Rare are the days when history and holiness meet, when the Jewish calendar’s rhythms and the country’s pulse seem to beat as one. Monday was one of those days.
Monday was Hoshana Raba, the final day of Sukkot. It is a day of sealing – the moment Jewish tradition teaches that the verdict of the High Holy Days is set. And it is also, remarkably, a day of return: 20 hostages came home after two years of captivity and hell in Gaza.
On that morning, as congregations across Israel encircle the bimah (“podium”), clutching willows and reciting hoshanot (prayers), the words “Hoshia et amecha u’varech et nachalatecha” – “Save your people and bless your inheritance” – carried a contemporary power they have rarely held.
Prayer was not ancient liturgy on that day, but a reflection of lived reality. On this day, the cry for salvation and the hope of blessing converged. On this day of sealing, the lives of hostages and their families are being unsealed from darkness.
The symbolism could not be sharper. Hoshana Raba closes the arc that began on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur — a 40-day journey from judgment to mercy.
It is the last chance, tradition says, to plead before the gates close. The hostages’ release is, in a sense, a sign that the nation’s own plea was answered at the last moment.
For the families of the hostages, it is as if the gates of Heaven have stayed open just a little longer, and their prayers have been answered.
On Hoshana Raba, worshipers circled the bimah in synagogues seven times. How symbolic were those circles on that day, a time when Israel had, for two years, been circling around grief, endurance, and the question of when this nightmare would end. On Monday, the circle finally seemed to close.
Hoshana Raba is about survival, about the soft persistence of faith. In that sense, it could not be more fitting that, of all days, this one marked the return of sons and daughters whose absence had defined these two long years.
The prayers include another refrain: “Kol mevaser, mevaser ve’omer” – “A voice heralds, heralds and says.” Isaiah’s line was meant as a prophecy of redemption, but on Monday, this became literal. The voice of the herald on Monday was the one on television, the one that excitedly announced: “They’re home.”
There will, of course, be those who note that not all will be coming home alive – that some will be coming home in coffins, and of those, only four of 28 were returned on Monday. Sadly, they are right.
Also, the soldiers who died to bring this moment about were not forgotten. Their absence is part of the price of Monday’s relief – a reminder that even good news here is never untouched by loss.
To see happiness return
But in a country where grief, worry, and sadness have been our collective default emotion for the past two years, it is a relief – and a pleasure – to see happiness return.
Simchat Torah follows Hoshana Raba; it is a day of celebration and renewal. It was on this day two years ago that Israel’s world was shattered. The symmetry is haunting.
Yet perhaps this year, that same date can begin to carry a different resonance – not only of trauma, but of return. It can be a date bearing the possibility that the gates of mercy have not been closed, that the circle of loss can give way, at last, to renewal.
The return of the hostages does not end Israel’s trials; it does, however, affirm its resilience – its refusal to stop praying, fighting, or hoping. It affirms the power of the nation’s solidarity.
On Hoshana Raba, the prayer for salvation met news of salvation.
The words we have repeated for generations – “Hoshia et amecha u’varech et nachalatecha” – do not echo only in the synagogue. On Monday, these words echoed in the Hostage Square, in the nation’s streets, in living rooms across the country, and in the cries of those who were reunited.
On Monday – the day of sealing – a door opened. And for a people that has known so much sorrow and grief over the last two years, that is ample cause to rejoice.