Rabbi Avinadav Abukarat helped me bring order to recent events as follows:
“My feeling when I heard that Ori Megidish had been liberated from Gaza in a daring raid reminded me of what I felt when first hearing about the massacre on Simchat Torah.
“It was a feeling of total surprise, a feeling as if I was in the middle of an unbelievable dream. Yesterday it was a good dream that materialized while the Simchat Torah dream was a nightmare that would not go away no matter how hard I pinched myself.
“It seems that we are living in a dream world. Reality is more outlandish than anything imaginable. The news is beyond all predictions and expectations. When all the channels were preoccupied with deals for the hostages’ release, a dream came to fruition with a heroic rescue.
“And when we dream, the power of our thoughts is enormous. It behooves us to dream good dreams about things that we never dared to dream before. As vivid as our worst nightmare from three weeks ago may have been, let us make the dream of an ideal future even clearer for us to see.
“To dream but also to fight all that is familiar, pragmatic, or taken for granted – to cast doubt on every arrogant expert and know-it-all news commentator. And still to dream.
Indeed, in Psalm 126, this is precisely what King David prophesied would happen: ‘When the L-rd brings back those who return to Zion, we shall be as dreamers.’”
Translation by Yehoshua Siskin.
