Toward Shabbat | Tears Need Not Be the End of the Story

As we emerge from the holidays this year, it feels so different from the last two years.  In 2023, we were utterly shocked and heartbroken by October 7. Last year, the hostages were still in captivity, missiles were falling across Israel, northern communities were emptied, and a devastating war in Gaza was raging. Our prayers were heavy, our hearts still broken, and our hopes faint.

This year, we have witnessed scenes we barely dared to dream: the cessation of the war and the return of the hostages — the embraces, the tears, the elation. The verse from Psalm 126 came alive before our eyes:

 הַזֹּרְעִ֥ים בְּדִמְעָ֗ה בְּרִנָּ֥ה יִקְצֹֽרוּ
“Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy.”

But this verse tells only part of the truth. Even amid the joy of return and reunion, the tears have not ceased. Many families will never again embrace their loved ones. The remaining 20 living hostages returned this week after unbearable suffering, while 90 others died in captivity, with many families still waiting for the bodies of their loved ones to be returned. Beyond the 1,200 brutally murdered on October 7, more than 900 Israeli soldiers have died in the war. Returning soldiers suffer from PTSD in record numbers; many have taken their own lives. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed. Gaza lies in ruins, entire cities have been reduced to rubble, its healthcare and education systems destroyed, countless lives uprooted. The land and its people, on both sides, are scarred and deeply traumatized. 

So yes, we have witnessed joy, but it is a joy intertwined with anguish. The psalmist’s image of reaping in joy after sowing in tears may speak to the long arc of redemption, but in this moment, the tears and the joy are intermingled. And they may be for a long time to come.

It would be foolish to assume that, with the return of the hostages and the ceasefire, the nightmare is over and all is well again, as if one could flip a switch and make the horror disappear. The outlines of a peace plan may offer hope, but its terms are uncertain at best, and whether it can be implemented without reigniting conflict remains unclear. The trauma on both sides is immense, and healing will take time. Hatred, fear, and resentment cannot simply be willed away. It may take generations. And yes, there is much moral reckoning to be done. Still, the work of repair must begin somewhere.

Our human nature wants to rush past pain. We crave closure, relief, a quick return to normalcy. But if the work of grief, accountability, and reckoning is bypassed, if we avert our eyes from truths that are difficult to bear, if the hard work of self-examination and the reaching for empathy are avoided, there will be no movement forward, no true comfort, no healing, and no future.

Israeli society is not the same as it was before October 7, before the war, before these two years of agony. Even before that day, Israeli democracy was in peril; Israel was torn apart by deep divisions over the nature of the state and its moral foundations. The war has only deepened those fractures.  Will a new spirit of humility and shared purpose emerge? Or will the same bitter divisions continue to grow? Will there be a renewed commitment to guard democracy from the forces that still seek to destroy it? 

And we, the Jewish people beyond Israel, are not the same as we were before. We, too, are painfully divided — over Israel itself, over the purpose of Zionism, over the future of both peoples who share the land, and over national and local politics. Will we have the ability to speak and listen to one another with civility, to affirm our kinship in diversity, in spite of our disagreements?

Meanwhile, here in America, we are living through our own turmoil. Our president is being celebrated around the world as a peacemaker, striving to calm global fires. Yet here at home, intent on weakening democracy and installing an autocracy, he leads a nation burning with division. The animosity grows deeper, the rhetoric more poisonous, the common ground smaller and smaller. We, too, are a society in need of repair — of truth-telling, reckoning, and healing.

So, as we enter this Shabbat Bereshit, there is relief and joy. Yet the faith the psalmist affirms is not the promise of instant joy, but the trust that out of grief, new life can eventually emerge, that tears need not be the end of the story.

This Shabbat, as we breathe once again after these years of anguish, may we recommit ourselves to the faithful, steady work that may bring, in time, a new future of justice, dignity, healing and peace — and true, long-lasting joy.

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Roly Matalon