The Wedding Hamas Could Not Stop

Yesterday, I watched videos of the wedding of two people I have never met, with tears in my eyes. I was not among the thousand guests celebrating under the chuppah of Eliya Cohen and Ziv Abud at Ronit Farm in Israel.

Yet it did not feel like the wedding of strangers.

Eliya and Ziv had been together for years. Days before October 7, Eliya bought an engagement ring. Everyone knew about the ring, everyone except Ziv. He wanted to surprise her.

Then came the Nova festival. Eliya and Ziv fled with 25 other people into the roadside shelter that would become known as the “shelter of death.” Ziv’s nephew Amit, and his girlfriend Karin were among the 16 murdered in that shelter. Ziv survived, buried beneath the bodies of victims, while Eliya was shot in the leg and dragged into Gaza.

For 505 days, Eliya was held captive in Gaza, bound in chains, hung by his feet, gagged, and burned. All that time, he assumed that Ziv had been killed. During that time Ziv learned about the ring, and what was meant to be a private surprise became part of a future for which an entire nation was praying.

This Wednesday, nearly three years after Hamas tore them apart, they stood together beneath the chuppah. And to all of us watching, their happiness felt personal because we had carried their names and prayed for this moment long before there was a wedding date. In some small way, their joy felt like ours.

Under the Chupah, Eliya described dreaming of this moment. He had promised G-d that if he ever stood beneath a chuppah, he would stop the ceremony, thank G-d publicly, and ask everyone to say the Shema with him.

After thanking G-d for being with him when he was hungry, cold, and in pain, a thousand Jews covered their eyes and declared, “Shema Yisrael… the L-rd is our G-d, the L-rd is One.”

Ziv said she hoped Al Jazeera was broadcasting the wedding. Hamas had tried to separate two souls. Instead, it got a Jewish wedding, and with G-d’s help, Jewish children who would soon run on the holy soil of Israel.

But why? Why did this wedding feel so personal to us who had never met Eliya and Ziv?

The answer may lie in a deeper understanding of the Mitzvah in this week’s Torah reading called Hashavas Aveidah, returning what has been lost.

The Torah says, “You shall not see your brother’s ox or sheep straying and ignore them. You must return them to your brother.” (Deut. 22:1)

Rashi explains those words literally. You may not close your eyes and pretend that you did not see.

That is a remarkable moral demand. The Torah does not say that returning the object would be thoughtful or generous. It says that once you see what your brother has lost, his loss creates an obligation for you. You cannot tell yourself that he lost it, so it’s his problem, not yours.

The Torah does not allow us to choose blindness to our brother’s loss.

The Talmud (Sanhedrin 73a) goes further. From the words, “You shall return it to him,” it derives an obligation to save a person in danger, and “to return the person to himself”.

Sometimes what has been lost is not an animal or a wallet. It is the person himself who has been lost from his family, his freedom, his future, and from who he was meant to be.

For 505 days, an entire nation refused to look away. Eliya’s face was on posters, and his name was in our prayers. We carried the names and stories of each hostage in our hearts as we prayed and pleaded with G-d to bring them back home.

The world wanted to move on. They wanted to forget about those stolen from us, chained in dark tunnels below Gaza, with no food to eat. But we could not turn away. We were morally incapable of abandoning our brothers.

It’s true. We also argued, sometimes bitterly, about how to bring them home. Some believed that an agreement had to be made, no matter how unbearable the cost. Others believed that only relentless military pressure could bring them back without inviting another catastrophe.

But despite the painful disagreements about the road to take, the longing was the same. We all shared the exact same goal of returning our brothers and sisters “back to themselves”. To bring them all home.

Eliya’s wedding was so moving because he did not merely return to Israel. He returned to his life, to his love, and to the marriage proposal Hamas interrupted. He returned to the Jewish home he and Ziv were meant to build together.

But what happens after the hostage posters come down? What happens when the person who is lost is not famous and his face is not on the news?

There are people all around us who are lost. Just in quieter ways. A widow who feels invisible. A teenager slowly drifting away. A family struggling financially behind a respectable front. An older person whose telephone never rings.

There are so many who feel lost and forgotten, but their faces are not displayed in Ben-Gurion Airport. And while their captivity is not the same as being in Gaza, they are still trapped by whatever trauma, addiction, panic, grief, shame, or fear is holding them hostage.

We need to ask ourselves the honest, painful question. Have we truly failed to notice them, or have we trained our eyes to not see?

Of course, our responsibility has limits. Some of those wandering got themselves lost – and they insist on remaining lost. They refuse to ask for directions and they consistently ignore anyone who tries to help.

Which is why, immediately afterward, the Torah describes our brother’s donkey or ox collapsed beneath its burden. It is a mitzvah to help the animal suffering, and we must stop travelling to help this person lift his donkey. But the Torah adds two essential words: “with him.”

Rashi explains that if the owner sits down and says, “The Mitzvah is yours, so you carry everything,” the other person is not required to lift the burden alone. The owner must participate.

Helping does not mean forcing someone to live the life we have chosen for them. We cannot do another person’s recovery, reconciliation, or difficult inner work. He must become a partner in lifting his burden.

Yet, this disclaimer does not release us from caring. Just because their problems are the result of their own terrible choices does not allow us to stop seeing them. Even though it was their choice to end the relationship or to sabotage their opportunities, that doesn’t justify us ignoring their pain.

We can set boundaries without closing our eyes. We can refuse to enable destructive behavior while keeping the door open, ready to help when he is willing to lift.

Our concern for the hostages revealed something beautiful. Another Jew’s pain can become personal, even when we have never shaken their hand. We can feel their absence even if we never knew them before.

We cannot allow that feeling of responsibility to a fellow Jew disappear now that, thank G-d, the hostages are home and living again.

Their celebration must leave us looking around. Who else is waiting to return to life? Who else is imprisoned mentally, searching for joy, dignity and connection?

We may not be able to carry them, and we may not be able to bring them back home alone.

But we must never stop seeing them and praying for them, waiting for the day find the love and happiness of their own.

May Eliya and Ziv build a joyful Jewish home and raise children on the holy soil of Israel. And may their happiness awaken us to see the pain of every brother or sister who is still lost, helping them return to life.

Good Shabbos!

Rabbi Yankie & Chana Denburg