Shabbat comes every Friday, no matter what else is happening. This week though, inflection point: Holocaust Remembrance Day. 81 years since Auschwitz was liberated. 843 days before our last hostage was free. Hostages Square clock at last stops ticking. And once more…Shabbat. Because it’s Friday.

Jewish time is nonlinear, past perpetually overlaps present and future. Whether we were born with trauma coded in our genes or came to be Jewish later, purpose and intent to integrate, one thing is common: each of us desperately wanted to end the suffering; each of us sought to Bring Them Home.

As we reset for the week ahead, may we reset here too, together, peers experiencing a unique time in history. As we remove our yellow pins, let us not remove from ourselves the meaning. _Arvut hadadit_ means mutual responsibility to each other, always. Remember the symbols and what they meant. That we all wore them, that they bind us. Clearly as Judenstern then, clearly as Magen Davids now, clearly as hostage pins have been. Let them be a reminder to us of this time, past times, commitment to community, and faith we will in fact build better days that shine.

Look around. Here are people who care. To show up, put whatever talents they hold into the collective, and try to help us all. Across generation, continent and background: here are people who aim to do something about this broken world. Look around. How can we be good, not just for our own ideas, but for each other? This week ends a brutal chapter; can it also be a beginning? Be gentle with one another. Each of our fate is bound up with all others. We need each other. We’re not the same (why would we even want to be), but share reality, understanding, and sameness of heart perpetually. Super-secular, ultra-orthodox, somewhere in between: we all heard the call and put down everything to come join our country, that fights for every one of us together and individually. We saw brothers, sisters, families and ourselves in each hostage story. Let’s take all that love and see that in each other now, please. For recent and distant past in which we’ve all been hurting, for shared future we’re here to design collectively. Let’s use this moment for forward momentum to protect ourselves and each other ceaselessly. As the world tries to divide us and our differences at times feel daunting, let VoP be a model for how we treat each other definitively.

Shabbat shalom, lovelies.