Special edition of the Weekly Verse
while Rabbi Rotenberg is at Camp Ramah Darom

There were two incidents this past week that gave me pause. The first: Upon hearing the news about the successful rescue of four hostages, the mishlachat, Israeli emissaries and counselors, hosted a ceremony where a heart was put over their pictures in our camp library. There, every hostage has a picture on the wall, and now four of them have hearts put there by the hands of our Israeli friends, and witnessed with teary eyes by the rest of us. They made it home. It took an army, meticulous planning, serious risks, but they made it home.

Fast forward to this past Wednesday night. I was catching up with minyan participants over zoom about my first week at camp, and mentioned that I had come home for Shavuot. “Where is home?” one of the participants asked. Hesitating, I said “Here, in Chattanooga.” It was only at that moment that I realized that I am home in Chattanooga. No, I’m not from here. My three years are nothing compared to the three or more generations that many of our congregants can trace. But I’m home.

For Noa, Almog, Andrey, and Shlomi, those four rescued from Gaza, being home is everything, almost a miracle beyond belief. To us, like my nonchalant mentioning of having returned home during minyan, we often take the gift of being home for granted. The hostages, their families, they do not. If in the midst of everything we do not take a second and appreciate the profou