The miracle we’ve been waiting for
I was in Israel on October 7, 2023. It was Simchat Torah, a day meant for dancing, joy, and community. Instead, it became the day the music stopped. The day families were torn apart. The day when celebration turned to terror, and hundreds were taken from their homes, their streets and from a music festival.
Two years later, as Simchat Torah approaches once more, I am again here, this time with the promise, finally, of reunions. Of faces returning home. Of the long-awaited sound of footsteps and embraces that once felt impossible. It is a privilege, and a heartbreak, to stand in the same land that held such devastation, now witnessing the final flickers of return. Quite frankly, it feels like a miracle.
The word nes in Hebrew means “miracle,” but it also means “banner.” A nes isn’t only something supernatural; it’s something lifted up for all to see, a moment that points us toward meaning, hope, or holiness in the midst of chaos.
In the coming days, we may witness a miracle – 48 in fact. The long-awaited return of the hostages is promised to be near. For two years, we have supported the hostage families, marking the hostages’ absences with empty chairs, reciting Psalms and prayers day after day, hanging posters, committing good deeds, advocating before our elected officials, all against the backdrop of the deeply painful reality of the rise of global antisemitism and the minimizing, denial, justification and even erasure of the atrocities of October 7.
I’ve often thought about what it means to pray for a miracle when you know that miracles don’t erase pain. Even when every hostage is returned, the road to healing will still be long. But return itself, survival itself, would be a nes.
Jewish tradition distinguishes between the nes nigleh, the revealed miracle, and the nes nistar, the hidden one. The Exodus was revealed as seas parted and manna fell. In contrast, Purim was hidden. There was no visible divine hand, only courage, timing, and endurance. The return of the hostages feels like both. There are visible hands — diplomats, soldiers, advocates — and invisible ones: the prayers whispered in schools and synagogues, around Shabbat tables, at rallies, and in the solitary quiet moments.
Miracles in Judaism aren’t about suspending the laws of nature. They’re about revealing the possibility of goodness within them. We still step into the sea before it parts. We still show up, speak out, and refuse to stop believing that human action, joined with faith, can bring redemption closer.
When the remaining hostages come home — please God soon — there will be tears, joy, and unimaginable relief. But the true test of our faith will be what happens next: how we accompany them and their families (or give them space), as they rebuild, how we tend to our collective wounds, how we hold both celebration and sorrow in the same breath.
The nes of our time may not come with thunder or flames. It will come as a family reunited, a respectful burial for the murdered, and a nation that remembers what it means to hope. It is in the kol d’mama daka — the still, small voice, the miracle of silence that follows the storm.
Two years ago on Simchat Torah, our world shattered. This year, as we prepare once again to dance with the Torah, our world trembles with fragility, uncertainty, yet illuminated by the return of life itself. As we circle and lift the scrolls higher, may we also lift this nes, this miracle, as a banner of who we are and what we believe: that even after the darkest times, life should also be lifted as it is still sacred, surprising, and good.
