The sight of six ordinary Jews praying for a Chanukah miracle of their own is something extraordinary

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How many concentration camp inmates braved the fear and despair of Auschwitz and Mauthausen, Dachau and Belzec to keep mitzvos? There’s no way that we’ll ever know, but we’ve all heard accounts of those who risked everything to light Shabbos candles or blow the shofar. Those stories of spiritual defiance have a power that’s hard to overestimate.

But just imagine if footage were to surface in some German archive that captures those acts of courage? Imagine the resonance of a film showing how those starved Jews lit up their hell on earth with faith, in the weeks before they went to their deaths.

Well, we now have something approximating to that. Because although the SS didn’t document the spiritual lives of their prey, their Palestinian heirs did.

If you’re like me, you weren’t sure at first that the clip released last week of the October 7 captives lighting the menorah in their underground prison was authentic.

The sight of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Almog Sarusi, Ori Danino, and Alex Lobanov closing their eyes in silent prayer and longing is both shocking and scarcely believable.

In real time, we recoiled from thinking how desperate life must have been for those six gaunt human beings in their dungeon. And yet, suddenly we’re forced to confront it. We see the squalor that they had to endure, their obvious malnutrition.

There before us stand regular Israelis, kidnapped from the 21st century, to live out a Hamas-staged reenactment of the Holocaust.

For me, what makes the menorah lighting under such conditions so ineffably sad isn’t so much the horrific conditions, though. It’s the hope reflected on the captives’ faces.

Because unlike them, we know the ending. We know that the confidence that they expressed in being released was misplaced.

We know that Almog Sarusi’s wish that “With the help of this holiday’s miracles, we’ll get home with a great miracle” wasn’t to be.

Their “haneirot halalu” seems a cruel parody of the light and cheer that we associate with Chanukah.

Yet, despite all that, the clip of the six captives dreaming of their own miraculous salvation resonates as a spiritual moment. Because this insight into Gehinnom is now a part of our national story, and Jewish posterity will see in it an enduring message.

Our great-grandchildren will be raised on accounts of October 7, of a Simchas Torah soaked with terror. They’ll hear whispers of unspeakable horrors perpetrated on mothers and babies. They’ll hear of soldiers who rushed from shul to the front lines. They’ll read of those miraculously spared, and of captives who made it back home against the odds.

And as they watch the Chanukah lighting of these martyrs, they’ll see the message gifted to us by some evil Hamas propagandist.

The sight of six ordinary Jews praying for a Chanukah miracle of their own is something extraordinary. It’s testament to the fact that even when the darkness all around is literal; even amid the bleakness of a concentration camp or a Hamas tunnel, the Jewish soul can find eternal meaning in the mitzvos and a connection to Hashem.

In the post-Holocaust era, Torah leaders fought to have the spiritual heroism of the many who lived and died al kiddush Hashem recognized in a world that often paid far greater tribute to the few who fought back.

How ironic it is that our era’s defining example of spiritual bravery might well be that of six people who weren’t religious.

As Hersh, Carmel, Eden, Almog, Ori, and Alex lit those flickering lights in a Gaza tunnel, they created something enduring — a record that in the spiritual world, even small acts of commitment last forever.

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There have been many moments over the last year when I just want to run for the hills, find myself a convenient desert island, bury my head under a pillow, or do anything that will make the whole horrible mess of the chareidi draft controversy just go away.

Moments such as when a secular public figure denigrates gedolim; the media publishes a particularly demeaning broadside against the “draft-dodging” of lomdei Torah; or a chareidi loudmouth spouts nonsense about owing nothing to those who serve.

Beyond those moments is the depressing nature of the standoff, which was brought home once again by the picture of Minchah in the Knesset during a recess in the committee debating the law.

Joined as one in tefillah were Yuli Edelstein, Meir Porush, and other religious lawmakers whose differing stances on the law have turned them into bitter opponents.

But to each cloud, its silver lining. As depressing as the rancor of the debate may be, the fact that the debate is happening at all is positive.

Because for the best part of a year, millions of Israelis have turned on the evening news to watch a discussion of the value of Torah in a Jewish country.

True, much of what they’ve heard on mainstream media has been poisonous. But these media outlets no longer rule the roost — and in alternative media such as the right-wing Channel 14, yeshivahs get a hearing.

Watch a debate at the channel to which hundreds of thousands of traditional Israelis tune in, and you’ll notice something remarkable: It’s mostly a given that some, or possibly all, full-time Torah students should be exempted from the draft. The argument is simply what to do about those who are not really learning.

It’s a remarkable demonstration of how the Overton window — a political term for the range of socially acceptable viewpoints — can shift. It’s hard to believe that pre-Channel 14 days, the idea of a yeshivah exemption would have broken through.

The draft controversy is far from over, but all the ugliness has achieved one thing that should be celebrated, regardless of your position on the law itself: The value of Torah study as a defining part of Jewish life is one that is getting a hearing across Israeli society.

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AS I was writing this column, news of the Sydney carnage broke. Long before the details had emerged, a list of names for tefillah emerged.

The words of Shabbos’s Bircas Hachodesh came back to me. “Mi she’asah nissim” is a prayer for the final redemption, that concludes with words that are both the result of and the condition for that process.

“Chaveirim kol Yisrael.”

Never have those words seemed more apt. From Israel to Australia, New York to London — we are surrounded by hate in a way that recalls extremely dark times. But against that bleakness, is the light which is our togetherness.

Yes, there are things on which we differ deeply — but we can’t afford to let them tear us apart. In a world in which news of an attack and a list of victims’ names goes viral within minutes, we are demonstrably one people.

“Chaveirim kol Yisrael” is a fact of Jewish life — it’s up to us to say Amen.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1091)