If there were a way somehow to eclipse the tragedy and suffering Israelis have endured since Hamas’s attacks on October 7, 2023, and replace it with joy and hope, then Monday, October 13, provided it.

After two years of practically uninterrupted war, the return to Israel of the 20 remaining hostages still alive in Gaza generated such relief among Israelis that for a day, at least, it appeared that all of Israel was swept up in euphoria.

More than half a million people—5 percent of Israel’s population—crowded into Hostages Square in Tel Aviv to celebrate the historic moment. For nearly 100 weeks, demonstrators had gathered there on Saturday nights, pleading for the captives’ release. On October 13, the atmosphere flipped: Crowds of people sang, embraced each other and shed tears of joy when helicopters carrying returning hostages passed overhead en route to the nearby hospital where they were to begin their recovery.

Following months of start-and-stop negotiations and the slow dwindling of the number of living hostages, the United States-brokered ceasefire had come together so abruptly that many Israelis were in a state of disbelief.

“Mr. President! The war is over?” a reporter shouted at President Trump as he made his way into the Knesset for his address that same day, asking a question on everyone’s minds. “Is the war now officially over?”

Trump, ever confident in his abilities to impose his will upon the warring parties, affirmed that it was—at least to his reckoning.

“We’ve achieved what everybody said was impossible—at long last, we have peace in the Middle East,” Trump told reporters later that day.  “Nobody thought we could ever get there, and now we’re there.”

The ensuing days have raised serious questions about the durability of the ceasefire, as Hamas is failing to deliver all the bodies of the remaining murdered hostages and reasserting its dominance in Gaza with public shows of force and mass executions of rivals and perceived collaborators with Israel. And just three days after the hostages’ festive return, the mood in Israel again turned somber as the country held its official memorial day for the events of October 7 and those who died in the war.

But on that Monday, Israel was awash in excitement. Every television program, radio station and news outlet broadcast images of the hostages’ reunions—from the FaceTime calls Hamas captors placed to some of the parents on Sunday to the emotional reunifications in sterile hospital rooms in Tel Aviv the next day.

“The nightmare is over!” Avishai David, the father of one of the newly released hostages, Evyatar David, declared in an interview with Israel Radio Reshet Bet. “There is joy.”

The timing of the hostage release was freighted with symbolism. Two years ago, it was at dawn on the Simchat Torah holiday when Hamas terrorists poured across the border, murdering 1,200 people and pillaging and burning Israeli borderline communities in what amounted to the single-deadliest day to befall the Jewish people since the Holocaust.

That the hostage release took place exactly two years later, on the eve of the same holiday, felt like a tikkun—a reparation, the closing of a circle.

It brought new resonance to the appellation of Sukkot as “the time of our joy” and evoked the words of Psalm 126, which recounts the Jewish people’s return to Zion from captivity. It’s traditionally recited as part of the grace after meals on holidays and Shabbat: “When the Lord restores the captives of Zion, we shall be like dreamers. Then our mouths will be filled with laughter and our tongues with jubilation… Those that sow with tears will reap with joy.”

After the October 7 attacks, synagogues worldwide added special prayers aimed at the return of the hostages, with many Israeli shuls reciting each of their names. Their release on the eve of the holiday prompted quick adjustments as congregations tried simultaneously to celebrate the release while also commemorating those who died.

Yossi Garr, the gabbai of one such congregation in Modiin who, at 52, has spent over 200 days since October 7 in military reserve duty, wrote on Facebook, “That day [October 7, 2023], I was at home, I was in shul, I was trying to make sense of what was unfolding all around us. The truth of it all didn’t sink in for days after October 7. Today, two years later, I’m sitting on base in an IDF uniform, watching the release of the remaining live hostages.” He wrote that his eyes were fixated on the screen as Omri Miran, the brother of one of Garr’s fellow reservists, was freed. “It’s hard to put into words the mix of emotions—joy, relief, pain, and the deep ache of everything and everyone we’ve lost along the way.”

Few Israelis have illusions about the difficult days ahead. It will take time for the hostages to recover, physically and psychologically. The war may yet resume. Hamas remains a presence in Gaza. The social divisions in Israel that preceded the war persist.

But with all surviving captives now home, Israel can begin to move beyond the trauma. The ecstasy on October 13 was fleeting. What Israelis seek now, after two years of war, is something simpler: normal life.

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Uriel Heilman is a journalist living in Israel.