CyberTorah

These are the names…the names of the children of Israel. We start Exodus and we read of a people. What constitutes a people? Simply a list of names. And then all the stories, and loves, and connections, and petty disagreements, and acts of life that creates a web of humanity. That is what makes a people.

These are the names…We have 98 hostages still being held in Gaza. Some of them alive, some of them not. They all have stories and loves and connections that have been badly damaged. Their family and friends, their business rivals, the guy at the coffee shop to whom they used to say hello, all those people feel that web being tugged and pulled and hurt. And the wound is deep, lasting, and unresolved.

These are the names… As I write this, a ceasefire may begin and it may include some of those hostages being returned to their families. But that web, that pain, the damage to our deep sense of shared connection, will remain damaged until every single hostage is returned to their family and community. Until each story can be told, and until those still alive can resume saying their own names, building their lives, forging their own stories.

I don’t know what will happen next. I don’t know how to even understand who is telling the truth and who is lying. I don’t know whether this deal will bring them all home or not. So I can only go back to what the Torah is teaching me this week. And that is to speak their names.

I invite you to go here to see their names. Speak them. Call them out. Because these are the names of the people of Israel, held in deep darkness, awaiting their redemption. May they soon and speedily come home to their families. And let us say: Amen.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi David Booth