Israel-Gaza War 5784: Ki Tavo – Finding Blessing Amidst a Curse

In this week’s Torah portion, Ki Tavo, we read a series of blessings and curses. Naturally, we all hope for much of the former and little of the latter. But this is not always the way of things. Sometimes, life sends us curses. This past year in Israel and for Jews worldwide it has been difficult to find much blessing.

Moses tells the people:

“Your sons and daughters will be given over to another people, and your eyes will see and long for them all day long, but you will be powerless…You will bear sons and daughters, but you will not have them, because they will go into captivity.” (Deuteronomy 28:32, 41) It is hard to to read these words. But to experience them is unbearable.

I am writing this in Israel. Earlier this week, I visited the site of the Nova music festival massacre in Israel as part of a press tour led by the American Middle East Press Association and Europe Israel Press Association. There, we were told, 364 young people were murdered and more than 40 taken hostage on October 7th.

Numbers are abstract and it is hard for the human mind to grasp them. It is for this reason that a Tennessee school had children collect six million paper clips to understand the enormity of the Holocaust.

But the numbers we were given at the Nova memorial did not remain abstract for long. Getting off the bus, we were confronted by a sea of mounted posters of the murdered and kidnapped. Each had a description of the person pictured and many had shrines created by friends or family with personal items of their loved ones. The display stretched as far as the eye could see. It was overwhelming. The victims were almost all young people, cut down as their lives had barely started, hopes and dreams destroyed.

The suffering of those murdered is at least over. But that of the kidnapped continues, as does the agony of their families.

We heard about their prolonged ordeal from volunteers at the Hostages Families Forum. They were formerly called the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, but the painstaking work of identifying remains so charred there were only DNA fragments left finally ended and now there are no more missing. The Forum, a civic volunteer group that is supported by donations, came together organically in the days after October 7th. Retired diplomats, legal and medical experts, mental health and social workers, and others who had no particular expertise but wished to help in any way they could have been giving the families legal, medical, financial and, most important, emotional support for almost a year.

At first, Forum members thought that in a few weeks there would be a deal and the hostages would be released. But instead, weeks dragged into months. The families were subjected to a roller coaster ride of deals that seemed tantalizingly near, only to have their hopes crushed again and again. The nadir was reached with the murder of six hostages as a deal seemed finally within reach.

We, the helpless witnesses to their torment, cry out to Hashem, asking how He could allow this to happen. Where is He? Is there no blessing left?

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks concludes in his commentary on Ki Tavo: “G-d is found in the goodness of the world, not in its pain…G-d is to be found in life.”

On our first night here, my husband and I walked along the beach in Tel Aviv. It was bursting with life—people dancing, singing, and playing music; riding bikes and electric scooters; playing volleyball; and eating and drinking at tables set up in the sand. But this is not an escape from harsh reality or a willful forgetting. Everywhere one goes, including at the beach, are hostage posters. On some, the person’s age has been crossed out and a new one written beside it; this hostage has passed his or her birthday in captivity. People have not forgotten the hostages. Their eyes see and long for them.

Irit Lav, who survived the attack on Kibbutz Nir Oz, spoke to us from the ruined houses there. Hiding in their safe room, she and her daughter heard the terrorists shooting and beating on the safe room door, and read the text messages from neighbors who were injured or trapped in houses set on fire. Sure their time had come, Irit and her daughter whispered loving goodbyes to each other.

They survived, but many friends and neighbors did not. Some, kidnapped, still languish in captivity. In total, one quarter of the close-knit community’s residents were murdered or taken hostage that day. The houses are vacant, their owners forced to live elsewhere, refugees in their own country.

Now Irit guides visitors through the ruins of homes and tells her story. Asked how she finds meaning after so much loss, she told us that she is a voice for the voiceless, those who did not survive. So she tells their story, hoping to make the world a better place. Being alive, says Irit, is a luxury.

Irit and so many others, as Jews have throughout our history, choose not to drown in despair but to fight it by affirming life.

Our enemies say of us, “You love life while we love death,” and believe this will result in victory over us. And if they were right, military victory alone would be hollow. But they are wrong. In the midst of curse, we will continue to choose blessing.