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The end of the war in Gaza is bringing tears of joy — and sorrow. How can we handle it all?
When I heard the news of a deal to return the hostages and end the war, I shed tears of joy and relief. This is a day we have been waiting for literally for years — hundreds of days without hope.
I worried the words of our prayer for the hostages, “they will come to Zion with joy,” would never come true. But now I dare to dream about a return of joy to Simchat Torah, which we hope will mark not only the anniversary of murder and captivity but also a deliverance and return.
But if I am honest, my tears were not only of happiness. I also cried for so much that was lost, for so much pain and suffering, for so many killed in Israel and then in Gaza, for so much healing that still needs to happen.
To make sense of this mix of intense emotions, I found myself going back to a story in my family from hundreds of years ago: the saga of Rabbi Yom Tov Lippman Heller (1579-1654). Known as the Tosafot Yom Tov (after his commentary on the Mishnah), Rabbi Heller was the chief rabbi of Vienna, and later Prague. I am descended from him through my mother’s side; when I was growing up, he was famous in our family for declaring that turkey was not kosher, and asking his descendants to refrain from eating this bird from the New World (I still don’t eat turkey). But I also knew he suffered in his life. With today’s news in mind, I went back to read his story.
In the summer of 1629, Rabbi Heller was arrested on trumped up charges and thrown in jail. As Joseph Davis wrote in his biography of Rabbi Heller, he was only released after others in the Jewish community negotiated on his behalf by committing to pay a heavy financial price. After coming home, he later wrote in his memoir, Rabbi Heller struggled with how to mark his return to freedom. On the one hand he was elated – the day he dreamed of had arrived. It should be a day of celebration and feasting! On the other hand, he owed a massive fine to the authorities. He had no more personal property and he was forced to resign from his rabbinic position.
Confused about how to mark the occasion, he came across a piece of Torah that guided him. In a commentary on the Book of Esther, R. Eliezer Ashkenazi (1512-1585) considered the question: Why was a celebratory feast declared to mark Purim, but not Hanukkah? After all, both are holidays of victory and deliverance from doom. The answer, R. Ashkenazi wrote, was that, unlike the salvation in Purim, where the Jews escaped unscathed, in the battles against the Greeks, many Jews lost their lives; the victory came at a great cost.
Heller read this commentary and decided to mark the day of his freedom from captivity — but to do so by declaring a fast on the Fifth of Tammuz, the date of his arrest, for all of his descendants, forever. He said: “I am still suffering”; he could not fully celebrate. This helped me make sense of how I am feeling now: Amidst all the joy of the return, I am holding grief as well.
There is a second story of Rabbi Heller that also gave me some inspiration in this moment. Years earlier, in 1625, he lived in Vienna during a plague. Hundreds of people of all ages died from sickness. But Rabbi Heller survived. He struggled with how to mark his survival. Should he praise God for performing a personal miracle for him, even though many others had perished? Ultimately Rabbi Heller took inspiration from a story in the Talmud, in which Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai survives a persecution from the Roman authorities by hiding in a cave. Following his survival, R. Shimon bar Yohai pledged to “mend something”; he proceeded to declare pure a field that was of unknown status.
Rabbi Heller noted that he must be grateful to God for surviving the plague — but the essence of his religious response was not gratitude, but to “mend something.” He instituted additional study of a religious text — the Orhot Hayyim — before daily prayer services, for he felt that the community needed to improve its ethical commitments. He noted that even though they had survived the physical plague, the community had a “spiritual sickness” and needed to be healed.
In this fraught moment – another year of joy mixed with sorrow – I want to recall the moments in our history when we have held these emotions together. Rabbi Heller teaches us that we can feel both of these feelings at the same time. And he also modeled that gratitude must be accompanied by improving our ethical behavior. May we see more joyous days ahead, and may we hold our mixed emotions together while working to grow spiritually and morally.
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The post The end of the war in Gaza is bringing tears of joy — and sorrow. How can we handle it all? appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Pentagon Preparing for Weeks of Ground Operations in Iran
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth holds a briefing with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine, amid the US-Israeli war on Iran, at the Pentagon in Washington, DC, US, March 19, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Evan Vucci
The Pentagon is preparing for weeks of ground operations in Iran, the Washington Post reported Saturday, citing US officials.
The plans could involve raids by Special Operations and conventional infantry troops, the Post reported. Whether President Donald Trump would approve any of those plans remains uncertain, according to the Post.
The Trump administration has deployed US Marines to the Middle East as the war in Iran stretches into its fifth week, and also has been planning to send thousands of soldiers from the US Army’s 82nd Airborne to the region.
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America’s oldest synagogue closed. Then an unlikely group tended its cemetery.
In 1833, Herald of the Times, a Newport, Rhode Island, newspaper, reported that the remains of Mrs. Rebecca Lopez had been brought from New York by steamboat and placed inside Touro Synagogue.
Dedicated in 1763, the building is now recognized as the nation’s oldest surviving synagogue. Newport had once been home to a thriving colonial Jewish community, but after the Revolutionary War and the city’s economic decline, that community had largely faded. The cemetery remained, and so did the synagogue. It was during that long interval of near-absence that Lopez’s funeral briefly reopened Jewish ritual life in Newport.
After prayers were read by Rabbi Isaac Seixas of New York, the body was carried to the cemetery on Touro Street, with “the clergy, town council, and a numerous concourse of spectators” joining the funeral procession. The paper noted that a Jewish ceremony had not been performed there “for the space of forty years.”
Newport’s Jewish burial ground dated to 1677. In 1822, Abraham Touro left money for the upkeep of the cemetery, the synagogue, and the street on which they stood. The fund was placed under trustees appointed by the Rhode Island legislature, and Newport’s Town Council was later authorized to use the interest for repairs.
While Newport’s Jewish population declined, the endowment ensured that the synagogue building and cemetery grounds continued to be maintained. In 1826, the Town Council reported that it had tried to repair the synagogue using the Touro fund, but could not proceed because it had not been able to obtain the keys from Shearith Israel in New York. Many of Newport’s former Jewish residents had relocated there, and the congregations had longstanding ties.
In 1842, the council contracted to enclose the synagogue lot with a substantial stone wall and an ornamental cast-iron fence, modeled on the fence around the Jewish cemetery. The work included a Quincy granite base and a gateway on Touro Street designed to correspond with the synagogue’s portico. The project cost $6,835.
The synagogue’s doors rarely opened, and often only for moments of mourning. In June 1854, Newport received the body of Judah Touro, one of the most prominent American Jews of his era, a native of the town and brother of Abraham Touro. The Herald of the Times reported that “the streets was [sic] crowded with people, the stores all closed, and the bells tolled.”
The City Council assembled at City Hall and marched in procession to the synagogue, where “thousands remained outside” during the service. At the funeral, Newport’s mayor, William C. Cozzens, spoke of the trust that had long existed between the city and local Jewish families, recalling that the synagogue and cemetery had been left in Newport’s care and maintained there “with ample means for their preservation.”
When Henry Wadsworth Longfellow visited Newport’s Jewish cemetery that same year, he wrote of the graves as “silent beside the never-silent waves.” He noticed, too, what endured there: “Gone are the living, but the dead remain,” he observed, “and not neglected.”
Newport’s preservation of Jewish sacred space was shared. Jews endowed these places and returned to bury their dead there. Christian officials repaired, protected, and publicly honored them. In this way, a Jewish inheritance was carried forward until communal life returned.
In 1883, Touro Synagogue was rededicated and a new Jewish community established in Newport. But even in the window of years when the congregation was gone, the dead were not abandoned.
The graves were kept.
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Milwaukee rabbi and son ordered to pay $1,000 to muralist who reportedly praised Hamas in court
(JTA) — A retired rabbi and his son were sentenced Wednesday in Milwaukee for having destroyed a local mural in 2024 that depicted the Star of David transforming into a swastika.
Rabbi Peter and Zechariah “Zee” Mehler were ordered to pay $1,000 total in restitution to Ihsan Atta, the property owner who had put up the mural. Peter, who pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge for criminal damage, was also fined $50, while Zee, who had pleaded guilty in December, was given a withheld sentence of 25 hours of community service.
The sentencing hearing took another turn when Atta, who is Palestinian, praised Hamas and walked out of the courtroom before being brought back in by deputies to finish the proceedings, according to local news reporters who were present. A transcript of the exchange could not immediately be obtained.
Zee Mehler told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that, despite pleading guilty, he felt “vindicated.”
“What we did was illegal and needed to be answered for. But at the same time, what we saw was a very strong response from the city and the court that showed that they have no patience or time for this anti-Israel narrative,” he said. “They recognize the way that it has spread antisemitism, and they recognize the way that it’s caused so much global harm to the Jewish community.”
The case dates back to September 2024, when the Mehlers used a hammer and other tools to tear down Atta’s recently installed mural in full view of security cameras. They have long maintained that, while they understood it was illegal to destroy the mural, they did so out of concern for the safety of the local Jewish community.
Atta’s mural included the words “The irony of becoming what you once hated” surrounding a Star of David transforming into a swastika; the background of the mural appeared to depict scenes of destruction in Gaza. The Mehlers viewed the mural as incitement. At the time of their actions, it had already been condemned by local Jewish groups and the Milwaukee City Council.
In the courtroom, Zee, wearing long dreadlocks, escorted his father, who is 74 years old and has Guillain-Barre syndrome, in a wheelchair. Peter recently lost the ability to walk, his son said: “This has been a really rough few years for him.”
According to reports, circuit court judge Jack Dávila interrupted Atta when he began praising Hamas and instructed him not to make comments unrelated to the crime.
“We’re not going to solve the world’s problems with this hearing,” the judge reportedly told Atta, who apologized for his actions. In a video posted after the verdict, Atta called the proceedings a “kangaroo court” and stated, “We must have judges that are on the Epstein files, because we’ve got clowns running the courthouse.”
Atta’s actions in court, Zee Mehler said, meant “I didn’t really need to do much.”
“He was called to testify, and he absolutely buried himself,” Mehler said. “I can’t believe he said that he supports Hamas in a court, on the record. That’s a crazy thing to do.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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