Armed with tefillin and neiros, Riki Siton is fighting to free the hostages

Photos: Flash90, Riki Siton

She may look out of place in her sheitel and long sleeves, but Mrs. Riki Siton is a familiar presence at the Mateh Mishpachot Hachatufim — the Tel Aviv-based Headquarters for the Families of the Hostages — and at Hostage Square, where she does her utmost to bring frum-flavored chizuk to the hostages’ families

When Riki Siton rode the elevator up to the Mateh Hachatufim in October, she questioned her sanity. “I asked myself, ‘What am I thinking coming here? I’m a chareidi woman from Bnei Brak! How can I look someone whose child is being held hostage in Gaza, in the eye?! What can I possibly say?’ ”

Instinct told her to do an about-face and return home, but Hashgachah intervened. At that moment, the elevator doors opened and Sheli Shemtov — whose 24-year-old son Omer was taken hostage on October 7 — looked straight at Riki, and with a broad smile said, “Achoti hachareidi, thank you for coming, we were hoping you would come. Please, bring your friends!” Immediately after she’d heard her son had been kidnapped, Sheli had called for achdus among Am Yisrael.

Where Are the Chareidim?

Riki is a program director at Ayelet Hashachar, a renowned Israeli bridge-building and Jewish education organization, and today also spearheads a movement of women backed by Ayelet Hashachar, who endeavor to bring a frum presence to the Mateh Hachatufim. I catch her at nine p.m., when she’s in her car, on the road up north to deliver tefillin to a man interested in keeping the mitzvah as a zechus for the hostages’ return. She’s accompanied by Julie Cooperstein, the mother of 20-year-old hostage Bar (Bar ben Julie), who was also kidnapped from the music festival, where he was part of the security team.

Riki tells me how her involvement with the Mateh Hachatufim began. “Often groups of secular people visit Bnei Brak to see how chareidim live,” Riki tells me over the phone. “I’ve never advertised. Somehow they find me. Some of them come through government programs, others by word of mouth. So someone from Hod Hasharon reached out to me at the beginning of the war, someone who’d once been in my house on one of these trips. This woman asked me, ‘Where are the chareidim? Why aren’t they visiting the families of the hostages? Do they care? You know a lot of people, bring them so the hostages’ families will see that their plight matters to the chareidi world as well.’

“I told her that I had to first see the situation before I brought other people with me, and that’s how I found myself in the elevator on my way up to the Mateh in Tel Aviv.”

“When the war broke out,” Riki continues, “I was in a state of total shock, numb with disbelief and pain. I went to many of the funerals of the residents who were killed, and traveled down to Eilat to visit displaced families from the kibbutzim that had been targeted.”

Through her work at Ayelet Hashachar, Riki had been close to many families from the ill-fated Gazan-border communities of Kerem Shalom, Re’im, and Be’eri. “Ayelet Hashachar has an initiative that sends avreichim to live on secular kibbutzim,” she explains. “By simply living together with ‘the other,’ the kibbutznikim started to taste and see the concept of ki tov Hashem. Through personal connection with their chareidi neighbors, the walls between the sectors dissolve and stigmas fall away. Because when you meet a person up close and have an opportunity to speak to them, you start to understand more and are open to learning from them.”

Riki is also involved in Ayelet Hashachar’s Chavrusa Project, which pairs secular men and women with a frum one. The word chavrusa is used loosely here, not strictly in its classic context of study partner. There’s another objective: friendship and connection.

“You can’t make a person become frum,” Riki explains. “You can’t change a person. You can get to know them, see them for who they are, show them your lifestyle. That has a tremendous effect.

“Don’t get me wrong, if you have the zechus to be a part of someone’s journey to Yiddishkeit, that’s fantastic. But that’s not the main goal. Eleven years ago, I had a chavrusa who saw our relationship as something of an anthropological foray into the world of chareidim. She had no intention of ever becoming frum and was entirely uninterested in learning anything related to Judaism. I sent a question to Rav Aharon Leib Steinman: Should I still be her chavrusa? Rav Steinman’s surprising answer was that if she wants a chavrusa with a frum person, I must provide her with one. However, her chavrusa must be someone adequately grounded in her own Yiddishkeit.”

Riki pauses. “‘Because,’ said Rav Steinman, ‘if one Jew will hate another Jew a little bit less, that is chazarah b’teshuvah.’ ”