I write to you with tears in my eyes. At 5:03 a.m. Wilmington time, Gilad Shalit, 25, returned to Israel's soil after 5 years and 4 months of capitivity in the Gaza Strip. He will return to his family in Mitzpe Hila, a small village of not more than 600 people, in the Western Galilee, directly across from Nahariya and the Mediterranean, and just south of the border with Lebanon (and the Iranian-made missiles of Hezbollah).
For this entire time, Congregation Beth Shalom of Wilmington, Delaware, has never stopped praying for his release. At the top of every prayer for the ill, our Misheberach list, recited three times weekly every time we take out the Torah to read, we ALWAYS began with the name Gilad ben Aviva Shalit. We thought, also, of his mother and his father, and his grandfather and Holocaust survivor, Zev.
Sukkot, the Festival of Booths, is referred to in the Torah as z'man simchateynu, the time of our joy. Jews are commanded by God to be joyous during this seven/eight day holiday. With the return of Gilad we can now be truly happy. In prophetic texts read later in the week, Israel's Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who worked tirelessly for this release, reminds us of Isaiah's command of ransoming the captive. For this release, Israel paid a very high price, 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, many responsible for the most bloody terrorist bombings in Israel, have been or will be set free. And in keeping with the text we chanted last week from Kohellet (Ecclesiastes), this holiday is joyous but tempered with reality. So, too, with Gilad's release, we share his hope that these Palestinian prisoners will usher in a new era of peace in the region and that they will not return to terror.
In Beth Shalom's Hebrew School this afternoon, we will begin the afternoon Mincha service by reciting the words from Psalm 100: Hodu l'Adonai ki tov, ki l'olam hasdo -- "Give thanks to God because the Holy One's kindness is eternal."
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