Jewish Hostage Crises - Va'era

1/24/25

Baruch Atah Hashem, Elokeinu Melech Haolam, Shehechyany, Vkiymanu, Vhigianu Lizman Hazeh.

Jews around the world celebrated this week on Sunday, when three young women returned safely to Israel, after more than 450 days as Hamas hostages. Tomorrow, four more girls are scheduled to come back home.

I hope they are all alive and well, and this is the beginning of the return of all the remaining hostages. I can't imagine what it must be like for the families, who in a moment's notice are having their worst fears and pain transformed into the greatest joy and celebration.

It is eerily prophetic that the parsha we are reading this week speaks exactly about these issues. The Torah is always a wellspring of insight and inspiration for timely events, and this week it jumps right at you.

This week's reading, Va'era, begins against the backdrop of Jews held captive in the Middle East. Only a few miles from Gaza, hundreds of thousands of Jews were enslaved in Egypt, and G-d appointed Moses to be His Middle East envoy to get the hostages released:

"I am G-d... I have heard the cries of the children of Israel... I will free you from the oppression of the Egyptians, rescue you from their servitude, and redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great chastisements. And I will bring you into the Land (of Israel)."

But there's one critical and stark difference between the current state of affairs and the one back then.

In Egypt, Pharaoh wasn't offered a deal; he wasn't part of a negotiation. He certainly wasn't offered serial killers in return for letting the Jews go.

Pharaoh was given a clear choice: Let the Jews go, or Egypt will be destroyed. Period.

And it worked, to perfection. Like clockwork, whenever a plague hit Egypt, Pharaoh announced he was ready to let the Jews free.

But as soon as there was any relief, even a brief one-week ceasefire between plagues, Pharaoh began singing another tune:

"But when Pharaoh saw that there was relief, he remained obstinate, paying no heed to them... And when he saw that the hail had ceased, he hardened his heart, and did not send the children of Israel away."

Eventually, after ten plagues, Moses' maximum pressure campaign paid through, and every last Jew was released from Egypt with no concessions and no deals:

"He (Pharaoh) called out for Moses and Aaron in the night, and said, “Get up and get out from among my people, you and the children of Israel, too, and go and serve G-d as you said!"

Sadly, the current hostage crisis negotiators didn't learn from Moses. Instead, Israel is being forced to release mass terrorists in exchange for women, kids, and innocent people.

Hadassah's cousin, Shimon Bergman, was a 15-year-old boy returning home from yeshiva when he was killed by a suicide bomber in the Egged Bus 2 attack on August 19, 2003. Along with Shimon, 23 others were killed on the bus, and 130 more were injured.

The three masterminds of this suicide bombing are going free during the current deal. Most likely, they'll return to planning more terrorist attacks. We all know that Yahya Sinwar, the architect of October 7th, was himself released by Israel in the Shalit deal in 2011.

There's a beautiful line in the Zohar that says, "Weeping is lodged in one side of my heart, and joy is lodged in the other.”

I feel ecstatic this week for the hostages who are returning home, for their families, and for the many Israelis who now feel their government will always be there for them.

But I feel terrible for the families of those murdered in terrorist attacks, and deeply frightened for the many more who might lose their lives as a result of this exchange.

Israel knows all of this, of course, and did what it felt was necessary for the country. I just hope it doesn't come back to bite them as it did last time.

Moses was the preeminent leader of the Jewish people. But the scope of his teachings is broader than we might have thought. In this week's parsha, he gives us a strong, unambiguous lesson in dealing with a hostage crisis.

Perhaps Israel would have been better off if it ditched its "Bring Them Home" mantra and instead, as many have suggested, adopted Moses' line, "Let My People Go."

Let's not bet against Moses.