There are videos that are commanded to be seen. A moment after learning of Uri Magidish's return home, a friend sent me the video from the family home. No, not the video of the kissing grandmother, which went viral within a second and left dust for every other video, but the video filmed the night before, showing Margalit, Uri's mother, at a prayer ceremony and the portion of challah, praying for Uri's return and for the safety of the hostages.
I've seen a few prayers in my life and challah ceremonies aren't exactly my thing, but I sat in front of this thing and did something my daughter taught me how to say it - gizdrati. Not moisture in the eyes and not something that goes up your throat, but crying, crying, whining and sobbing. I cried all this time into Margalit's prayer, until the curtain got wet.
There is no gradient to pain and there is no comparison, but I think that what was there is something that is above the pain and the loss and the worry and the desire that it will already be good. A mother who looks up because her daughter was stolen, who knows what about her and what she's going through now and maybe it will last forever, it's an axe that blows into her head. And G-d heard this prayer and sent His good guys from the Patrol and the Shin Bet, and they brought it home.
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"Blessed be you, Yehudleh, from the compassion of my soul and beloved of my heart, Shalom. Maybe fate is so cruel to us that you come home, thank God, but we're just not home! Now Passover and we have closed the apartment and are in a mother and child institution in Bnei Brak. Go up to Aunt Esther and ask for money for the ceremony and come to us in Bnei Brak, 10 Avnei Nazar Street. If you forgot, Esther lives at entrance A, 6th floor, apartment 14. The code to reach the elevator is +1234. The longing is abnormal. Dad, Mom, Dad, Farahia, and the whole family."
The note that Grandma Sarah wrote to her son Yehuda,
Yochai Kfir is my good friend and he was the one who showed me this letter. Yochai is a producer and businessman, and among other things he owns Shaba's Bistro, an excellent ready-to-eat store in Jerusalem that is responsible for one of the best cholents in the city, and all this advertisement is intended to give him the fact that since the beginning of the war he has been sending, through the business houses, dozens of food rations to IDF units and families, and every week he takes pains to point out that he prefers the food to reach the families specifically. Because "we don't really want warriors charging after Cholent Lamb." Yochai is actually Yo-Chai, an acronym for "Yehuda Chai." He was born exactly a year after his uncle Yehuda Katz, his mother's brother Farahia, went missing in the battle of Sultan Ya'qub and his traces remain unknown to this day.
Yochai's mother, Farhia Heiman (Katz), her brother Avi and her parents Sarah and Yossi z"l, know every Israeli my age. They waged a long campaign and struggle to demand some kind of signal from Judah, and continued to believe wholeheartedly in the chance that he was alive. I heard these things before from her flowers and other family members when I interviewed them, and I heard the same things from her this week in a great storm, when the events of the days once again flood the pendulum of hope and despair and the unknowing that never ceases to sway.
In 2007, 26 years after Yehuda's absence, the Katz family left their home in Ramat Gan to celebrate Passover at a guest house in Bnei Brak. On the eve of the holiday, Yochai arrived at his grandparents' home in Ramat Gan just before them, to help them carry their suitcases, went up to the apartment and on the door he found this note, written by Grandma Sarah to her son Yehuda. Yehudleh.
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Thank God Uri is coming home. There will also be more such promotions and more releases and many parties will be heard in many stairwells. It was an uplifting moment this week, which both reminded us that there is joy in the world and also restored national pride for a moment and taught everyone that the government is busy releasing the prisoners.
And now - onwards. The prisoners must be returned immediately. Before anything. Two weeks ago I expressed concern here about the natural healing that will attack Israeli society and push the question of prisoners aside, or backward. That's not happening yet, thank God, but other worrisome processes are starting to emerge. This week, a discussion about the price and extortion capacity began to surface, and I find this discussion unacceptable. Without getting into the exact questions of price—a question that no one but the most specific professionals can answer—the fact that 240 (the number right now) of our brothers and sisters are now in captivity is a matter that puts off anything else in the future. Even when there is a future fear of loss of life.
What's much worse is that these days I watch with concern how here and there the discussion begins to spill into the old stencils. After all, everything is so liquid now and everything is bubbling, but this liquid slowly forms and fills the molds, turning into opinions and attitudes that can influence decisions and actions.
And you have to be so careful that it won't fill, damn, the old stencils. This may be astonishing, but the simple truth is that such an argument can easily settle on the patterns of left and right of yesteryear. Really easily. At its core is the age-old debate about how to treat the enemy, although these assumptions have changed dramatically since 7/10. In addition, the "captives now" position is – in principle, only in principle – antithetical to the government's position. And so we can accept in this great and wonderful madhouse of ours, that the thing he knows most is to be sad on old stencils, a new struggle of left and right.
It would be terrible not only because it would fracture the consensus, but because it would cause the leadership to treat the matter as controversial, which would greatly damage its specific weight. Hundreds of parents look up to the sky and cry that only the mother of a captive can cry. This position carries heavier weight than any other reasoned position, even if it is right. That's what needs to be debated these days.
240 prisoners are certain. Everything else is doubtful. Berry and shama, berry is better. Leave everything, bring the captives and abductees home in every way. We will hold the tactical and philosophical discussions immediately afterwards, when they have already settled in their homes in peace, with the sounds of the air force pounding Gaza in the background, and now really, because there is no Israeli there anymore.
Amen, yes, may it be desired.
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