I have already learned their names, their stories, have found this individual connection to each one. Liri. Emily. Naama. Even out here, across an ocean, we talk about them by their first names as though they are our friends, as though we’ve built some parasocial relationship. There is an intimacy that comes with davening for someone, with pleading for their fate for so long. You begin to think of them as yours, as much a piece of your fabric of family and friends as the people you actually know.

And I watch the videos of their homecoming and feel sick, because I know: these are not the first videos of these girls. Sometime soon, they will find out what the world has seen of them — at their most vulnerable moments, attacked and abused and demeaned — and that this is how they have been remembered by so many strangers.

I hope they never see it. I hope they never know.

When I talk to my children about the hostages they’ve been davening for, it’s with little tidbits, carefully curated. Did you know that she would braid the children’s hair? Did you know that she tried to get her captors to send someone else home instead? Did you know that she would take care of the rest of the others?

I show them Emily Damari’s three-fingered victory salute. I show them a picture of Gadi Moses standing strong through the mob of terrorists around him. I show them the moment when the four soldiers (girls, they were just girls, taken in their pajamas to almost 500 days of misery) embrace Agam Berger. Someone wraps a flag around the girls. They are lost in a world together that we are fortunate that we can never understand.

I can’t allow myself to scroll past a single video. There is a reverence they require, almost like the instinctive, all-consuming need that comes from spotting a sefer on the floor. It must be picked up, must be kissed and returned to its place. These are Hashem’s children, returned from the unforgivable, and they must be treated with veneration. Every video must be watched. Every word they speak must be heard.

They have been unheard for too long. They have existed in our minds for almost 500 days as videos of bruised, bloodied, horrified victims. They have been given no power over what the world has seen of them.

Now, they are free. Now, they can choose who they want to be to the rest of the world. But there are no videos that can wipe away what we have already seen.

So I do my best to replace those horrific clips with images of joy and strength and safety. In my thoughts, they have been weakened and exposed for too long. They deserve to be remembered as powerful.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 931)