Welcome back to the Deep Dive. I want to start
today by just acknowledging where we are in time.
It feels like we're standing on the other side
of a very long, very dark tunnel, you know, squinting
a little bit at the light. That's a really good
way to put it. It's Wednesday, January 28th,
2026. And to really understand the moment we
are in right now, I want you to, if you can,
just close your eyes for a second and visualize
a small physical object. An object that really
for the last couple of years has been completely
unavoidable. Completely. It's something that
if you were walking down the street in Tel Aviv
or, I don't know, New York or Miami or London,
any time in the last two years, you absolutely
saw it. It became part of the visual landscape
of the post -2023 world. You saw them on grandmothers
in the supermarket. You saw them on teenagers
at music festivals. You saw them on professors
in lecture halls. They were everywhere. Exactly.
I'm talking about the dog tags. But we have to
be really specific here. We aren't talking about
standard military issue ID tags that soldiers
wear under their fatigue. No, these were different.
These were different. They were public. Yeah,
everywhere. Rectangular pieces of metal, usually
hanging on a simple ball chain that carried a
very specific, very heavy weight to them. A tangible
weight. Yeah. But also a symbolic one. A huge
symbolic weight. They had an inscription that
became a mantra, bring them home now. Often right
below that, a phrase in Hebrew, which translates
to my heart is held captive in Gaza. My heart
is held captive. Just think about that phrase.
It's not I am worried about Gaza or I stand with
the hostages. It's an internal state. It's so
visceral. My heart is captive. And today we are
doing something a little different. We're not
just looking at the news headlines or the, you
know, the military analysis. We are basing this
entire deep dive on a really profound piece of
scholarship. by Dr. Iqbal. He's a professor of
religious studies and the co -founder of Miami
Interfaith. He wrote this incredible essay that
analyzes the event that just happened this week,
the return of the final hostage, but he strips
away the military strategy, the politics, the
polling data. All the usual noise. All of it.
And he looks at it entirely through the lens
of theology. And Dr. Iqbal is such a fascinating
guide for this journey because he says right
up front, he's an outsider. He's not Jewish.
He's a Muslim scholar. Right. And he writes about
organizing these interfaith dialogue sessions
with his colleague, Rabbi Jamie Aklepi, right
after October 7, 2023. He describes walking into
these rooms and just seeing these tags on almost
everyone's neck. And he admits he was confused.
Totally. He just didn't get it at first. Which,
if you think about it, is a really fair reaction
for someone outside that specific cultural bubble.
To an outsider, they look like political merchandise.
Or solidarity jewelry. Yeah, maybe even, you
know, a statement of militarism. Right. That's
the first place your mind goes. You see a metal
tag you associate with the army. You think war
support. But Dr. Iqbal argues that if you actually
stop and study the theology, if you look at the
history of symbols in Judaism, these weren't
political statements at all. They were a response
to a specific historical trauma. A collective
trauma. A collective trauma that has been...
just bleeding for two years and just came to
a resolution two days ago on January 26th, 2026.
The day the clock stopped. The day the clock
literally stopped. I saw the footage online.
It was eerie. For our listeners who haven't been
glued to the live feeds for the last 48 hours,
let's just set the scene in Tel Aviv. For two
years, this place, Hostages Square, has been
the epicenter of this national grief. A public
wound. Totally. And it has been dominated by
this massive digital clock. It wasn't telling
the time of day, it was counting up. Seconds,
minutes, hours, days. Since the abduction on
October 7, it was this relentless ticking reminder
of absence. And two days ago, after 843 days,
the power was cut. The screen went dark. Because
the remains of Staff Sergeant Ranjvili were returned
to Israel. Ranjvili, he was 24 years old, a police
officer who was killed defending Kibbutz Illumim
way back on that very first day of the war. On
October 7th itself. Yes. And for 843 days, his
body was the last question mark, the last hostage
held by Hamas, the final piece of the puzzle.
I think we need to just sit with that number
for a moment. 843 days. It's staggering. It's
more than two years. Dr. Iqbal calls it an eternity
of agonizing uncertainty. Think about what that
does to a family, to a community. I can't even
imagine. Waking up every single morning for 843
days, not knowing if your son, your brother is
alive or dead, whole or in pieces, buried or
abandoned somewhere. It's a psychological torture.
So here's the mission for this deep dive. The
headline on CNN or the BBC is simply body returned.
But the story, the real story, is why it matters
so much. The why. is everything here. Why did
an entire nation hold its breath for two years
over a corpse? Why did people halfway around
the world wear those metal tags? Right. Dr. Iqbal's
thesis is that this obsession with the body,
this refusal to leave the dead behind, isn't
just a quirk of Israeli society or Jewish culture.
He argues that this theology of death, and specifically
the shared reverence for the body, might actually
be the secret key to peace between Jews and Muslims.
Which sounds completely backwards when you say
it out loud. It's so counterintuitive. Totally
backwards. You'd think peace comes from the living,
from negotiations, from planning for the future.
But his argument is that the way Jews and Muslims
treat the dead is a shared language. It's a frequency
they both hear, even when the politics are jamming
every other signal. It's this one place of common
ground. OK, so let's unpack this. We have to
start with the dog tags. Dr. Iqbal calls the
phenomenon of wearing them a transformation of
consciousness. That feels like a big claim for
a piece of metal on a chain. What does he mean
by that? It's a huge claim But I think he backs
it up. He's pointing out a shift that happened
in the Jewish world. To understand why those
tags became so ubiquitous, so necessary feeling,
you have to understand the Holocaust. Right.
But not the way we usually learn it in history,
class dates, battles, numbers. He's talking about
the specific mechanism of the Holocaust, the
psychological machinery of it. He uses a term
in the essay that I hadn't encountered before,
and it really stopped me in my tracks, necrocide.
It's a chilling word, isn't it? Necrocide. It
is. Break that down for us. What distinguishes
necrocide from genocide? Because they sound related,
obviously. They're absolutely related. But necrocide
is a specific subset of genocide. So genocide
is the killing of a people, the destruction of
a group, a genus. The people themselves. Yes.
Necrocide is the killing of death itself. It
is the systematic desecration and annihilation
of the body. Think about the Nazi infrastructure.
Yes, they use gas chambers to kill. But the gas
chambers were followed immediately by the crematoria,
the industrial ovens. The smoke. The smoke. The
ash. The goal of the Nazis wasn't just to end
a biological life. That was only step one. Step
two was to erase the physical evidence that a
human being ever existed. To make them vanish.
To turn a person into nothing but particulate
matter. To scatter them so there was no grave,
no marker, no place for a child to come and say
Kaddish, the mourner's prayer. It was the ultimate
erasure. It's not enough to kill you. I have
to annihilate your death. So the trauma isn't
just we died. The trauma is we were discarded.
We were treated as waste. Precisely. The crematorium
became the ultimate symbol of Jewish vulnerability.
It meant you were unburied. You were abandoned.
Your physical form, the only thing you leave
behind, was just gone. And Dr. Iqbal argues that
the phrase, never again, which we hear all the
time, is usually interpreted as, never again
will we be slaughtered. But deep in the theology,
deep in the subconscious, it means something
else. It means, never again will Jewish bodies
be abandoned. That's the vow. That is the core
trauma that October 7th reopened, the fear of
being left behind, unburied, unaccounted for.
That recontextualizes everything for me, honestly.
When I saw those tags in 2024 or 2025, I just
thought about solidarity with the living hostages.
But you're saying it was a theological shield.
It was a reaction to the threat of erasure. It's
a deep, almost instinctual response. And it links
directly to this central concept in Jewish law
called kavod hamet. Kavod hamet. That translates
to dignity of the dead. Right. And this is where
the theology gets really beautiful and really
specific. It's not just a nice idea. A bit of
a vague feeling. Not at all. In Jewish theology,
the body isn't just a shell. It's not like a
banana peel you throw away once you eat the fruit.
The body is a vessel. It housed the selem elekim,
the image of God. The divine spark. The divine
spark. So the body itself is sacred property.
You don't own it. You're just its guardian. And
because it's sacred, you don't burn it. You don't
discard it. You don't leave it in a field. You
return it to the earth intact with reverence.
And there are specific rituals for this, right?
It's not just a general feeling of respect. It's
codified law. Oh, it's incredibly specific. The
laws are detailed and ancient. And Dr. Iqbal
highlights a few rituals that really, I think,
explain the dog tags perfectly. Let's start with
the practice of shamira. Shamira. OK, meaning
guarding or watching. Yes, both. Guarding. From
the moment a Jewish person dies until they are
buried, they are never left alone. Not for a
minute. You mean practically speaking, like in
the morgue, in the funeral home. Someone is physically
in the room. Literally in the room. 24 hours
a day. There are volunteers. From the community,
they're called shamrim guards. They organize
shifts. They sit with the body, often reciting
psalms. Why? What's the theological idea behind
that? The theological idea is that the soul is
in transition. It's confused. It's vulnerable.
It's hovering between worlds. It doesn't quite
know where it is. So you're keeping it company.
You do not abandon your brother in the dark.
You stay with them until they are safely in the
earth. It's an act of profound community care.
That is... Honestly, that's incredibly tender.
The idea that you wouldn't let someone be lonely,
even in death. It is. It's beautiful. And then
you have Tahara, the ritual washing. This is
another key piece. This isn't done by a mortician
or a medical examiner in a clinical setting.
Right. It's done by the Shevra Kedisha, which
translates to the Holy Society. These are trained
volunteers for the community. Men for men, women
for women. So it's peers from your own community.
Yes. Your neighbors, the person you see in the
synagogue, they come and they perform this ritual.
They wash the body, they cleanse it, they dress
it in simple white shrouds. And get this, the
source mentions that before they close the coffin,
They ask the corpse for forgiveness. For forgiveness.
Forgiveness for what? Yes. They apologize in
case they move the body too roughly, in case
their thoughts weren't pure enough during the
ritual, in case they weren't gentle enough in
handling this sacred vessel. Wow. That is the
level of reverence we are talking about. The
body is treated with absolute sanctity even after
life has left it. More than sanctity. It's treated
like a guest of honor on its final journey. So
let's bring this all the way back to the dog
tags. Dr. Iqbal makes a direct connection between
Shamira, this concept of guarding, and the act
of wearing the tags. How does that work? Well,
think about the situation on October 7th and
the months, the years that followed. You have
hostages in Gaza. Some are alive, suffering in
tunnels. Some are dead, their bodies held as
bargaining chips. Miley's cannot sit Shamira.
Of course not. They're not there. They cannot
be there to guard them. They cannot perform Tahara.
They cannot wash them. The body is abandoned.
It is the nightmare scenario of the crematorium
all over again. The ultimate vulnerability. So
the community steps in. The community becomes
the shamroom. That's the argument. By wearing
that metal tag against your skin, by feeling
the cold weight of it every single day when you
wake up and when you go to sleep, you are performing.
A continuous vigil. It's a remote guarding. It's
a remote guarding. You are saying, physically,
with your own body, I am not leaving you alone.
Even if I can't be there, I am carrying you.
My heart is captive with you. That gives me chills.
It transforms the object from a political slogan,
which is how I first saw it. Into a religious
ritual. It's almost like a prayer you wear. It's
a spiritual refusal to abandon the captive. It's
a constant physical reminder of an unfulfilled
religious obligation. And look at the inscription
again. My heart is held captive. Right. That's
not just poetry. It's not a metaphor. It ties
directly into another major concept. Pity and
Schwim. Pity and Schwim. The redemption of captives.
I've heard that phrase used a lot in the news
coverage. That's a commandment, right? A mitzvah.
It's one of the highest mitzvahs in Judaism.
It's considered a massive obligation. Maimonides,
the great medieval scholar, laid this out very
clearly. What did he say? He said that if you
have money collected to build a brand new synagogue.
A holy house of God, the center of community
life, and you hear that a member of your community
has been taken captive. You have to divert the
funds. You are obligated to take that money,
all of it, and use it to buy that prisoner's
freedom instead. The human body takes precedence
over the holy building. You paused the prayer
to free the captive. That puts the last two years
into perspective. The entire society was oriented
around this specific commandment. The protests,
the international diplomacy, the negotiations,
the obsession. It was all pity and shvim in action.
It was a whole nation trying to fulfill the highest
commandment. And visually, Dr. Iqbal points out
something very sharp that I hadn't considered.
The dog tags. They recall the numbers tattooed
on arms in the concentration camps. Yeah. I can
see that. The marking of the body. It's a marking
of the body. But this time it's voluntary. It's
chosen. It's a symbol of commitment rather than
a symbol of dehumanization. It's saying, you
marked us to erase us. I will mark myself so
I don't forget you. It's an act of defiance against
that history. So we have this intense, historically
loaded, deeply felt Jewish theology driving the
need to get Randville back. But here is where
the story shifts and where I think Dr. Iqbal's
perspective is most valuable. This is the pivot
point of the essay. He isn't writing this from
inside the synagogue. He's a Muslim scholar.
And he takes us into that dialogue room in Miami.
Yes, the Miami interfaith sessions. This is where
it gets really interesting. So you have Jewish
participants wearing the tags, carrying all this
trauma we just discussed. The Holocaust, the
fear of abandonment, the sacred duty of burial.
All of that is in the room with them. It's palpable.
And across the table, you have Muslim participants
from the Miami community. And I imagine the vibe
in that room was tense. Kent is putting it mildly.
The source describes a real wall going up almost
immediately. The Muslim participants saw the
tags and their guard went up. They saw a military
symbol. So they got. They thought, militant,
pro -war, you support the bombing of Gaza. You
support the IDF. They saw a political threat
sitting across from them, wearing a symbol of
the army they saw as an oppressor. Which, let's
be honest, is a completely logical assumption
if you don't know the theology we just spent
15 minutes unpacking. If you see a military -style
ID tag, you think military. It's a perfectly
logical conclusion. But then, because they were
in a dialogue setting, the conversation happened.
They started talking. And the Jewish participants...
guided by the rabbi, didn't talk about military
strategy. They didn't talk about borders or Hamas
brigades. They talked about death. They talked
about burial. They explained the fear of the
crematorium. They explained Kavod Hamet, the
need to return the body to the earth, the agonizing
need to have a grave to visit, a place to mourn.
And that's when the light bulb went on. That's
when everything changed. Because that is a language
Islam speaks fluently. Let's look at that. Does
Islam have a similar concept of the body? I know
there are very strict burial laws in Islam as
well. It's remarkably similar. It's almost a
mirror image in many ways. Dr. Iqbal quotes the
famous verse from the Quran that said, whenever
someone dies, indeed we belong to Allah and indeed
to him we return. Acknowledging the source and
the destination. Exactly. The theology here is
that the body is alone from God. It's a trust.
And the mana, you live in it, you care for it,
but you don't own it. At the end of your life,
you have a duty to return it to the creator in
a dignified way. And the rituals, do they mirror
the Jewish ones we talked about, like Tahara?
It's almost a perfect parallel. In Islam, you
have ghusl. This is the ritual washing of the
body. It has to be done with extreme tenderness,
usually by family members or people of the same
gender. You use water. sometimes with camphor
or scented oils. It's intimate and respectful.
So again, it's the community, the family, not
a stranger. Yes. The community takes care of
its own. Then you have the kafon, the wrapping
of the body in simple white cloth. Just like
the Jewish shrouds. No fancy suits, no jewelry.
Exactly. Rich or poor, king or pauper, everyone
gets wrapped in simple, clean white cloth. It's
the ultimate equalizer in death. And then the
burial must be swift. Ideally within 24 hours.
Okay. I've always wondered about that rush. I
assumed it was a practical thing. You know, hygiene
in hot climates, desert traditions. That's the
secular explanation you often hear. And it might
be part of it historically. But the theological
reason is all about compassion for the deceased.
How so? The belief is that the soul has separated
from the body and is waiting to begin its journey
back to its creator. Delaying the burial is seen
as keeping the soul in a state of distress. of
limbo it's like leaving someone waiting at a
train station for days on end so it's an act
of mercy it is an act of mercy to the deceased
you hurry to bury them not to get rid of them
but to help them on their journey to give them
peace so when the muslim participants in miami
heard the jewish participants talk about the
agony of waiting of not being able to bury their
dead for days weeks months years they understood
viscerally In their bones, the political symbol
of the dog tag just melted away. Yeah. Underneath
it, they didn't see an enemy soldier or a political
opponent. They saw a fellow human being with
an unfulfilled sacred duty. They saw a shared
religious obligation. They realized, wait a minute,
you aren't wearing that because you want to destroy
my people. You're wearing that because you were
in agony over your need to bury your brother.
That is such a powerful shift. It moves the entire
conversation from my side versus your side to
we're all humans who need to bury our dead. It
humanizes the other through the shared experience
of grief. It creates a bridge. Dr. Iqbal calls
it a moment of understanding. Now, let's be crystal
clear. It didn't solve the geopolitical crisis
in the Middle East. Of course not. It didn't
stop the bombs. But in that room amongst those
specific people, it changed the temperature.
It allowed them to see each other as human beings
bound by similar sacred laws. It allowed them
to speak. Which brings us to the actual logistics
of this return. Because while the theology is
beautiful and shared in a conference room in
Miami, the reality on the ground in Gaza was
messy. It was violent. It was complicated. Messy
is a massive understatement. When we talk about
the return of Rancho Vili this week, we aren't
talking about a simple handover at a border crossing
with a handshake and a somber moment. We are
talking about a massive military and intelligence
operation that took place inside a hostile war
zone. The source material. mentioned something
that I found staggering, and I had to read it
a few times. It says that Israeli authorities
spent days exhuming approximately 250 bodies
from a cemetery in Gaza just to find him. Let's
just pause on that. 250 graves opened. 250 bodies
disturbed. My initial reaction to reading that
was shock. I mean, it feels extreme. It feels
like a violation, especially knowing what we
now know about the Islamic reverence for the
dead and the need for a swift, undisturbed burial.
It is extreme. And from a purely secular perspective
or a purely military strategy perspective, it
makes zero sense. Think about the cost. Think
about the resources. Why expend those resources?
Why risk soldiers' lives in a hostile zone for
a body? Why generate that much anger and hatred
on the other side by digging up their cemetery?
It seems completely irrational. It's totally
irrational from a cost -benefit analysis. But
if you view it through the lens of necrocide
and Kavod Hammett... Then it becomes a religious
imperative. It's not a choice. It's an obligation
that supersedes almost everything else. You cannot
leave the body behind. The idea of the mass grave
or the unknown grave is the ultimate nightmare
scenario from Jewish history. So the state acts
on it. The state, acting on this deep subconscious
theological impulse, goes to lengths that seem
irrational to the outside world to recover one
single body. And it's not just about October
7th either, is it? As you mentioned, there's
a pattern here in Israeli history. A long, consistent
pattern. Dr. Iqbal points to Zachary Baumel.
He was an Israeli tank commander missing in action
in the first Lebanon war in 1982. Right, 1982.
His body was missing for 37 years. 37 years.
Most nations would have declared him dead and
moved on decades ago. Israel kept looking. They
ran intelligence operations for decades. They
eventually got his remains back from Syria in
2019 via Russia. 37 years. Or Eli Cohen, the
famous spy executed in Damascus in the 1960s.
To this day, Israel is still trying to get his
remains back. Decades of secret negotiations
just to get his bones back. Time doesn't diminish
the obligation. It's a debt that never expires.
But here's the twist in the Ranjvili story that
Dr. Iqbal really highlights. The source says
Hamas actually provided the information to find
him. This is the fascinating and deeply messy
cooperation of enemies. This, in turn, didn't
happen in a vacuum. It wasn't just an Israeli
raid. No, it was part of the deal. It was part
of the ceasefire negotiations. It was entangled
with the opening of the Rafah crossing, with
the release of Palestinian prisoners with aid
shipments. So it was a bargaining chip. His body
was a bargaining chip. Explicitly. And Dr. Iqbal
doesn't shy away from that at all. He says both
sides instrumentalized a sacred duty. What does
he mean by that? He means Hamas used the body
as leverage to prove they were serious about
the ceasefire terms or to get more prisoners
released or more aid in. Israel used the ceasefire
as leverage. to get the body. It was raw political
currency. That feels so cynical. Using a corks
as currency. It is cynical. It's ugly. It's the
reality of war. But Dr. Iqbal finds a sliver
of hope, a silver lining, even in the cynicism.
What's the silver lining there? He argues that
by using the body as currency, both sides were
admitting that returning the dead matters. How
so? It feels like the opposite. Think about it.
For something to be valuable currency, both parties
have to agree on its value. If Hamas didn't care
about burial, they wouldn't have kept the body.
They wouldn't have tracked where it was buried.
They would have just left it in the field. Okay,
I see that. And if Israel didn't care, they wouldn't
have negotiated for it. So even in a war where
there is almost zero good faith, where both sides
view the other as inhuman monsters, they both
implicitly agreed on one thing. This body is
valuable. This body deserves to go home. It's
a weirdly profound agreement in the middle of
a bloodbath, a shared recognition of a moral
violation. We know keeping this body here isn't
right. Exactly. Both sides know that keeping
a body from its grave is a transgression and
that shared knowledge, even when it's used cynically,
is a tiny, tiny point of light. It's a shared
moral language. But we have to acknowledge the
tragedy here, too. The deep, painful asymmetry
of this whole situation. Because this story isn't
just about one family getting closure. No. And
Dr. Iqbal is very clear and very insistent on
this point. Rangevili goes home. He gets a state
funeral. His family sits Shiva. They have a grave
to visit. They get certainty. Which is invaluable.
Invaluable. Meanwhile, the operation to find
him involved deking up a cemetery and disturbing
250 Palestinian graves. And at the same time,
thousands of Palestinians are still missing under
the rubble in Gaza. Their families have no closure.
They don't have a body to wash. They don't have
a grave to visit. Their cemeteries may have been
bulldozed or disturbed. The inequality of who
gets to mourn is just. It's stark. It's a gut
-wrenching contrast. One family gets certainty
while thousands get more chaos and desecration.
And that tension, that painful asymmetry, leads
us to the central paradox of this entire deep
dive. The question that really haunts this whole
episode. The question of the living versus the
dead. Exactly. Dr. Iqbal poses this provocative,
deeply uncomfortable question. If we invest this
much moral weight, this much energy, this much
resource in the dead, if we're willing to negotiate...
Pause fighting, exhume graves, risk soldiers
and spend millions to bring back one corpse.
Why don't we invest as much in the living? Oof,
that hits hard. Because we don't. We don't. It
exposes a massive failure, a collective moral
failure. Because here is the great irony. Both
traditions, Judaism and Islam, actually prioritize
life over death, unequivocally. Let's look at
the Jewish side first, the concept of pikish
nefesh. Pekesh nefesh, the saving of a life.
In Jewish law, this is the trump card. It's the
highest value. It overrides almost every other
commandment in the Torah. Almost everything.
Almost everything except for murder, idolatry,
and certain sexual sins. You can break the Sabbath
to save a life. You can eat non -kosher food
if you're starving to save a life. You can drive
a car on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year,
to get someone to the hospital. And the Talmud
has that famous saying. Whoever saves one life,
it is as if he saved an entire world. the value
of single human life is infinite. And in Islam,
is it the same? It is almost identical. The Quran
in Surah 5, verse 32 says, Whoever kills a soul,
it is as if he had slain mankind entirely. And
whoever saves one, it is as if he had saved mankind
entirely. The exact same idea. Saving one life
is like saving all of humanity. Precisely. And
a teaching of the Prophet Muhammad says that
the first question a person will be asked on
the Day of Judgment is about bloodshed. Did you
spill innocent blood? The sanctity of life is
paramount. So the theology in both faiths is
crystal clear. Life comes first. The living take
precedence over the dead. The theology is clear.
But the politics failed. The human beings failed.
That's the tragedy Dr. Iqbal highlights. The
return of Ranjili was a triumph of Kabod Hama
dignity for the dead. We nailed that part. We
fulfilled that obligation. But the war itself,
the 843 days of fighting. It was a catastrophic
failure of Pekwash Nefesh. Failure of Koran 5
.32. We fail to save the thousands of worlds
that were lost on both sides. He mentions another
concept from Judaism, tzitzal emet. He translates
it as true kindness. Yes. In Jewish thought,
caring for the dead, washing the body, burying
it, mourning, is considered the truest kindness.
Why true? Because the dead person can't pee you
back. They can't write you a thank you note.
They can't do you a favor later. It is pure altruism.
You do it simply because it is the right thing
to do for a fellow human being. It's an act of
grace. It's a beautiful concept, doing good with
absolutely no expectation of reward. It is. But
the challenge Dr. Ipbal throws down at the end
of his essay is this. Can we extend that true
kindness to the living? Can we act with that
same selfless grace towards people who are still
breathing? Can we treat the living populations,
the people in found, this destroyed Kibbutzim,
the people in Khan Yunus, the refugees in Tenzin
Rafa, with that same level of sanctity we afford
a corpse? Because right now it seems like we
treat the dead with more reverence than the refugees.
That's the paradox, isn't it? We honor the body
once the life has left it. We treat the empty
vessel like a holy object. We move heaven and
earth to bring it home. But while the life is
in it, while the telemelechim, the image of God,
is still breathing inside it. We allow it to
be destroyed. We allow it to starve. We allow
it to be bombed. We fail it. So where do we go
from here? I mean, it feels hopeless. The clock
has stopped. The body is home. The war. Well,
the war shifts. It changes, but it doesn't end.
Is there a lesson here? Dr. Iqbal suggests that
we can actually use this shared theology of death
to build peace. He does. He refuses to end on
a hopeless note, which I appreciate. He suggests
that honoring the dead can be a bridge. How does
that work practically? Because it feels like
a nice poetic idea, but how does it work in the
real world between enemies? Well, think about
the universality of grief. It's the one thing
everyone in this conflict shares. Every single
person. Everyone has lost someone. Everyone has
a story of a funeral. Or the lack of a funeral.
Because it's a shared experience. It's the most
fundamental shared experience. Dr. Iqbal suggests
that organizations on both sides could work together
on the dignified treatment of the deceased. Like
a joint burial commission, something like that.
Exactly. Or a joint project on identifying remains
from past conflicts. Or mapping cemeteries to
ensure they're protected. It's a space where
enemies can recognize each other's humanity without
having to agree on borders or security arrangements
yet. You don't have to agree on who owns Jerusalem
to agree that a mother should be able to bury
her son. That's it right there. It's a starting
point. It's a nonpolitical human level task that
builds a tiny reservoir of trust where none exists.
And he brings up some deep vocabulary from both
traditions that could help. He says we use political
language too much and it fails us. This is so
important. We're stuck in the language of politics.
Two state solution. Demilitarized zones, security
envelopes, that's the language of policy papers.
It's sterile. It has no heart. It has no heart.
Dr. Iqbal says we need to use theological language
because that's what speaks to the people's souls
in this region. These are religious societies,
whether we in the secular West like it or not.
So from the Islamic side, he lists a few key
terms. The first is Rama. Rama, mercy. It's one
of the primary names of God in Islam, Araman,
the all -merciful. To act with Rama is to emulate
God. but also sul, which means reconciliation.
It's an active process of mending broken relationships.
And a very pragmatic concept he mentioned called
maslach. Maslach. I find this one fascinating.
It means public interest or the common good.
In Islamic jurisprudence, it allows for leaders
to make treaties and compromises, even with enemies,
if those treaties serve the greater good of the
community and prevent further harm. So making
peace with an enemy isn't surrender. It's maslach.
It's a wise and religiously sanctioned act to
protect the community from further death and
destruction. It gives a religious permission
structure to stop fighting. And the Quran verse,
he quotes, if they incline to peace, then incline
to it. Exactly. It's a command, not a suggestion.
If the other side offers a hand, you are religiously
obligated to take it. And from the Jewish side,
the key term is, of course, shalom. Shalom. But
not just as a passive greeting like hello or
goodbye. The Psalms say, seek peace and pursue
it. The Hebrew is, The rabbis point out something
fascinating about this verse. For most commandments,
you wait for the opportunity to come to you.
You wait for the Sabbath to arrive. You wait
for a poor person to ask for charity. But peace.
You have to chase it. You have to run after it.
You have to hunt it down. It requires active,
relentless effort. You can't just sit back and
hope for peace to happen. I love that image.
Running after peace, not just waiting for a treaty
to be signed by politicians. And Dr. Iqbal makes
a crucial distinction here, which is maybe the
most important takeaway. He warns against conflating
the religion with the nationalism. The trap we
all fall into. All the time. He says we have
to be so careful to distinguish Jewish theology
from Israeli government policy. They are not
the same thing. And we have to distinguish Islamic
theology from Hamas or Palestinian resistance.
They're not the same thing. Right. When we collapse
those identities, we lose all the wisdom we've
just been talking about. We lose the wisdom.
We just get tribalism. We just get my team versus
your team. He points out that the diasporic communities
in Miami, in London, in Toronto have a special
role here. Because they aren't on the front lines.
They aren't in the bomb shelters or the refugee
camps. They have a bit of distance. They have
the luxury of safety. And with that luxury comes
a responsibility. They can model what it looks
like to hold multiple truths at the same time.
To say, I believe in Israeli security and Palestinian
dignity. To say, I mourn the Jewish dead and
the Muslim dead. If it can happen in a dialogue
room in Miami, if those dog tags can, for a moment,
become a point of connection instead of division,
maybe eventually it can happen in Jerusalem.
It's about small acts of recognition. Yes. Grand
peace treaties often fail. because there is no
trust on the ground. They're imposed from the
top down. But small acts like returning a body,
like helping to identify a grave, like sharing
a meal build trust from the bottom up. Dr. Iqbal
points to history. He says we have to remember
this isn't impossible. Look at Northern Ireland.
Catholics and Protestants who slaughtered each
other for generations. That's right. Now they
share a government. Look at South Africa. Black
and white. Apartheid seemed insurmountable. Or
France and Germany. They killed each other by
the millions twice in a single century. It was
unimaginable that they would ever be allies.
Now they share a currency and an open border.
Reconciliation happens. It's a long, painful
process, but it happens. And it always starts
when you begin to see the other as human. And
ironically, as we've seen today, seeing how the
other mourns their dead is often... The first
most powerful step in seeing them is human. When
you see a mother crying over a grave, you don't
see a terrorist or an oppressor. You see a mother.
And that changes everything. So as we wrap up,
let's go back to that image in the intro. The
dog tags. They are being retired now. The source
mentions they are being collected, being placed
in repositories and synagogues. They are becoming
sacred objects of history. Artifacts of a time
of waiting. They are being taken off necks and
put into archives. And the clock in Tel Aviv
has stopped. The digital numbers are dark. That
constant ticking reminder is gone. It has. The
count is over. The vigil for Ranjivilli is over.
So the question Dr. Iqbal leaves us with, the
question for all of us is, what did we learn
from these last 843 days? What did we learn from
these dog tags? Did we only learn how to recover
the dead? Did we get really good at fulfilling
Kavod Hamet? Did we perfect the art of being
efficient undertakers after the fact? Or did
we learn how to protect the living? Did we learn
anything about Pekwash Nefesh? It's a haunting
choice because we can't do both, it seems. It
feels like we have to choose. It does. The theology
is there. The resources are there. The true kindness,
the cheese of Shalomet exists. We saw it in the
exhumation. We saw it in the negotiation. The
machinery of care exists. We just have to decide
to apply it to the people who are still breathing.
The image of Randville returning home. It's tragic,
but it's also a reminder of what humans owe each
other. That even in the midst of total war, we
can pause for this one sacred act. He was a defender.
He was a son. And in the end, his return was
a moment where the war stopped, just for a second,
to honor a human life that was lost. Dr. Iqbal's
final words in the essay are beautiful. He says,
may the memory be a blessing and may the wisdom
of the dead teach the living how to stop the
war. That's the hope, isn't it? That the dead
can teach us what we couldn't seem to learn on
our own. Thank you for listening to this deep
dive. It's a heavy one, I know, but I think an
important one. As you go about your week, maybe
think about that clock. Think about all the energy,
all the focus, all the national will it took
to stop it. And just think about where else that
energy could go. Take care, everyone. See you
next time.