Episode 84: Why soldiers wept when Ran came home, lessons from Tu Bishvat

Ask Haviv Anything

Haviv Rettig Gur

History

4.9 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 29 January 2026

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week, Israel finally brought home the remains of its last hostage, 24-year-old Ran Gvili. To outsiders, the sheer scale of the national sacrifice and the collective exhalation of relief that followed his return can seem like a mystery. Every nation honors its fallen, but few go to the lengths Israelis do to reclaim a body from the hands of the enemy.

In this episode, we use the upcoming holiday of Tu Bishvat as an entryway into the Jewish psyche. We explore the idea of "hesed shel Emet" -- the "true kindness" of a dignified burial, which is called "true" because it can never be reciprocated. We dive into a world where a dignified burial is more than a ritual; it is a declaration that even in death, a human being remains a reflection of the divine. Through the teachings of the Malbim and the Sfat Emet, we re-examine Tu Bishvat not as a simple children’s holiday, but as a sophisticated meditation on the human condition. From the sap stirring in the dead of winter to the "inner light" hidden within the shells of the Seven Species, we discover a "New Year of the Human"—a day that honors our unique mission to find meaning in our mortality and uncover the sacred within the broken.

This episode was sponsored by an anonymous donor who asked to dedicate it to all our fallen soldiers and to the sacrifices of the reservists and their families, from October 7 until today. Thank you for your sponsorship.

If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at haviv@askhavivanything.com⁠.

Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi, everybody. Welcome to a new episode of Ask Haviv Anything.
0:09.0	I'm recording on Thursday, January 29. Yesterday, Ran Gvili, 24 years old, when he died,
0:15.6	was finally brought home to burial in his hometown in Israel. The last of our people robbed from us by Hamas on October
0:24.1	7. Watching videos of the soldiers who found his body, watching them crying and singing when they found
0:31.9	out it was him, one of them, I think, was blowing a shofar in one video, in that corner of Gaza where they found him
0:39.2	in that cemetery, where the enemy hid our son from us. I've been asked over the last couple of
0:45.9	days again and again by foreign media outlets, why this was such a big deal, why Israelis were so
0:53.1	obsessed with this issue, why battalions
0:55.8	were hunting for the last body in Gaza, why the war suddenly could come to an end when our people
1:00.4	were brought back, what about the burial of this last body seemed to bring the whole country
1:06.6	to a pause?
1:09.1	It's not that other people don't care about their hostages or their lost ones,
1:14.5	their lost soldiers or fighters. It's that nobody seems to obsess about it quite as much as
1:20.0	Israelis. It seems to be bigger here in this culture. And I haven't really responded. And I kind of felt like it would take far too long to
1:30.4	explain. Like it's not a sound bite I can prepare for cable television. And not everything about my
1:36.9	existence and our existence is for sharing. Not the big things. If you understand this,
1:43.2	you don't need anyone to explain it to you. And if you don't understand it,, you don't need anyone to explain it to you. And if you
1:45.4	don't understand it, you also don't need anyone to explain it to you. Either you're in the circle of
1:51.7	solidarity of responsibility and then it's as clear as day, or you're not and it's just not your
1:59.1	responsibility. You have plenty of other responsibilities.
2:02.7	What's the point of opening our souls and laying it out before the world?
2:08.2	But then I realized that Tubeshwit is coming.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Haviv Rettig Gur, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Haviv Rettig Gur and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.