Human Shield

With his son Yosef Chaim now beside him, recovering at their home in Kiryat Malachi, Avi feels he has received the greatest gift on earth. While Yosef Chaim is slowly returning to routine and needs much rest, Avi Ohana has no intention of resting, nor of taking time to recover from these two tormenting years. What he did in the past two years, he hopes to continue doing for the rest of his life.

This last year, on 7 Adar, the birthday and yahrtzeit of Moshe Rabbeinu, Rav Meir Mazuz ztz”l told him to daven that in the merit of Moshe Rabbeinu, Yosef Chaim would return home healthy and whole.

“I was standing at the Kotel plaza, saying Tehillim and crying, and through my tears, promising Hashem that if He returns Yosef Chaim to me, I will do everything in my power to sanctify His Name in the world as long as I have strength. That’s why I intend to keep speaking, as long as I can, wherever and whenever possible.”

These days, Avi Ohana is spreading the miracle of his son’s survival.

Avi reports that Yosef Chaim, a former combat commander in the IDF’s Givati Brigade, survived torture “beyond anything the army could have imagined.”

“It was a great miracle,” Avi says. “Yosef Chaim told us so many things we didn’t know. For example, after the deal was signed, we thought they were taking them out of the tunnels to prepare for release. But what Yosef Chaim said was shocking. He told us, ‘Dad, from the moment the deal was signed, they put me with six others and took us down a staircase — down and down and down. We thought we’d reach another tunnel, but instead they put us in a pit so small that seven men couldn’t sit. We could barely even stand or lean on the wall. There was so little oxygen that we could have died from that alone.’”

Yosef Chaim relates that in the first months of the war, he was held in one of the heavily-guarded houses. “I heard the Air Force bombings very clearly — the whole house shook from the explosions. Twice I was almost killed from those bombings. One time was as they were moving me from one apartment to another. I walked about a hundred meters with the terrorists guarding me, when suddenly I heard a horrific explosion. I turned around and saw the house I had been kept in collapse and crumble. Had I stayed there another five minutes, I would no longer be alive.

“Since then,” Yosef Chaim continues, “I repeatedly found myself in near-death situations. Each time, I would lift my head to Heaven and promise Hashem that if He would save me, I would say Tikkun Haklali after I was freed — and suddenly everything would turn for the better and the danger would pass. Everything there was beyond nature. Nothing was natural or logical. We were underground, in places I don’t think the army even knows about. Only prayers and faith protected us there.”

A few months in, Yosef Chaim was transferred from a Gazan hideaway into the tunnels, where he remained until his release, always with several other hostages.

“For the last two months, though, I was  alone,” Yosef Chaim says. “I was used as a human shield for one of Hamas’s senior commanders who still hadn’t been targeted. On the one hand, it was hard to be alone, but on the other hand, that commander treated me relatively well, because he knew he needed me.

“There was no chance in the world I would come out of Gaza standing on my own two feet — but look at me. One day I’ll tell everything, and then everyone will understand what miracles we experienced. For all 738 days we were in Gaza, we didn’t know if we would remain alive. Every minute, we didn’t know if we’d live another minute. The Hashgachah pratis was beyond belief. We felt malachim guarding us at every step.”

Merit of the Mitzvah

Yosef Chaim Ohana was born on 10 Elul, 5760/2000. He’s the oldest of his parents’ three living children, with siblings Yisrael and Odell. Another brother, Asher Yitzchak a”h, passed away from illness at the age of seven. (Avi and Yosef Chaim’s mother, Miri Ben-Ami, are divorced.)

“I named him Yosef Chaim after the Ben Ish Chai ztz”l, whose yahrzeit was  that week,” Avi says. “I’ve always felt deeply connected to the tzaddik and have learned a lot from his seforim. Throughout these past two years, I’ve been davening to Hashem to protect Yosef Chaim in the merit of the Ben Ish Chai.

Yosef Chaim studied at the Chabad Talmud Torah in Kiryat Malachi, then attended a religious preparatory academy in Teveriya. He enlisted in the Givati Brigade, and after his release from the army, chose a different derech from his family and lived in his grandmother’s apartment near Tel Aviv, where he worked as a bartender.

“Two days before the massacre,” Avi says, “Yosef Chaim came to visit. We sat in the succah, had a nice family meal, and just before he left the house, he asked for my arba minim in order to make a brachah on them. Yosef Chaim waved the lulav and etrog, and then I placed my hands on his head and blessed him that in the merit of this mitzvah, Hashem will save him from death. I have no idea why I blessed him that way, why those words even came out of my mouth.”

This year before Succos, Avi says he doesn’t know exactly why, but he bought two sets of arba minim — one for himself, and one for Yosef Chaim. And indeed, just hours after he was freed, before the chag was over, Yosef Chaim made the brachah once again — the same holy words that protected him two years before.

Status: Missing

The three weeks after Simchas Torah were unbearable. Yosef Chaim had gone to the Nova festival with friends, and when the terrorists attacked, he and a friend began helping the injured at the party, bringing them to medics and ambulances before trying to escape themselves. They ran to the main road, just as an RPG was fired by the terrorists at the car under which they took shelter. The friend survived, but didn’t see Yosef Chaim after that.

The Ohana family searched for Yosef Chaim in every hospital ward in the country, but he was nowhere to be found. There was no clue as to whether he was alive, or where he might be. Those were days shrouded in grief and confusion, as a stream of bodies arrived at the Shura military base for an often-complex identification process. “During the first three weeks of the war, Yosef Chaim was listed as missing,” says Avi. “They were the hardest weeks of my life. I jumped at every phone call, every knock on the door. A week later, the army inform us that they believed Yosef Chaim had been kidnapped. After they had completed analyzing footage from the terrorists’ vehicles and were able to track his cellphone signal, we received official confirmation that Yosef Chaim had been abducted and was alive in Gaza. Almost three months later, we received footage the army had retrieved from cameras. In the video, you can see Yosef Chaim standing tall and fearless, while ten terrorists beat him and then threw him to the ground, while one terrorist points a gun at his head. Just before he pulls the trigger, another terrorist stops him — as if he’d received a sign from Heaven. I have no doubt that it was the power of our tefillot, and the merit of the arba minim, the last mitzvah Yosef Chaim performed before he was taken.”

From that day on, Avi Ohana decided to dedicate all his time and energy to spiritual efforts for his son’s safety. Representatives from the Hostage Family Forum reached out to him, but he turned them away, choosing to direct his pleas only to Hashem. Over the next two years, he visited the graves of tzaddikim across Israel and abroad, sought blessings from the great rabbanim of the generation, and poured out endless tears and prayers — often joined by other hostage families. The outreach organizations working with the hostage families saw him as the driving spiritual force, and he willingly joined every Shabbos retreat, prayer gathering, and visit to Torah leaders.
“It wasn’t just our prayers,” Avi  emphasizes. “All of Am Yisrael tore open the heavens with prayers for the hostages throughout Jewish communities around the world, in yeshivot, seminaries, schools, and batei knesset. Jews who had never met Yosef Chaim finished entire masechtot and thousands of chapters of Tehillim in his merit and in the merit of all the hostages.

Over the next two years, he visited the graves of tzaddikim across Israel and abroad, sought blessings from the great rabbis of the generation, and poured out endless tears and prayers — often joined by other hostage families. The outreach organizations working with the hostage families saw him as the driving spiritual force, and he willingly joined every Shabbos retreat, prayer gathering, and visit to Torah leaders.
Rav David Chai Abuchatzeira was Avi’s backbone through the ordeal, as was the Vizhnitzer Rebbe, Rav Mendel Hager.

“While davening one day in a shul in Kiryat Malachi, I met a Vizhnitzer chassid, who took me to the Rebbe,” Avi relates. “I met him privately and attended several tishen, and the Rebbe repeatedly assured me that Yosef Chaim was alive and would come out of Gaza whole and healthy. All the chassidim davened for him. After the release, on Motzaei Simchat Torah, I spoke with the Rebbe for half an hour. He shared with me that throughout these two years, he had taken upon himself many commitments in tzedakah, Torah, and tefillah for my son’s sake. I was shocked and so moved that I cried like a child.”

Kiddush on Water

Meanwhile, Avi tirelessly kept the tefillah message going. “I went to every place that invited me — universities, schools, the Knesset, even a Shas conference. Everywhere I went, I spread the message that my son was in Hashem’s hands, not in the hands of Hamas — that G-d was watching over him every moment in a supernatural way. And indeed, those were the same words that Yosef Chaim himself told me after we were reunited.”

Because in a Hamas tunnel, all you really have is Hashem’s embrace, regardless of whether you pretty much ignored Him before. For Yosef Chaim and his fellow hostages, mitzvah observance in some form or other became a primary concern and priority, even though they might have left it behind in the “before” part of life.

“We would sit together and try to reconstruct the calendar by various different signs, to keep the mitzvot and times as best we could,” Yosef Chaim reveals. “Last year, according to our calculations, we knew when the month of Elul began, and from that day we started saying Selichot, as per the Sephardic custom. We all said Selichot together, each one reciting by heart a different section. Later, we found out that we had made a small mistake — in the end we said Selichot for forty-five days. But we never got the date of Yom Kippur wrong. We all fasted that day — including Keith Siegel, who was with us during the first year of captivity. Keith was like a father to us — an extraordinary person. He told us this was the first time in his life he had fasted on Yom Kippur.

“On Shabbat, we would make Kiddush over water or over the dry pita they gave us. We strengthened each other, and even sang Shabbat zemirot. Whenever we wanted to ask the terrorists for a bit of food or a cup of tea when it was freezing cold, we would recite Psalm 121 — ‘Shir lama’alot —I lift my eyes to the mountains…’ After the request was granted — and even when it wasn’t — we would recite Mizmor LeTodah (A psalm of thanksgiving).”

“You could say that faith in the Borei Olam saved us. The terrorists were religious men, believers. When we spoke with them about faith and about G-d, we managed to win their hearts — and that’s how our lives were spared. We noticed that whenever they wanted to harm us, we’d start talking about emunah and about Hashem, and somehow, it helped.”

Yosef Chaim related how, more than once, he narrowly escaped execution during his two years in captivity.

“I had to plant a logical thought in my captors’ minds — why it wasn’t worth it for them to kill me. Dozens of times, I was one second away from a bullet to the head,” he relates.

In one instance, he told the terrorist captors in Arabic that he’s picked up, “Wait a second — before you shoot, what do you gain from this? You’ll get nothing. The State of Israel will give you something valuable in return for me, I’m your human shield.’”

It was also imperative for him to hide the fact that he was a former commander in the Givati Brigade. He didn’t deny being a soldier, because in their eyes, everyone was a soldier anyway, but just to play it safe, he told them: “The army didn’t want me. It took a long time before they even drafted me. Eventually they gave me a low-level job, and later kicked me out.” Downplaying his military service to such an extent, the terrorists believed he had barely served in the IDF.

Avi, too, never mentioned his son’s army service in all the two years of interviews he gave.

No More Doubts

But for all the psychological games between captor and hostage, there was one thing that overshadowed everything.

“Hunger was the hardest part,” Yosef Chaim says. “Anyone who hasn’t experienced it will never understand. The terrorists gave us one dry, stale pita a day. Since we never knew if we’d have food the next day, we decided to save that pita for the following day. So every day, we ate yesterday’s pita — already dry, and in the damp tunnels, it would grow moldy. We’d ask the terrorists to burn it a little so we could eat it despite the mold.

“One day I thought to myself: There’s no reason to live like this. I decided to trust Hashem completely — that He would provide my sustenance — and I told my friends that from now on, I would eat the pita of that day. I told them that in the desert, Hashem gave the mahn to the Jewish people fresh each day, and I was sure He would take care of us the same way.

“My friends thought I was crazy, but after a few days another one did the same, and then another, until after two weeks, everyone was eating their daily pita that same day. And from that point on, there wasn’t a single day that we didn’t receive food.”

Yosef Chaim says that there were many “winks” from Hashem during those two horrific years, gestures that made it clear they were being guarded by a Higher force.

“Hashem’s Hashgachah pratit accompanied us constantly,” Yosef Chaim relates. “At some point, the terrorists brought us an old radio. They thought we’d only be able to get Arab stations and the muezzin, but with a few wires and iron rods we managed to build an antenna and pick up Galei Tzahal (Army Radio).

“For a whole month we listened without the terrorists noticing, and we finally got some news from Israel. And then one day, I suddenly heard my father’s voice. He was speaking words of emunah, and I felt that Hashem had sent me a special gift. Then the host asked him if he wanted to send a message to his son, and my father said: ‘Yosef Chaim, be strong. Know that Hashem is watching over you, and all of Am Yisrael is praying for you. Very soon, you’ll be home.’

“It’s impossible to describe what that did to me. After hearing it, I literally danced in the tunnel from joy. The chance that my father would happen to speak on the one station we managed to pick up, at the exact time we were listening, was one in a million. It was a ray of light that helped us endure that terrible period.”

With the horror behind him, Yosef Chaim hopes to move forward, but on a new trajectory he’ll have to navigate, slowly unpacking the pain, fear, and trauma, and also the daily miracles that kept him and his friends alive.

“I came back from Gaza a different person. Not the same Yosef Chaim as before October 7. I thank Hashem for bringing me to this point, and I thank everyone who helped behind the scenes,” he says. “The day will come when I will tell everything. And then, everyone will understand the magnitude of the miracle that happened to us — the sheer power of the miracles that accompanied us every moment of captivity.
“When the full story is told,” he continues, “there will no longer be any doubt that all these events — which were completely supernatural — were a sign and a symbol of the great love of the Borei Olam, Who protected us in Gaza and brought us out of there whole, walking on our own two feet, in a way that no one could have foreseen.” —

IN YOUR HANDS

Julie Kuperstein, the mother of freed hostage Bar Kuperstein, had received a threatening phone call from one of the terrorists holding her son, when she answered, “My Bar is not in your hands. He’s only in the hands of the Borei Olam. And you, too, are in His hands.”

Julie repeated the incident in every interview she gave over the last two years as she tirelessly campaigned for spiritual endeavors in the merit of her son. The phrase became her slogan — and Bar’s too. Upon his release, Bar — who was held together with Yosef Chaim Ohana for most of his captivity — hasn’t taken off the backward baseball cap with the inscription “Tamid bayadayim shel Borei Olam” and happily distributes bracelets with the same slogan to all his visitors and well-wishers.

The kidnapping of 22-year-old Bar (Bar Avraham ben Julia) wasn’t Julie’s first encounter with a life-altering nisayon. Six years ago, her husband Tal, a volunteer paramedic, was injured in a severe car crash on his way to an emergency call. He’s been confined to a wheelchair since, and following a stroke, also lost his ability to speak. Their family was left reeling — and without any source of income.

Bar, who was not yet 17 at the time, took on the burden of supporting his family. A mature and resourceful young man certified in first-aid, he found a job in a security firm. His job landed him at the Nova festival in 2023, and when the terrorists began their slaughter, he became an unofficial commander, splitting up his team with quick-thinking instructions — secure the area, evacuate the people, help provide first-aid to the wounded. He continued saving lives, until he was captured by Hamas.

A clip out of Gaza showed Bar being beaten and stomped on, lying on the floor with his hands bound behind his back, yet still focused on the plight of others. Next to him was a bleeding Elkana Bohbot, yet there was nothing Bar could do to help him — except to yell at his captors from his own precarious position on the floor, “Take care of him, he’s injured!”

When Julie made her journey to observance several years back, she urged Bar to follow her and keep Shabbos, until she realized the pressure he felt to provide for their family was an obstacle too challenging to overcome.

But a day before that fateful Simchas Torah, he called her to wish her a good Shabbos and Yom Tov — and told her that he’d made arrangements so that he wouldn’t have to drive for the duration of Shabbos.

That final message crystallized Julie’s sense that the fight to bring Bar and the others home would be conducted on a battlefield much more cosmic than a negotiating table or protest rally. And so, she found other tools: the “Tefillin Bar” campaign was one — in which each male captive was matched with a fellow Jew who signed a contract detailing a commitment to lay tefillin in his zechus for the duration of his captivity.

When asked what people can do to help the hostages, Julie’s simple response was always “tefillot, tefillot, tefillot, and kabbalot — to do more, to do better.”

“We are always in Hashem’s hands. Always. It’s not just a saying — it’s a clear truth. It’s a way of life,” she tells Mishpacha. “And that’s how I survived these past two years.”

And she later learned that Bar strengthened himself in captivity with those very same words. In a moment of real mortal fear, when the terrorists told the six hostages in their group — Bar and Yosef Chaim, Elkana Bohbot, Segev Kalfon, Maksim Harkin, and Ohad Ben-Ami — choose three of them to be executed, Bar sat quietly in his corner, repeating to himself over and over that he was only in Hashem’s hands. In the end, they all survived.

“During this time,” Julie says, “I learned the true power of faith — how important it is not to give up on yourself, to keep doing even when you have no strength left, and how sweet the Jewish people are.

“Baruch Hashem, Bar is here, and I’m so proud of him — for who he is and for the choices he made. I know that if, G-d forbid, he were in the same situation again, he would make exactly the same choices.

“Hashem placed me in a situation I never imagined I could endure. I was privileged to make incredible spiritual commitments and the people of Israel were with us all the way. We, the families, made a promise that once our loved ones return, we will continue to do even more — much more. This is only the beginning, b’ezrat Hashem.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1084)