בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְיָ אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, שֶׁהֶחֱיָנוּ וְקִיְּמָנוּ וְהִגִּיעָנוּ לַזְּמַן הַזֶּה
Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech ha’olam shehecheyanu, v’kiy’manu, v’higi’anu la-z’man ha-zeh.
Blessed are You, Eternal our God, Sovereign of the universe, who has kept us alive, sustained us, and brought us to this moment.
בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְיָ אֱלֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, מַתִּיר אֲסוּרִים
Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech ha’olam, matir asurim.
Blessed are You, Eternal our God, who frees the captives.
October 13, 2025
Dear Friends,
Today we rejoice in the return of twenty living hostages, reunited with their families, their loved ones, and Am Yisrael, the People of Israel: David and Ariel Cunio, Matan Angrest, Eitan Horn, Alon Ohel, Omri Miran, Eitan Mor, Guy Gilboa-Dallal, Gali and Ziv Berman, Elkana Bohbot, Avinatan Or, Yosef-Haim Ohana, Evyatar David, Rom Braslavski, Segev Kalfon, Nimrod Cohen, Maxim Herkin, Matan Zangauker, and Bar Kupershtein.
For two long years at Temple Micah our voices have carried the prayer “shelter them beneath Your wings.” Now, at last, we breathe—a breath that catches between a sigh of relief and a gasp of grief, as we continue to take in all that has been lost, all that cannot be undone.
We pray for families still awaiting the return of their loved ones for burial, for Israelis who endured two years of war, and for those soldiers and reservists who gave their lives. We pray for Palestinians caught in cycles of fear, destruction, and loss, that they may know peace. We carry so many heavy emotions.
It is this paradox–the coexistence of grief and joy–that Rachel Goldberg-Polin gave voice to two days ago when she reflected on Kohelet, Ecclesiastes, the book we read on Sukkot. She said,
“We are told ‘there is a season for everything, and a time for everything’—but now, today, we are being asked to digest all of those seasons, all of those times, at the exact same second: Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall—experience all four, right now! … It says, ‘there is a time to weep and a time to laugh,’ and we have to be both, right now… It says, ‘there is a time to sob, and a time to dance,’ and we have to do both, right now.”
This is what faith asks of us–not to simplify the moment, but to expand our hearts to hold contradiction. To bless the day even as we tremble.
Indeed, our tradition does not shy away from this tangle of emotions. It sanctifies them with ritual, in a festival, Sukkot, that draws us into fragile huts, open to wind and rain, to remember how vulnerable life truly is. How deeply we have felt that fragility these past two years. Yet Sukkot is also z’man simchateinu–the season of our joy. It reminds us that even in heartbreak, even in fragility, we must rejoice, give thanks, and imagine a future more whole than the past.
And so, in this moment–when captives return and families embrace–we pause in elation and gratitude, in all the varied emotions we hold. The future is uncertain, but this much is clear: we will need hope to carry us forward, courage to rebuild, and strength to endure.
May this Sukkot bless us with all these gifts and with the faith to believe that a more peaceful future can yet be built.
“Od lo avdah tikvateinu, we have not yet lost our hope.”
Chag sameach,
Rabbi Josh Beraha, Rabbi Samantha Frank, Rabbi Healy Slakman, and Rabbi Dr. Kari Tuling