Ancient. Present.

A paradox worth living, worth worshiping, even while we fear it.

Photo by Stock Birken on Unsplash

I was listening to the Free Press podcast, Honestly yesterday. I wanted to hear the interview with Matti Friedman and Haviv Rettig Gur, two Israeli journalists whose work I’ve followed in the Free Press and come to really love. Not only do the two of them provide insights that are important to understanding Israel and all of the Middle East, but they do so in a way that, at least to me, is as poetic as it is poignant.

They were speaking in very material and real terms about the U.S. president’s creating conditions for a ceasefire and specifically, in bringing home the hostages. But that’s not what I was hearing. Instead, I heard the conversation lilt and turn up to the poetry above the conversation, about an ancient and present God.

The key to the conversation hosted by Rafaela Siewert, the podcast’s executive producer, was something Matti Friedman said that might have slipped by me had I been more earthbound and considerate of the remarkable event of freed hostages. Instead, I was walking and both listening and not listening—while a patch of cloud, gray and then pink and burnt umber with reflected light sailed overhead.

“What Israel wanted was to get the hostages back because we can’t function with hostages in Gaza…” He slowed down and emphasized, with a kind of heartache, “Can’t Function…” And immediately, I caught a gasp, and at once the politics of the region and the singing of choirs merged. Israel’s troubles, and there are many of them—both internal and external, are most achingly about how their nation could do nothing while so many of them were not free and part of their community. The fracturing of their government, the division of their people and horrific choices that lay before them all amplify in the tension of those who are no longer with them — and those yet to return.

Whatever happens next in Gaza, as long as Hamas is involved, it probably won’t be peace. The people of Israel are not blind to this, nor are those in Gaza. But right now, in a moment that eclipses all other moments since 2023, the hostages are free and they are back with loved ones and they are damaged, frightened, scarred and healing and a kind of euphoria has grabbed hold in Israel, all while understanding that nothing is over.

A Jewish wedding is marked with an ancient tradition, a moment at the height of joy—when two people are joined, by the wrapping in cloth of a crystal glass that is then stomped on usually by the groom, but sometimes both bride and groom. The moment symbolizes the destruction of the Temple, and it has also come to symbolize the fragility of relationships, the hard times of sadness, loss and disunion. The hostages are freed—they are home, and that is the cause of joy across the nation of Israel. But it comes with the smashed-glass reality that life’s fragility is still at hand, and that with joy comes dreadful sorrow and destruction.

There are wisps of it every day, but we often miss them. At this turn of seasons, as the sun’s heat dissipates behind paintings of cloud, cool air and rain, I heard it hit me rapid fire days in a row. From Friedman’s revelation of a nation paralyzed by the loss of members of its own community, to the life-altering heartache of the Polin family as they celebrate the return of the hostages, while they mourn the life of their 23-year old son, Hersh, who was murdered while in captivity.

I heard it in Dan Aykroyd’s tribute and eulogy to his friend John Candy in the documentary on Candy’s life by Colin Hanks, I like Me. And I read about it in an article by Tara Isabella Burton this morning about T.S. Elliot’s 4 Quartets, a poem that is as elusive as the life it attempts to illuminate, and as mysterious as the man who wrote it. Nothing is changed in these deep and long traditions. And everything changes as we walk forward and feel, as the Beowulf poet wrote, “…fate hovered near. Unknowable but certain.”

I felt it tug at me as our daughter feels the world and its opportunities expand before her, a recent college graduate with accolades and plaudits, even while her first job closes those familiar walls that she, however, never knew were there. I watch it in my own life as dreams I’ve had all my life slowly fade now, and decisions made after years of consideration suddenly evaporate, and create more loss even as they promise new horizons.

These things have no comparison in an earnest life to those who’ve lost loved ones to war, bigotry, hatred and deep fragmentation. They are no match to the story of the Jewish people who've lived and continue to live with both the exultant joy, and the heartbreaking sadness delivered to them by a world that has been all but indifferent to their plight as a people. But they are reminders that the God I serve, they serve as well and that in the midst of their broken glass lives, comes a wedding — and a life shared with loved ones that is more than worth living. It is essentially lived, and it is the province of at once an ancient, and a present God.