We Need a New Abraham: What the Hostages Taught Us About Faith
- Dr Tanya White
- 1 day ago
- 10 min read
Updated: 16 minutes ago
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The Abrahamic Revolution Then and Now
We need nothing less than a new Abrahamic revolution. A revolution that will return us to our spirit; a spirit that puts religion before dogma, love before law, and mystery before knowledge. And there are some who are telling us this. They are doing so in interviews and in social media posts. They are showing us that we can be different if only we return to our essence. These people have been through the gates of hell and returned. And we need to listen to them carefully. They are saying more than their words allow.
This is a picture of Julie Kuperstein and myself. Julie is the mother of Bar, released from Hamas captivity on erev Simchat Torah, almost exactly two years to the day he was taken hostage. I met Julie early in the war—so early that no hostages had yet been released. Bar was just another face, another name among the hundreds in the Gazan tunnels. Julie shared her story: how after her husband's accident she found God and became more religious. She asked us to recite Mizmor LeToda (Psalm 100) with her, thanking God for Bar's release, which she 'knew' would arrive. A modern-day woman of the Exodus, tambourine in hand, ready to celebrate before the redemption had come.
I sat with her, cried with her, hugged her. Then I walked away and thought, in my pre-October 7th way, 'Such simple faith surely sets you up for disappointment.' Yet despite so many hostages—many of them children—I couldn't get Bar out of my head. Something about Julie's simple but strong faith, about Bar's life before captivity, about her conviction that only God could bring him home, left me questioning my own religious assumptions. I read everything about Bar, davened for him particularly, learned in his merit. I tried desperately to identify with Julie's unbridled, unconditional, unrepentant dependence on God.
I was wrong. About so much. But perhaps mostly about Julie's faith.
Mashiv HaRuach: The Return of Spirit
Early on, Miriam Peretz suggested that this war be called Mashiv HaRuach — because it began on Shemini Atzeret, when we pray for rain, but also because it has returned our spirit. In hindsight, the name captures something even greater. It marks a paradigm shift so profound it may rival the transformation our ancestors experienced in Egypt.
The revolution of the Bible was never simply monotheism — the belief in one God — but covenant: a living partnership between God and humanity, and between God and the Jewish people in particular. In the ancient world, humans were pawns, their fates ruled by capricious gods. The Bible changed that story. It taught that God believes in humanity — in our agency, our responsibility, our spirit.
But somewhere between then and now we had lost our spirit. We had forgotten our purpose. Religion had devolved into empty behaviorism at best, righteous indignation at worst. Judaism became a subject for polarization and violent eruptions. Israel was merely another nation pursuing consumer markets and liberal democracy.
And that land—our beautiful, precious, ancient-new land—had become dull, its exploration rare. A land consuming its inhabitants through fires of hate and self-destructive divisiveness.
Lech Lecha: A Journey to Unimagined Possibilities
Last week we read Parshat Lech Lecha. Lech lecha (Genesis 12:1) does not mean 'go,' nor even 'go for yourself' as many translations render it. It means 'go to yourself.' Return to your essence. Journey to your spirit.
These past two years have been a journey of spirit. Spirit, by definition, lies beneath the surface—intuited rather than perceived. Aristotle called it Pneuma, ancient Greek for "breath"—ruach. Abraham's entire journey involves releasing preconceptions. He must surrender to become other than he is, sacrifice repeatedly. Living with ruach means consistently looking beyond the given toward the horizon—that place we think we know but don't. It means transcending comfortable structures, holding strong opinions loosely, nurturing passion so tenderly we can hear another's voice even in disagreement.
A life of spirit requires constant movement. The Sefat Emet—Rabbi Yehuda Leib Aryeh Alter—describes lech lecha as ascending level by level, extracting ourselves from habit and normalcy. "At all times," he writes, "one must renew one's soul and religious direction. Abraham was tested with ten trials (Pirkei Avot 5:3), and EACH TEST RE-CREATED HIM AS A NEW BEING until he knew not the meaning of complacent normalcy" (Sefat Emet 5656).
A.J. Heschel termed this consciousness radical amazement. Hearing God, he claimed, requires viewing the world through fresh lenses daily, practicing gratitude, taking nothing for granted. This demands two counterintuitive movements: We must WALK and we must SURRENDER. Walk toward the promised land. Work, dream, enable it. Yet we must also surrender to forces beyond control, releasing our assumptions about how things should be, cracking ourselves open to unimagined possibilities.
Note that God never explicitly tells Abraham his destination (Genesis 12:1). Abraham walks, trusts, intuits, learns—keeping his eyes open to every eventuality. He learns from everyone and everywhere. Thus ordinary nomads become angels, barren land becomes opportunity for divine worship. This is how he grows, how he reaches the promised land.
When Abraham Judges Too Quickly: Avimelech and the Akeida
Yet once Abraham judges prematurely. Arriving in Gerar fleeing famine, he again pretends Sarah is his sister (Genesis 20:1-2). When God saves King Avimelech from sinning with Sarah, the king confronts Abraham: "Why did you nearly cause me to sin?" (Genesis 20:9). Abraham replies, "I believed there were no God-fearers in this land" (Genesis 20:11).
Here Abraham closes his eyes to possibility—that Gerar's people might differ from his assumptions. Thus follows the Akeidah (Genesis 22:1-19)—where he must set aside his cherished beliefs, holding together God's promise of descendants and the command to sacrifice that very descendant. Where he must say hineni to God (Genesis 22:1) and hineni to his son (Genesis 22:7), and mean them both. Where he must ascend, eyes open, hoping, praying, believing—like hostage families—that his son will be spared. Somehow, sometime, somewhere.
To accomplish this, he must adopt a posture revolutionary in the ancient world: submission to the Divine alongside human agency. Counterfactual. Against all givens. A posture singing psalms of thanks before redemption arrives.
What This War Has Taught Me
If this war taught me anything, it's to release self-assured convictions. Those young people dancing at Nova—you've seen them? Many came from religious households, those we label in Israel chozrei beshe'ela (lit. Returning to questioning) or in the diaspora 'off the derech.' Yet these questioners of faith have taught us—more than any 'religious' person—what authentic, deep-seated emunah truly means. What genuine conversation with the Creator looks like. (See for example the video from Sukkot of Omer Shem Tov). Not perfunctory prayers rushed between social media checks. No quid pro quo bargains, no religious behaviorism making mockery of ritual. Real dialogue. Connections we 'ordinary' people can only imagine.
Those who lost loved ones, who sacrificed most, who endured years of unimaginable conditions—tortured, emaciated, abandoned to death—have breathed life into our weary national soul. They have taught us what loving our people really looks like.
And it is not self-interest dressed in righteous garb, nor arrogant, self-assured political agendas. It is a love born in that invisible string of their people. A connection that transcends genetics and history, that goes beyond reason and facts.
It is the inexplicable feeling of destiny, whose delicate footprints can be traced back to our biblical roots. The footprints of a people who have traversed many lands over thousands of years, yet have never forgotten their spiritual centre.
A people shaken from apathy by the cry of a brother or sister on a distant continent whom they have never met. A people whose very history is testimony to that enduring spirit—one that defies the laws of history and breathes life into a culture of death.
This is what they felt in Gaza's tunnels. They felt the Jewish spirit. Though surrounded by death and darkness, their eyes rose beyond the given toward possibility and connection's horizon. Now returning, they tell this story. Each says the same: "Lift your eyes. Move beyond accepted vision, parochial assumptions, restrictive categories." They ask us to see anew through WHO they are and WHAT they say.
Early in the war, I heard Tifferet's mother interviewed—Tifferet, a beautiful young woman killed at Nova. Tifferet had chosen a different path from her family. Classically, a chozeret beshe'ela—she had 'gone off the derech.' Bodies of those dying al kiddush Hashem receive no tahara (ritual purification). Tifferet was buried in her festival clothes. Her mother declared with unwavering clarity and pride: "If God accepts my pure Tifferet in those clothes as holy, how dare we not?"
Something in me shifted. I considered myself open, accepting of all Jews. Yet like most, I harbored buried moments of judgment, religious arrogance—products of our upbringings. Hearing Tifferet's mother transformed me. Put a mirror up to my own religious arrogance.
The 'Chozrei Beshe'ela' Are Teaching Us
These 'chozrei beshe'ela' are only living up to the derogatory category the religious community imposed on them: they are making us question—they are asking us to look beyond the external and see deep into the spirit. They are reminding us that our forefathers were all 'chozrei beshe'ela'—they were seekers that found a new God, a new land, a new vision for humanity beyond the given. This is what authentic religiosity looks like. And we needed someone outside the accepted paradigms to teach this to us. We needed a new Abraham. All these heroes, lay leaders,  'survivors' are modern-day Abrahams. They have sacrificed everything for their people, for their vision, and in doing so they have resuscitated the spirit of humanity and the Jewish people.
Abraham's greatness lay in abandoning accepted paradigms to begin anew. T.S. Eliot's words in "Little Gidding" echo Abraham's journey:
"With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this Calling
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time."
Ultimately, Abraham continued his father Terach's journey to Canaan (Genesis 11:31), making it his own by transcending inherited assumptions. We cannot see afresh while trapped in old modalities, having lost curiosity, fighting mystery. We cannot perceive fellow Jews essentially when locking them into superficial categories of politics or religious leaning. We cannot dismantle dividing barriers while imposing artificial assumptions. As we age, we grow fixed, stagnant, stale. Movement becomes difficult. Searching and questioning harder. Yet we're called to shatter frozen idols, traverse unknown lands, see the land anew.
Let's think about the returning hostages. How they saw reality before and after their ordeal. We too must enter their vision. We too must see everything for the first time. We too must fall in love with land and people, refrain from judging through artificial assumptions just as they are teaching us.
Now I Know You Are Yirei Elohim
After Abraham sacrifices the ram replacing his son, God declares, "Now I know you are Yirei Elohim—God-fearing" (Genesis 22:12). Was the entire mission testing his "fear"? Surely God knew Abraham's unbridled faith? He abandoned home, fought mighty kings, submitted to divine authority. Why this test to prove "God-fear"?
Remember though that these are Abraham's own denigrating words to Avimelech (Genesis 20:11). Words reminding us even the greatest possess penchants for indiscriminate judgment. And almost as a pedagogical test God seems to challenge Abraham at the Akeida by saying: "You see—you judged quickly in Gerar. Can you transcend accepted structures of vision and understanding? Hold given and mystery simultaneously?"
And he passes the test. Not through willingness to sacrifice his son, nor readiness to heed the angel, but through capacity to practice what every Yirei Elohim must master: seeing beyond the given. The given is divine command. The 'beyond' is fulfilling that command other than the way it may have initially been understood. Being open to unimagined possibilities and endings is the hallmark of a ‘yireh elohim’. That why Abraham can hear the angel's voice and see the ram in thickets (Genesis 22:13).
Biblical Yirei Elohim intuit reality beyond the given. Being Yirei Elohim means less fearing authoritarian divinity than cultivating radical awareness of transcendence and inner voice. Submitting to external command isn't enough—that's too easy. Responding to clear, unambiguous authority is commendable but insufficient.
Fully rounded religious consciousness means living with radical awe, awareness of something beyond the given. Living with spirit and transcendence. Hearing God's voice while interpreting it aligned with sometimes contradictory values. Seeing the world as is AND intuiting what might become.
Religious consciousness means to dig deep and find the essence of things rather than accepting readily available understandings.
Julie Kuperstein's Faith
Julie Kuperstein's faith is neither naïve nor simple. It is the faith of our forefather Abraham when he left the land of accepted assumptions to travel to unknown pastures and unforeseen possibilities and walked up the mountain knowing there would be a way to fulfill the divine command without sacrificing his son. It is the faith of Moses who understood that his privileged life in the palace was a façade for the greatest act of slavery ever known to man. It is the faith of the prophets who believed a stiff-necked, incorrigible people could change. It is the belief of Herzl that dared to dream of a return to an ancient land after years of living in exile. It is the faith of the Bible that never accepts the world as is and strives for a world that could be. A faith that echoes Abraham's motions in lech lecha and at the Akeidah and that in St. Augustine's words, enables us to: "Pray as though everything depends on God; act as though everything depends on you."
What the Hostages Have Taught Us
For the religious amongst us, the hostages have forced us to face our accepted assumptions of what religious conviction must be. For the secular amongst us, the hostages have made rugged the smooth contours of the way the world works and the forces at play. Those on the right must bow reverently before Matan Zangauker's mother's fortitude, believing only ceasefire and negotiation could save her son. Those on the left must bow before Eitan Mor's father, refusing any deal with evil, trusting military pressure alone. They both were right. And they both were wrong. And in the end what won out was the value of life over death. What was the right thing to do at the Akeidah? To sacrifice his son or to defy God's command? Both were right and both were wrong. And in the end what won out was the power of life and the posture of humility over a reality bigger than the self. Jewish victory is not about power, or obedience to the letter of law. It is not even about dogma or belief. In the end it is about spirit. And that is what we had lost. And that is what we have gained. And that is what we must work to sustain. A spirit of yirat Elohim—a humility, a deep inner conscience, a reverence for something beyond the self. A posture of gratitude and radical awe.
They've taught us the highest value lies not in sacrifice and death but spirit and life. That growth comes through questions rather than answers. That judging others belongs to God. That meaning supersedes knowledge. That we need an Abrahamic revolution of highest order, beginning not in heaven but on earth. Beginning today, this moment, when we choose to open our eyes to possibilities—recognizing what we thought we knew may not be what is.