit again for a long time.

Thank God, these lamps of hope are lit today in Israel. Even while Israeli society often seems splintered and so at odds with itself, it can stand together to repel this threat. And amidst this standing together, there is hope and the potential for return, and redemption, and therefore peace. 

“In those days, and in that time, says the Lord, the children of Israel shall come, they and the children of Judea together, going and weeping: they shall go, and seek the Lord their God.” (Jeremiah 50:4) 

The Rabbis of the Midrash Tanchuma explained, “When they (the Jews) are united, they shall welcome the face of the Divine Presence,” and “Although you have darkness, the Holy One, blessed be He, is going to shine on you with light eternal.”

The prophet envisions a time when the Jewish people as a nation unite, and through that unity, seek out God. A time when unity leads directly to return and redemption. A time when God shines the “light eternal,” on us.

Let us pray that in our days too, we will see such light. And fires. Not fires of destruction. But the fires of return. Fires in our hearts and fires of thanksgiving sacrifices to God. Fires not of destruction but of peace, healing, and hope.