“Let’s spend a Shabbat together in Yerushalayim, chareidim and chilonim. Just Shabbat, Yerushalayim, and Jews — that’s all. Everything that unites us”

On Simchas Torah 2023, the illusion of control was shattered and a wave of emunah swept across the land, as Jews all over began to reconnect with their core identity. And then, Hashem drew me into the saga as well, allowing me to stand alongside survivors and hostage families in their darkest hours, to visit the destroyed communities, and to participate in shabbatons and other events. And then came the book — not a rehashing of the news, but a story that will be etched in the gold letters of Jewish history, deepening the bonds that connect us to one another and to our Father in Heaven.
With the release of the remaining hostages, many of the stories have since had a happy ending, while others have ended in tragedy. Either way, it’s my privilege to continue to share them with you.

When chaos strikes, inner truth is revealed: No matter how connected or disconnected, we are a nation of anshei chesed. People like Binyamin Shimoni Hy”d, who, after fleeing from the unfolding massacre with four frantic strangers in his car, dropped them off at the entrance to Be’er Sheva and rushed back to the chaos to save more people. He crammed eight more people into his car and brought them to safety in Netivot. He returned yet a third time, amid whistling missiles and flying bullets, but at the Alumim Junction, he was shot and killed.

Or take Rom Braslavski — Rom ben Tamar —  who was freed from captivity last week after 738 days of torture and starvation for refusing to convert to Islam.

Rom could have been sitting with his family in Jerusalem instead of being violently abused in a Gaza dungeon, but his sense of responsibility didn’t let him walk away in the face of danger. During the terrorist incursion, he refused to flee, sure that as long as he could help others, he had no right to abandon them. He covered wounded people with trash so Hamas wouldn’t spot them, and even after being shot himself, he hid two bodies to prevent them from being taken. It was in the middle of these acts of chesed that he was taken to Gaza.

On Simchas Torah of 5784, HaKadosh Baruch Hu had a conversation with some of His children who had been less connected with Him. They couldn’t be expected to demonstrate mesirus nefesh for Shabbos or tefillin, but Jews are intrinsically rachmanim, bayshanim, and gomlei chasadim — compassionate, modest, and kind, with an extraordinary capacity for self-sacrifice in order to help others.

Yet by the winter of 2024, the war had become a tiring burden. Yes, there were daily casualties, young men killed whose families many of us knew, but the sense of urgency had faded.

Still, several thousand Jews were left behind. They tried to raise awareness for their cause, to keep their loved ones in the public eye — only to be branded “leftists” and accused of politicizing the war. For much of the public, the families of the hostages had become a burden.

Later, when I met them, I saw how deeply this realization haunted them. “You see,” Shai Wenkert, father of freed hostage Omer Wenkert, told me at the time, “my son is a burden. He’s created a problem by having been taken hostage.” He told me that another parent confided to him, “So many have died in this war. Let my son die, too — that will make things so much easier.”

“For six weeks, I did nothing but say Tehillim,” Meirav Berger, mother of Agam, told me. “I didn’t speak to a soul. I barely ate, I barely slept. All I did was say Tehillim. I woke up with Tehillim, I sat down with Tehillim, I paced the house with Tehillim.”

But the Israeli public had moved on. Winter vacation season arrived and people’s biggest problems were how to book flights to Europe. And the chareidi public was naturally even more removed — less exposed, less directly connected, less personally acquainted.

Toward the end of Shevat, I received an invitation to a shabbaton for hostage families sponsored by Kesher Yehudi, an organization founded by Rabbanit Tzila Schneider with the goal of breaking down walls of hostility and making Judaism accessible to secular Jews through one-on-one learning.

For a number of years, the organization quietly built bridges. And then, Rabbanit Schneider entered the encampment of the hostage families with a simple proposal: “Let’s do something good. Truly good — for us, for our children. Let’s spend a Shabbat together in Yerushalayim, chareidim and chilonim. Just Shabbat, Yerushalayim, and Jews — that’s all. Everything that unites us.”

The Shem Tov family lives in Herzliya: Malki, the father; Shelly, the mother; and their son, Omer. As founding members of the Hostage Families headquarters, the Shem Tovs became prominent spokespeople for the families. During one particularly tense interview, a provocative journalist posed a divisive question to Shelly Shem Tov about chareidim versus chilonim, right-wingers versus left-wingers. Overcome with emotion, she cried out: “Have we not yet understood that our enemies are in Gaza? How long will you go on sowing hatred between Jews?”

When the idea for the Shabbos initiative was raised, Shelly Shem Tov was its most vocal proponent. Officially, she pushed for it in the name of unity. But she had another, deeply personal reason.

She knew it was time to start keeping Shabbos.

Two months earlier, Itai Regev had returned from Gaza. His sister, Maya Regev, had been injured during her abduction and hospitalized in Gaza, where she received inadequate care and quickly became a humanitarian case. She was released during the first round of hostage releases, and since families were not to be separated, her brother was released as well.

Throughout his captivity, Itai had shared a room in an apartment hideout with Omer Shem Tov, after they were shoved into a car and kidnapped together.

“We kept repeating the same message to ourselves,” Itai told the Shem Tovs after his release. “ ‘Just a little longer. Just a little more.’ We would say it to each other dozens of times a day.

“Every morning, I would say the date of the month,” Itai went on, “and Omer would say the day of the week. That was how we kept track of how long we’d been there.

“On Friday, the first Shabbat in captivity, Omer turned to me and said, ‘Back home, we make Kiddush every week. I need wine for Kiddush.’ ”

(“That was our nod to Jewish tradition — Kiddush every Shabbat,” Malki told me. “Omer grew up with it and knew it by heart.”)

“Believe it or not,” Itai told the Shem Tovs, “a Hamas terrorist showed up and gave us a mini bottle of grape juice — a special delivery from HaKadosh Baruch Hu. But Omer was already thinking ahead. ‘What if we get stuck here for five years?’ Omer asked me. ‘This bottle has got to last us a very long time.’ So we poured a bit of juice into the bottle cap, and that’s how we made Kiddush. I took a small sip, then Omer. We carefully returned the rest to the bottle — and that was our Kiddush wine for months.

“After Kiddush, we wanted to say Hamotzi and dip our bread in salt. We had a bag with some salted pretzels. Every Shabbat, we’d take out a single pretzel, scrape the salt off it, and dip our pita in that in honor of the Shabbat Queen.”

The Shem Tovs knew that their son was being starved. But that starving child had a bottle of grape juice and a few pretzels — and he was saving them for Shabbos.

Omer’s story made waves, and thousands of people began whispering, “Omer ben Shelly” in their prayers, knowing that somewhere in Gaza, a Jewish captive was sanctifying Shabbos.

“The bottle lasted half a year. I made Kiddush with it dozens of times,” Omer himself related upon his release after 505 days in captivity. “The grape juice never spoiled, the bottle never emptied. It was my personal version of the miracle of the oil flask.”

A few weeks into their captivity, Omen told Itai, “It’s not enough just to make Kiddush. We need to start keeping Shabbat properly.” When Itai returned to Israel, he told the Shem Tovs, “You should know that Omer is keeping Shabbat.”

The Shem Tovs shrugged and said: “Well, it’s not as if you had your phones there or had the option of going to work. You couldn’t drive a car or smoke a cigarette.”

“True,” Itai replied. “But we had flashlights. We were held in sealed hideouts. So Hamas gave each of us a flashlight — the only way we could move around. When Omer decided to keep Shabbat, he turned off his flashlight before sundown every Friday. That meant sitting in total darkness for 24 hours.”

When Shelly Shem Tov heard that, her heart broke, and she knew: If Omer is doing this in Gaza, he’d want me to do it, too.

When I shared this story in a yeshivah, one of the bochurim said, “But you can’t make Kiddush in a bottle cap — you need a revi’is.” Another piped up, “You can’t pour the grape juice back into the bottle. That makes it pagum.”

But here’s the thing: Omer and Itai hadn’t yet come across these halachos. They were taken hostage before they ever reached Orach Chaim, siman 272. They didn’t make Kiddush out of the Shulchan Aruch. They made Kiddush from their neshamah, radiant and sparkling in the pitch-black tunnels of Gaza.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1083)