Bring Them Home NOW: Shemot’s Wisdom for Today

Today, I find myself filled with nervous energy — perhaps like many of you. The news has reached us: negotiations between Hamas and Israel, supported by other nations, have entered the final stages for the first phase of a hostage-release ceasefire agreement. I can barely breathe. And if I, with all the distance and privilege of safety, feel this way, how must the families of the hostages feel?

Israel’s government, in all its complexity and diversity, has struggled to navigate this moment. Politics aside, this isn’t the place to dissect strategy. But today marks the 466th day since our family — because they are our family — is incomplete. They are not with us. They are not home. I ask you to pray now. Pray that nothing stands in the way of this first step toward release.

We’ve lived, worked, loved, and endured as if this heartbreak wasn’t breaking us. Somehow, we’ve made it this far. But how can we imagine what it has been like for those who have been held? For our sisters and brothers, our grandparents, our children, our babies?

There is Torah to learn, yes. There is action to take, always. But right now, before we open the text of this week’s parasha, let’s pray. Pray for the hostages to come home. Pray for the families awaiting them. Pray for those whose loved ones may not return alive, that they be given the dignity of closure and the ability to mourn with kindness and care.

This week’s parasha, Shemot — the first portion of the Book of Exodus — is a powerful backdrop to these emotions. It is a narrative of anxiety, confusion, and a yearning for freedom that takes far too long. Pharaoh doesn’t begin with chains — he begins with cleverness, subtly dehumanizing the Israelites, stripping away their dignity bit by bit. The result is a people enslaved externally and internally, so much so that even when they are freed, the Egypt within them remains.

It took 400 years of suffering for God to “hear” the cries of the Israelites, 400 years before deliverance began. And we might ask, “What took so long?” It’s a question not just for God but for humanity. As Elie Wiesel famously said, “The question is not where was God, but where was man?”

Even Moses, standing before the burning bush, doesn’t receive an easy answer. When he asks God, “What is Your name? Who should I tell them sent me?” God responds cryptically: Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh — “I will be what I will be.” What does that even mean? Perhaps it means God is not static, not confined to a name or a moment. God is dynamic, revealed through us, through our actions, through the activation of the divine spark within each of us.

So, as we cry out, bring them home now, let’s understand that this prayer is not just directed outward — it’s also directed inward. It’s a call to awaken the best within ourselves. It’s a reminder that deliverance, while miraculous, requires us to act.

We know what we must do. We must refuse to accept a world where our children, grandparents, and siblings remain in danger. We must call upon our leaders, upon God, upon the very core of the universe to bring them home. And we must let that cry transform us into people who will never stop fighting for freedom and dignity.

So I invite you, right now, wherever you are, to join me. Say it aloud, let it reverberate through your soul: Bring them home now. Bring them home now.

Amen.