The Hostages’ Symbols: Our Civil Tsitsit

What sad relief that Ran Gvili, z”l, has been returned to Israel for burial, for his family and friends to have that open nightmare, on top of him  having been killed by the terrorists, come to an end. He was, as all who knew him say of him, an extraordinary hero, who behaved with utter clarity of purpose that horrible day to fight the thousands of terrorists who invaded and protect as many people as he could from them. He fought until his ammunition ran out. He was 24 years old.

He was the last hostage, deceased or alive, held in Gaza, an open sore that has festered since the war in 2014, and we are rightly marking that reality.

Many are removing their hostage pins and the yellow ribbons, doing so dramatically, ritualistically; rituals to end the prolonged shiv’a that this has been, rituals like those we all know in our personal lives that demarcate the end of that phase of grief; in this case, not a week but years. Some TV newscasters have done the removal on air at the end of their broadcasts. Some politicians have done similarly.

The many placards and stickers demanding the hostages’ return, the sheets with their names and faces and prayers for them that I have carried around with me and demonstrated with and stuck on lampposts, these I have gathered to put away.

Not, though, the hostages’ symbol and yellow ribbons tied on my backpack, on my pocket book, and my coats. These I will continue to wear, not because this part is not over; thankfully, it is.

But because those ‘otot, those signs, marks, came to be in a mass, spontaneous outpouring of insistent connection to the hostages and support for their families for almost two and half years, including to our horror, when some, including public figures, made that connection and solidarity a target for despicable attacks, verbal and physical.

Symbols are distillations, concretizing, of feelings, positions, commitments. Reminders. For consciousness, and for action.

We have many such reminders in Jewish practice, so many injunctions to remember! Don’t forget! Keep these values, commitments, before you always! In the words at your lying down and rising, on your doorposts, on the clothes you wear and wrap yourself in prayer with, in the way you cut your head hair.

The hostages’ symbols are reminders of mutual caring and support, of societal decency and empathy, of an instinctive commitment that poured out from millions of us unceasingly these last horrible years since that horrific day and despite a regime embodying the very opposite of those values and inciting against them ceaselessly with all the many means at its disposal; a regime obsessed with itself, of, by, and for, itself.

We called out, again and again, chanting: We are with you! You are not alone! אתם לא לבד!אנחנו אתכם! The waves of thousands, tens of thousands of us, calling that out with all our hearts; and we now know with certainty that that– masses of people showing up again and again and connecting with and for them, literally saved lives. And our own souls and hearts and sanity.

We need to keep the reminder of that good– and of  actions that sustain the good, the best in us— before us– שוויתי– at least until this regime is over. Like any muscle, those need regular exercise and reminders.

The hostages’ symbols are our civil tsitsit. Our ‘ot, our sign, token, mark.

Mine are going nowhere until they can truly be put in a drawer. We are far from that point yet and the road needs signposts.