A Good Week

It was a good week. The remainder of the surviving Israeli hostages were returned to their families. Some of the bodies of those who did not survive were returned as well. This stage of the ordeal of their families is over. There is a feeling of relief, but perhaps not as much as we would like. Peace is a possibility, but not a certainty. I have read articles written by those who want to claim that Israel won this war. If there is a debate about who won a war, it is safe to say that there wasn’t a winner. Like many wars, this one ended with both sides exhausted. It was a war that dragged on because it suited the callous leaders on both sides of the conflict and not the needs of the peoples that they (dubiously claim to) represent. It was a good week. God willing, there will be better weeks ahead than this one.

Where do we go from here? In one way or another this has been my subject for much of the past two years. It is a question that will never exhaust itself. Rashi tells us that before Moses died on the mountaintop God showed him all of the land of Israel and revealed to him the future of all of the tribes, both good and bad. Having not had the tour myself, I can only look backwards for lessons and hints. The orderliness of the past is made up of stories that we assemble out of events that may or may not carry the meanings that we ascribed to them. Our visions of the future are not that different. As humans, making meaning is a choice, a choice to try to enact our values in our lives. This leads us to the next question – how?

It is no secret that at Der Nister we aren’t satisfied with the way things are in the Jewish world. And yet, we are not so full of ourselves that we imagine that a better way, that others failed to find, is somehow obvious to us. I’ll return to the project next week.