Opening Bereshit anew

The Time of Ghosts

The living hostages have returned. Now we are left with ghosts.

I’m not speaking of the ghostly appearance of the released captives.I mean the posters of hostages, now obsolete, still hanging on every bus shelter and roundabout, tracing the landscape of Israel like stitches on a wound.Empty chairs and yellow ribbons reminding us of two years of shock and waiting.And of course, the ghosts of the bodies not yet returned to us — the ones we still cannot bury.

These words are dedicated to the parents of Tamir Nimrodi, who will never see their boy again.

Friday morning, erev Shabbat.

A calm morning in the Negev. The birds are singing.The desert stones smell faintly of salt.The air is still soft, and the sky loyally blue.Soon it will be too hot to look the sun in the eyes.All around — silence, silence, silence.

It soothes me to turn my gaze, if only for a while, toward what is immutably beautiful.Yes, nature is irredeemably beautiful — whatever happens on this earth’s surface, whatever we do to one another in our small human theater.Yes, whatever we do to one another, as long as it doesn’t explode into a ball of fire in the impassive sky, the earth continues to teach us, in silence, through its unbroken beauty — the generosity of compassion.This morning, I drink from its breasts of silence to gather a little strength again.

Last Friday, the Shabbat before Simḥat Torah, might have been the last one when I still lit candles for them — my heart too heavy, knowing the hostages were still there.We had learned it the day before.

The Beginning of the End

Since the start of this war, I often learn the news at dawn — from my friends across the Atlantic.That Thursday morning, it was a message from Antoine, whispering to my soul what had once seemed impossible, unbelievable, hopeless:

An agreement had been reached.They were going to be freed.All of them.The living and the dead.

No more lists. No more drips and drops. No more perverse ceremonies, no one left behind.

Months earlier, Guy and Eviatar had been left behind. Worse — they had been forced to watch, from a captivity car barely five meters away, the release of Omer and the others, while a hooded jailer calmly “interviewed” them, camera fixed on their shaved heads, asking innocently, “How do you feel?” — before broadcasting the footage worldwide: young hostages, underground for over a year, hands clasped, pride long gone, pleading simply to go home — before being dragged back into the tunnels for six more months of darkness.

Months later, on Tisha B’Av, another video of Eviatar appeared. Now skeletal, beard covering a hollow face, his black curls longer than his bony arms, almost naked in a dark tunnel — the very image of “skin and bones.”He was forced to dig his own grave, with the little strength left in him, for a video Hamas would then send to his family — and to us.An image that moved the whole world — but also, strangely, Israel’s enemies, like the young climate activist who, in a post accusing the Jewish state of mistreating Palestinian prisoners, used Eviatar’s photo as “evidence.”

After two years of waiting, false hopes, failed negotiations, doubts about whether the Israeli Prime Minister truly wanted to end the war — or whether Hamas ever intended to release its captives — hope had atrophied so deeply that I waited before rejoicing.I waited before allowing myself to rejoice.Not everyone did.

Together

Thursday night, 400,000 people filled Kikar HaHatufim in Tel Aviv.David was there. He told me it felt good to be there.

“It feels good to belong — to the Am, to the people.”

The crowd was electric. They needed to be together — to start celebrating, to release adrenaline — even though they knew it was too early, that caution was still needed.

Speeches from Americans who had succeeded where our government had failed.The White House envoy who had negotiated tirelessly — alongside, I learned that day, the President’s son-in-law.Then the President’s daughter, perfectly coiffed — God bless us.Words of praise and thanks I couldn’t quite join in.Too soon, and too much ambivalence.

Despite my gratitude, I felt uneasy at the polished triumphalism, the grand thanks to an absent President spoken of almost as a god — who would arrive only on Monday, the day of the long-awaited liberation.I was conscious of the inevitable cynicism in this “heroic” international generosity.But so what.He had brought them home.Thank you — that’s all.

Friday, we tried to ignore the waiting.We said to ourselves: maybe this will be the last Shabbat we light candles for them — the last time I set an extra place at the table to mark their absence.

The Tikkun

Then came Sunday. Then Monday.They were to be freed Monday morning, erev Simḥat Torah.What a symbol.

I was moved by the healing synchronicity of that coincidence.Our world had plunged into chaos on a Simḥat Torah, and remained trapped there for two revolutions of the sun.And now, the negotiators had chosen that very date for their release.Even Hamas agreed — surprisingly.

I don’t know why or how.But it doesn’t matter.It would indeed be erev Simḥat Torah — and that, in itself, mattered.Because symbols matter.It was as if light would slip into a small corner of darkness to heal, even just a little, where it hurts most.I thanked the heavens for that tikkun, that moment of repair — even in the choice of date.

Monday morning, half asleep, I dreamed of them — paraded through Jerusalem -this time in joy, this time by us.

My mother, visiting for Sukkot, found me in pajamas before the computer, glued to the nonstop news channels, waiting to see the liberation — at last.There was little to see, of course. At that stage, they were in Red Cross custody “for identification,” said the reporter.

So the channels, starved for footage, replayed images of Kikar HaHatufim full again — crowds cheering, roads lined with flags — while Trump’s plane prepared to land.

The only real moment — tiny and magical, like the glow of a phone screen — was when some captors, before releasing their hostages, called the families on WhatsApp video. Israeli television was stunned. It hadn’t been planned.What could have made Hamas guards call parents to let them see their sons one last time before freedom? A final act of control? A strange act of kindness?Light or darkness of human motives — I didn’t try to understand.

It was moving to see a boy’s faint smile as his mother, radiant on the phone, heard him say:

“I’m okay. I’m coming.”

Soon we had to go — after all, it was erev Simḥat Torah, and there were errands to run, cakes and quiches and rice to cook before joining friends for dinner.Life goes on.I knew I’d later see, all over social media, those compilations — the reunion videos.That was what I wanted to see.

To See

On this matter of “seeing,” my mother hesitated:

“Why do we do this? Why film and show those tearful reunions — parents sobbing in their children’s arms, women crying like birds and lionesses, lovers kissing? Isn’t it just more war voyeurism — that emotional sensationalism you hate so much?”

I thought for a moment.No.I don’t think so.

For our own healing, we needed to see them.At least I did.

For two years we had lived with their pain — their absence felt in our very flesh. We knew their names, their faces, their stories, their fiancées, their hobbies. They became part of our lives.We wore yellow ribbons, marched for their return.We tasted joy only with the bitter aftertaste of survivor’s guilt — their absence like a phantom limb.

That body — I wrote about it on their hundredth day in captivity — is ours, the collective body of the Israeli people, of the Jewish people.It is real. It lives in flesh and rituals: the empty yellow chairs in banks and doctor’s offices, the prayer for our brothers in every synagogue, the posters, the phone apps.It is both our weakness — because our enemies know where to strike — and our strength.We don’t give up. We leave no one behind.

I remember Antoine, my editor, and I were stunned to reach 100 days.They were freed more than 600 days later.

And since then — I am still stunned.

Just After

When I lose my voice, someone else speaks for me.This week, I keep hearing a song by Jean-Jacques Goldman:

She turned off the light,And then, what could she have done,Just after...

My world has tilted again, and I don’t yet feel relief or joy.We were desperate for too long. It takes time to believe that a nightmare is really over.

Today I feel like one of Omri Miran’s little girls — who, after crying for two years for her missing father, couldn’t bring herself to approach him when he opened his arms.Sometimes it’s too hard to open your heart all at once.

This morning, we opened the Torah again — on the eve of Shabbat Bereshit.In my weekly class on the parasha, some students said they didn’t yet feel joy or relief — only tears.We must let go of the obligation to rejoice, that heavy demand we think we owe ourselves or others.It’s not just oppressive — it’s inadequate.

After such pressure and anxiety, the natural reaction is decompression — and decompression often feels like depression.We are exhausted, even sad, without knowing why.We are living, collectively, between joy and relief — and a kind of post-traumatic postpartum.

Yes, I am stunned.That’s what happens when you see ghosts.

The Ghosts

The ghosts are like the different worlds of Kabbalah — many layers of reality.

First, there are our returnees.Most are young. Some soldiers, others civilians taken from their homes.

Some — like Alon the pianist, feared to have lost an eye, whose mother led nightly meditations on WhatsApp; Rom, whose skeletal head and hollow body recalled the ghosts of Holocaust survivors;or Matan Z, whose mother burned with fury on television, chaining herself before the Knesset — we knew their names.

Others — Segev, Maxim — we hardly knew.Yet they all shared something.

Not their emaciation, nor the ghostly whiteness of their skin — that was expected.No, what struck me was the expression on their faces.A softness — incredible softness.As if radical suffering had stripped away every layer of ego, cleansed the soul, leaving only grace: a gentle smile of kindness and gratitude, as if God’s compassion looked at us through each of their faces.

But they do not return only with the face of God.They return with their ghosts — nightmares that will haunt them even in freedom, noises that will trigger terror, languages now forever linked with oppression.

In To the End of the Land, David Grossman describes a man returned from Egyptian captivity — broken forever by the moment his torturers forced him to dig his own grave, while they laughed.I don’t know how many ghosts will accompany ours — or for how long.

Last week we heard of the suicide of the boyfriend of a young woman killed at Nova.He lived two years with her ghost.

So I pray that our returnees can shake off the dark cloud that enveloped them for two years — and that this darkness, like the primordial darkness of Bereshit, becomes fertile:the darkness from which, mysteriously, new light can be born — as life emerges from the womb, as being (yesh) emerges from nothingness (ayin), the very definition of creation in the mystical commentaries on Genesis.

Some of the freed have already spoken of such revelations — divine presence glimpsed in absolute darkness.May this new beginning, like the opening of the Bible, be a victory of light over darkness, of life over chaos.

The Real Ghosts

But God does not give gifts.For if some have returned, others — long awaited — have not.

I think of Joshi Bipin, the Nepali student whose sister spoke at the hostages’ square just a week ago.I think of Tamir, the basketball player in a mixed Israeli-Palestinian team, who believed so deeply in coexistence that he learned Arabic — who said “with you” and lived it.But Tamir was Israeli; at eighteen, like everyone, he joined the army.On October 7, he was on duty — covering a friend who wanted to go home for Shabbat.Tamir, with the sweet smile that now looks at me from his photo — frozen in heaven.

There are all those who did not come back — more than two-thirds of the 28 bodies still held by Hamas, not yet returned. Their failure to honor the agreement chills us for what may come.I think of the 14-year-old girl who said on the hostages’ square she only wanted to bury her father — so she could go on with her life.

There are also the ghosts of those who died fighting — whose families now watch these “deals” with bitterness:20 living and 28 dead in exchange for 2,000 terrorists who may kill again tomorrow.

My friend Maya lost her brother, Yoni, on October 7.A tank commander, he covered his men — and was killed.For Maya, the release of hostages in exchange for those her brother fought — perhaps even his killer — is not easy.She wants them home, yes, but feels as if her brother died for nothing.

Kohelet, read just last Shabbat during Sukkot, wrote:

עֵת לִבְכּוֹת וְעֵת לִשְׂחוֹקעֵת סְפוֹד וְעֵת רְקוֹד

A time to weep and a time to laugh;A time to mourn and a time to dance.

But the truth is not so simple. Today, for me, the two are intertwined.

I heard that Rachel Polin Goldberg said something similar about this teaching of King Solomon:We live irreversibly in a world where the lines are blurred, where both tablets must be read together.We laugh and cry at once — and that’s all.

Rachel did not get her son back.Since his death, she and her husband have continued to fight for the release of others. So perhaps for her, the liberation of the captives — those who returned to their mothers’ arms, those who came back whole, unlike her son who lost an arm and will never return — was both joyful and sorrowful.

And still — she could at least bury him. Today, I pray for those whose mourning is still suspended, whose burial is still taken hostage — for an unknown time.

That is the time of ghosts. This is also the time where Light emerges from darkness. It is up to us to choose what we look at and what we look for.