Two weeks have already gone by, but the images are still seared in our minds. I am referring to the images of the emotional embraces of the newly freed hostages and their loved ones. To Yidden who are shomrei Torah umitzvos, some of those scenes of reunion appeared like a reunification of Yidden from vastly different worlds. The images epitomized almost the harmonization of antithetical themes. The starkest for me was of a father clad in a big black velvet yarmulka hugging his son, a young man with large tattoos visible on his arm. It evoked a wide range of thoughts, questions, and emotions in my mind.
What kind of relationship was there between this loving father and son?
Did it take tragedy to bring them this close or was it always that way? Were they always so different? Will they become closer? When did the father don that big black yarmulka? Was the son once in the fold, and somehow, tragically, drifted away, driving to a different world on Yom Tov, only to become a victim of terror at the Nova festival? Or perhaps, the father, too, was not religious, and only during those long, harrowing months of captivity did the father’s heart turn upward to the Ribbono Shel Olam, and he himself became a baal teshuvah.
And now — maybe it’s the child’s turn.
Of course, it’s none of my business. But my mind, like so many other minds, is human. I can’t help but wonder. I am not an investigative reporter. I am an observer and ponderer. And the scenarios I conjure in my mind leave me thinking. And thus, that one moment transcended all speculation.
It was that scene that makes me ponder. It was that unforgettable video of a father and son embracing, the father collapsing on his child’s neck and screaming out the same words that his holy ancestor Yaakov Avinu cried upon seeing Yosef Hatzaddik: Shema Yisroel, Hashem Elokeinu, Hashem Echad.
I’m not here to draw direct comparisons, but there were foundations set in stone millennia before our existence. Just as Shema Yisroel of Rabi Akiva in his final moments became the mantra of the cry of kiddush Hashem for thousands who gave their lives al kiddush Hashem, so too, Yaakov’s cry of Shema Yisroel has become the cry of reunion.
Shema Yisroel. The cry of pain. The cry of faith. The cry of oneness.
What does Shema Yisroel have to do with reunion? Everything.
To understand that, we must go back — to the first father and son whose separation seemed beyond restoration.
The father sat in mourning in Eretz Canaan, the son in an Egyptian dungeon.
The father is surrounded by Shivtei Kah and holiness, the other by the decadence of a foreign palace. They were separated by miles, by cultures, and by circumstances, yet, somehow, impossibly, they found each other again. They reunited as one. Why? How? Because Jews are never truly separated.
Because achdus Yisroel is rooted in achdus haBorei. That is the cry of Shema Yisroel. Klal Yisroel, hear this. Hashem Elokeinu, Hashem Echad. The unity of Hashem, the indivisibility the eternal oneness, is embedded in our essence from his essence. For as Hakadosh Boruch Hu is One, then Klal Yisroel is one.
And therefore, no matter how far apart we may be — whether separated by tunnels and terror, or by lifestyles and ideologies — that bond remains.
A father may sit in a bais medrash with tears streaming down his Gemara, while his son sits in the darkness of captivity. Or perhaps a father in Canaan searches the horizon by candlelight for a son lost to Egypt. Or perhaps — and maybe this is the hardest to witness — a father watches a son lost to the hedonism of the modern world and pleads for his return.
But he will return. Because the nation of Klal Yisroel is one.
That’s why the embrace of Yaakov Avinu and Yosef Hatzaddik and the embrace of that father and son in our own generation are both characterized by the same words: Shema Yisroel, Hashem Elokeinu, Hashem Echad.
And perhaps that’s also why the prelude to Shema that we say each day contains a plea for unity.
Before the Shema, we ask: Vahavi’einu l’shalom mei’arba kanfos ha’aretz v’solicheinu komemiyus l’artzeinu. Bring us together, Hashem, from the four corners of the earth, and lead us upright to our land.
Because Shema Yisroel is not just a declaration of faith. It’s a declaration of unity. If Hashem Echad, then Yisroel must be echad.
And so, two Jews, separated by the corners of the earth — whether Egypt and Canaan, or Gaza and Be’er Sheva — are destined to find each other again. And when they do, that cry will echo once more across the generations:
Shema Yisroel, Hashem Elokeinu, Hashem Echad.
That’s what I saw when the tattooed boy embraced his large yarmulke-clad father. That’s what I heard as well.
The cry of faith. The cry of reunion. The cry of redemption.
The cry that we all cried during these two long harrowing years. We are all one.
Just Saying.
