Last month, I stepped off the plane at Ben Gurion Airport for the first time in over a decade. I wasn’t coming for a conference or a program. I was coming as a father.
My twin boys and I were there to visit yeshivas and to walk campuses, meet rabbeim, feel the rhythm of Torah learning, and begin imagining their next chapter. It was one of those milestone parenting moments: equal parts pride, nostalgia, and quiet awe at how fast time moves.
But Israel, as it often does, reminded me that personal milestones unfold within a national story.
When we arrived at Ben Gurion Airport at 3 a.m. in the morning, we walked through the long corridor that, for more than two years, displayed the pictures of the hostages taken into Gaza. That morning, the railings were empty except for one photo: Ran Gvili, who was killed on October 7, 2023, and whose remains had been held hostage since.
The solitary picture stopped me. I paused and explained to my sons why.
There I was excited and hopeful, beginning a meaningful father-sons journey staring at a reminder that for many families, time had frozen.
Leadership collides with reality in moments like that. You can’t walk past those faces without asking: What does responsibility look like right now? How do you hold hope without denying pain? How do you lead when grief is unfinished?
Ten days later, as we wheeled our suitcases back through the airport, something had changed. The picture was gone. While we were in Israel, the IDF had located and returned Ran Gvili’s remains. His family could finally bury him.
Closure is not the same as healing. But absence is not the same as forgetting. The empty space felt heavier than the poster itself.
During those ten days, we traveled across the country visiting yeshivas. We met educators who carry both Torah and trauma in the same breath. We heard shiurim about war, resilience, faith, and the moral clarity required in impossible times.
At the Hesder yeshivas especially, the contrast was striking: wide-eyed recent high school graduates learning beside fifth-year students in green army uniforms, heavy-eyed but filling every spare moment with words of Torah. The beit midrash was not an escape from the world; it was preparation for it. That may have been the deepest leadership lesson of the trip.
As a father, I was helping my sons choose a place that will strengthen our tradition through Torah learning, and for one of them after Yeshiva, to strengthen our nation through IDF service.
As someone who thinks deeply about leadership, I was left with this question as I walked the now empty corridor: What do we carry forward when the picture comes down? Because removing a poster does not remove obligation. It transforms it.
The image of Ran Gvili represented unfinished business and ongoing pain. Its absence calls us to memory, dignity, and the responsibility to build a future worthy of sacrifice, while forever guarding the sanctity of life itself.
Leadership is not only about vision. It is about memory and recognizing that every generation stands on stories that cost something.
As I took the last few steps in the corridor before we boarded our flight home, I looked one last time at the place where the picture had been. An empty space by a railing in an airport. But also a reminder: Time moves. Chapters close. Responsibility transfers.
My sons are beginning their next chapter in Israel. Israel is writing its next chapter in resilience. And we, wherever we are, are responsible for ensuring that the space left behind is filled not with forgetfulness, but with purpose.
Leadership begins there.