Even in Hamas’s tunnels, Sapir Cohen found faith and fortitude. Months after her release, she has a message she wants to share with Am Yisrael

Photo: Flash90

“A

few months ago, I sensed something terrible was going to happen to me,” Sapir Cohen said in her introduction to a video clip gone viral after her release from Hamas captivity. “I was sure it was some sort of illness, and they did find that I was carrying a virus. I was advised to say a perek of Tehillim daily for one month. The last day was October 7.”

On that fateful morning, Sapir was in Kibbutz Nir Oz to spend Simchas Torah with the family of Sasha Troufanov, the young man she was dating. The two had met six months earlier, and Sasha, kind, caring, and ambitious, was a person with whom Sapir could envision a rosy future. When he invited her to spend the chag with his parents and grandmother, Sapir was delighted. She enjoyed spending time on the pastoral grounds of the kibbutz and appreciated Sasha’s filial loyalty; once he’d scheduled a visit to spend time with his family on the kibbutz, he never, ever, reneged.

But shortly before they were to travel, Sasha seemed hesitant about the planned visit. “A day before we were meant to go, Sasha said, ‘Sapir, I don’t want to go to my parents for chag.’

I said to him, ‘Sasha, you never cancel on them, you’re always concerned they’ll be hurt if you don’t come. Why now?’

“The next morning, on Friday, he asked me again if I wanted to cancel. I asked him, ‘Why don’t you want to go?’ He said, ‘I don’t know why, I just really don’t want to go.’

“Now when I think of it, it was as if his neshamah knew something was going to happen,” Sapir speculates.

We sit in a room on the fifth floor of a hotel in Ramat Gan, which serves as Sapir’s interim home. The living space is small, with shoes and backpacks neatly lining the perimeter. On the sideboard, sifrei Tehillim and siddurim stand erect like soldiers, and a model of 770 wrapped in cellophane sits by their side, clearly a gift.

Sapir is slight, with long dark hair framing her thin face, so slight I wonder if this is her natural size or perhaps the evidence of weeks in captivity followed by months of worrying for Sasha and the other hostages. Her voice is soft and low, but her eyes are intent and focused, and the conviction embedded in her otherwise unassuming words make it clear that she has a message to impart, even as she recounts the difficult memories she has of that terrible day.

On the way to the kibbutz, Sapir recalls, the couple picked up a hitchhiking soldier. The conversation turned to the grave ideological rift plaguing the Israeli nation. Sasha’s response was eerily predictive: “Only a war will mend the rift.”

“Truthfully,” Sapir muses, “my brother said the same thing. He told me, ‘Sapir, we’re on the precipice of a great war. The incitement in the media, the terrible hatred within the nation is going to bring us to war.’ And he didn’t mean a civil war, he knew our enemies would see how fractured we were and would jump on the chance to start up with us. It’s a golden opportunity for them,” she says matter-of-factly.

The very next morning, Sapir awoke to the reality of that war.

“At six a.m. I awoke to the sound of furious explosions, ‘BOOM, BOOM, BOOM!!’ There were mortars exploding and sirens going off,” she recalls.

“I’m from Kiryat Ata, I’m not used to the sound of sirens. But here, we were in the midst of a heavy rocket barrage. A message on Sasha’s phone confirmed their worst fears: Terrorists had infiltrated the kibbutz next door. And they were on their way to Nir Oz.

“Suddenly I heard shouting in Arabic outside. I rolled myself in a blanket and wedged myself next to the wall, under a bed. I heard everything happening outside. Terrorists shouting ‘Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!’ and the sound of bullets spraying in every direction. I heard them going house to house, the screams of people being slaughtered, grenades detonating, and I was just waiting for my turn. There was nothing else to do but wait.”

Sapir pauses, clearly struggling with the memory. “It was the fear of death, a fear so terrible it can’t be condensed in words. I was shaking, sweating, but I refused to touch my phone. I didn’t want to send parting messages to anyone, because I simply wasn’t willing to part from them.”

“In those moments I essentially stopped thinking, and only focused on saying my perek,  of Tehillim over and over. And, for the first time I understood what all those allusions to war in my perek were about, why I’d been in such a state of fear over the last few months. At once, I understood everything.”