The Birth of a New Israel

Israel today is...holding its breath. We are afraid that the chance to end this war will disappear again. We are afraid of what the deal means, but we are more afraid of what will happen if it doesn't go through.

We can't believe, after two years, that we're close to ending this nightmare. What if it falls? How will be go on? How will the families survive? The hostages?

What if it goes through? Will those monsters we release come back and bring another October 7, just like the monsters we released for Gilad Shalit brought us this one?

Will we ever be whole again? Trust walking in the streets of Europe without wondering about those around us? Will we ever say we are from Israel without the challenge in our voice? What will you make of where I am from because I AM proud and I will always say, no matter where...this is my land, my country, my people?

What does it mean to be normal? To answer, "all's good" when someone asks how we are?

We are filled with questions today? Terribly afraid to hope.

We are filled with hope. Terribly afraid we are being deceived, set up to fall even harder than we already have.

We are in the holiday of Sukkot, when we put our lives in the hands of God. Protect us from our enemies, from the weather, from all. We have come out of our homes to show our trust, our vulnerability.

If the plan works, on Sunday, the living hostages will come home. We already know it will be akin to opening the concentration camps up. They have been beaten and starved. Some will have heals that will never heal...like our souls and our hearts.

If the plan works, on Monday, the dead will be brought home. How many families will be forced to continue on without the bodies of their loved ones, and how will they ever cope? Will the family of Hadar Goldin finally, finally, finally have a grave with the remains of their son buried nearby?

If the plan works, on Wednesday, we as a nation will close out the world. Go away. Leave us alone. We have nothing left to say to you. We will dance, as we promised we would. With hearts as full as possible after two such years. We will dance with our Torah and with each other, and we will start a new path in a new Israel.

A new Israel as shaped by October 7 as the Israel re-established in 1948 was shaped by the Holocaust.

Mostly, we are filled with the reality that there is no victors in war. No one won this war, we just lost it considerably less than Gaza. And we will rebuild it a hell of a lot better and faster than anything they manage to save from the rubble of the war they began.