In mid-October 2025, I felt a tidal wave of emotion seeing the final release of the 20 living hostages from Hamas captivity to freedom in Israel. The outpouring of relief in Israel and the Jewish world; particularly here in Miami, was overwhelming. For two years at our weekly minyans, we prayed for every hostage. At the same time, a US-brokered ceasefire offered hope that Israelis and Palestinians might live free of Hamas terror.
Thinking about that wave, a raindrop came to mind. Many raindrops form a tributary; many tributaries become a roaring river; and from there a tidal wave.
Here is my personal raindrop:
Since October 7, 2023, I have worn my yellow ribbon hostage pin at our weekly Shabbat minyan. Each week we danced, solidarity and spiritual awakening. One week I looked at my lapel and saw only the back of the pin. I dropped to the floor looking for the missing ribbon. Others joined me in my search, but it was gone. At our next Shabbat minyan, someone smiled and pressed a new yellow pin into my hand. Everyone saw. There was no speeches or ceremony, just a tiny act of chesed. One raindrop joined by other raindrops.
By fortuitous fate, the following week I was invited by a GCC delegation to visit the United Nations. I wore my newly gifted pin to the UN, a small emblem in a very large room. I was proud that many noticed the yellow hostage pin.
Our raindrops were now becoming a stream.
It is tempting to call this the butterfly effect, but it’s different. The butterfly effect is chaos math: an accidental flutter becoming a storm. What I witnessed was the covenant effect: collective, consistent, compassionate chosen action repeated until it gathers enough force to move history.
In Genesis, our sages teach (Rashi on 2:5) that God sent rain only after Adam and Eve, so humans could ask for and appreciate the blessing. We pray for rain because we know its goodness.
In 1979, when Iranian student militants seized the US Embassy in Tehran and 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days, yellow ribbons became a national symbol of hope Across the country we tied ribbons to windows, trees, lapels and more while we prayed for return. Yet there is a contrast: in Noach, there is too much water, the flood.
How do tributaries handle obstacles? Rivers find a way around rocks; persistent water wears them down.
When I wore my yellow hostage pin at the UN, a man approached me in the Security Council room and said he was Israeli and the UN forbade him from wearing a yellow hostage pin. This motivated me to wear my pin even more.
Wearing a hostage pin is, to me, like placing a menorah in the window: we illuminate the street not to provoke the dark, but to remind the dark that it cannot last. While pins found lapels, some people ripped down hostage posters from poles. No one would remove a “lost dog” poster, why tear down a hostage poster? Removing a sign cannot remove a soul, and yet it wounds the one doing the tearing.
This fight only makes us stronger. My niece Gabrielle was told by her Washington, DC landlord that she could not hang a mezuzah on her apartment door. Rather than acquiesce, Gabrielle used the laws of our land to assert the laws of our people. Her legal victory made headlines, a beacon of light into the darkness.
I think of Muhammad Ali in Zaire in 1974,the Rumble in the Jungle. George Foreman pounded away, round after round. In the seventh round, Ali leaned close and said, “Is that all you got, George?…Is that all you got?” Foreman sagged; Ali turned the tide and won.
Heraclitus taught that no man steps into the same river twice for it is not the same river and he is not the same man. Our community is that river. At the headwaters is the snowmelt of cold convictions. The midstream are the tributaries carrying different sediments. At the mouth the freshwater wrestles with salt. I Though there are different waters and different views, it is all the same river.
The story of the children of Israel has often turned on individual raindrops. In Exodus, when Nachshon ben Aminadav stepped into the Sea of Reeds, the waters did not split at the first splash. He kept walking, deeper, steadier until faith met its own momentum and the Sea of Reeds yielded, and Moses led the Children of Israel out of Egypt into the wilderness. Not a miracle of spectacle, but a miracle of accumulation: step upon step, heartbeat after heartbeat, the stream becoming a river and the river making a path where there was none.
So here is my prayer: May we each be a first raindrop. May our small, stubborn acts find one another in alleys and boardrooms, in sanctuaries and city squares, in WhatsApp threads and around kitchen tables, until streams of courage become rivers of consolation, and at the sea hostages return, soldiers come home, and every mother finally sleeps.
Commitment is necessary; belief makes it sufficient. Together, belief and commitment turn raindrops into tidal waves. They don’t start in headlines; they start in human hearts. Put on the pin. Light the menorah. Touch the mezuzah when you leave and when you return. Offer the quiet kindness someone will remember a week later, a year later, a lifetime later. Let us choose the actions that help us gain our souls and help others find theirs.
Be the raindrop, move the sea.
raindrop on tallit—
rivulets of kindness meet;
the sea parts for love.
Further Reading
You can read more about Mohammed Ali and the in the Rumble in the Jungle here.
You can read more about Gabrielle’s story of fighting for her mezuzah here.
