Ne’ila: What are we? What are our lives?

The Gemara in Yoma 87b asks, What is Ne’ila, this closing service? 

Rav says it’s an additional Amida prayer. One more final opportunity to pray with all our heart and soul. One more time to appeal to G-d’s rachamim, mercy. 

But Shmuel offers something radical. Ne’ila isn’t a prayer at all. It’s simply a time to reflect on two questions, Mah anu (What are we) and Meh chayeinu (What are our lives)? 

Rashi makes this explicit: Shmuel says we are speaking, not praying. 

We speak directly to G-d and ask ourselves how we want to live. 

After an entire day of confession and petition, after all the words of the Machzor, at the final hour, when the gates are closing, Shmuel says that we stop praying and stand with these two raw, existential questions: What are we? What are our lives? 

Last Yom Kippur, right before Ne’ila, someone handed me a Machzor with a dedication that reads, “Dedicated by … In memory of Rabba Sara Hurwitz and Josh Abraham on the birth of Natan.” Now, thank G-d, my husband, Josh, and I are very much alive, and our son Natan is nine. But what better reminder could there be to confront the questions of our lives? If Yom Kippur is a brush with death, then Ne’ila is that moment when we confront our existence. And in that space between the closing gates, we ask, How do we want to live? 

I hold these questions alongside the words of Eli Sharabi, the first Gaza hostage to publish his account of captivity. To call it merely an autobiography misses its essence. It’s a sacred text about what it means to live in darkness and fear, and still choose life. 

In the tunnels of Gaza, stripped of everything, Sharabi was forced to answer Shmuel’s questions in the starkest terms imaginable. What am I? What is my life? 

You would expect the answer to be “I am nothing. My life is nothing.” But instead, his answer reverberates with a fierce, almost defiant vitality. “I don’t want to survive just for them [his family]. I don’t want to live just for them. I want to live for myself too. For me, Eli Sharabi. I want to live. I love life. I crave it. I want to breathe life, to walk free, to return to the open skies, to go back home, to work, to have purpose. To return to the sea, to diving, to hiking, to the Jewish holidays we celebrate as a nuclear family in Israel and those we celebrate with Lianne’s family in Britain. To return to the roads, to driving, to walking down the street, to my simple regular worry-free day-to-day.” 

Mah anu, What are we, meh chayeinu, what are our lives? 

If Sharabi, who lived for 491 days in constant hunger, dealing with the brutality of his captives, living in filth in the tunnels, without knowing of his beloved family, if his wife and girls were alive or dead, if he can still crave life against all odds, then I, too. Even when I feel shrouded in darkness and fear, I will not take what I have for granted, and I will embrace life. 

But Sharabi’s testimony offers something even more profound. In absolute darkness, starving, humiliated, he and his fellow hostages created a daily ritual. 

“The four of us sit and try to think of something good that happened to us that day. Whatever day we just had. At first, we rack our brains to think of one good thing. Then, as time goes by, we challenge ourselves to come up with three. Slowly, this routine begins to affect our whole day. We find ourselves searching for the good things for which we can express gratitude in the evening.” 

Some sweet tea. A cruel guard’s absence. A day without humiliation. A small piece of fruit. 

In hell, they chose to find gratitude and see the tiny, minuscule blessings in their lives. 

He writes, “Hope is never something that comes easily. It’s always something you’ve got to fight for, to work on. Like Kiddush every Friday night, like Eliyahu’s Havdalah songs at the end of every Sabbath, like the prayers that open every morning, this circle of thanksgiving is something that we stick to, cling to, cleave to. To search for something good. To stay optimistic. To win.” 

Hope was their spiritual practice. Gratitude became resistance. Searching for good was an act of defiance against fear. 

This year, as you stand in the final moments of Yom Kippur, between the closing gates, Shmuel asks us to hold Eli Sharabi’s questions alongside our own. Mah anu? What are we? Are we people who wait for perfect conditions to feel gratitude? Or can we, like Sharabi, search for good even in difficulty? 

Meh chayeinu? What are our lives? Do we celebrate only the extraordinary moments, or can we embrace the mundane, like walking down the street, breathing, the freedom to be at home with our loved ones? 

This is the wisdom of someone who faced death and chose, deliberately, consciously, to love life. Not despite the darkness, but in the darkness. Not waiting for redemption, but creating small redemptions daily. 

As the gates close, we’re not asked to have all the answers. Shmuel teaches us that Ne’ila isn’t about answers at all. It’s about sitting with the questions: What are we? What are our lives? 

As we examine the lives we intend to make for ourselves this year, let us hold Sharabi’s courage and search for good even when it’s hard to find. I, too, will strive to make hope and gratitude a daily practice. 

Mah anu? Meh chayeinu? What kind of life will you choose to live? 

May this year inscribe us in the book of those who truly live. 

• Rabba Sara Hurwitz is the co-founder and president of Maharat, the first institution to ordain Orthodox women as clergy. She serves on the rabbinic staff at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale.