Sweetest Ending

Kalman Gross

A

fter October 7, I didn’t want to go on with life as usual, enjoying and indulging when so many of acheinu Beis Yisrael were being held in captivity. I needed to impose limits on my life, so that I could remember the deprivation of theirs.

I resolved not to eat desserts or other sweets until the last hostage had returned home. This Hoshana Rabbah, after we’d watched the hostages’ joyous reunions with their families, I took my grandchildren out for ice cream. After two years, after watching the hostages reunite with their families, I can’t imagine anything sweeter.

Names

Rochel Samet

I

didn’t have a Name.

I had names. Different ones at different times.

Shortly after the war broke out, I signed up to say Tehillim each day. Yagil ben Ranana. The children were released in the first deal; the relief excruciating. A few weeks later, I came across a website urging people to take on a Shabbos-related kabbalah in the zechus of a hostage. Daniella bas Orly. Last winter, I signed up on another spreadsheet, this one dividing shemiras halashon hours for each of the remaining living hostages. Bar Avraham ben Julia.

Names made it real. Painful. Searing and unforgettable. Names told stories. That’s what made it so hard. That’s what made it so powerful.

At the beginning, I wouldn’t go to sleep without saying Tehillim for the hostages and the soldiers: Some nights one perek, some nights several. How could I lie in my comfortable bed without doing something, anything, for our brothers suffering unimaginable agonies?

And then time passed.

I held on to the nightly Tehillim through the first months of war. Then we traveled amid a post-Iran-attack airline fallout. With kids on nonexistent sleep schedules, and many nights and days in transit, I didn’t reach for my Tehillim for weeks.

I never really recaptured it.

It’s hard to sustain intensity for two years — especially two years when there’s no knowing when the end is in sight, months upon months of no news. It’s harder still when life changes fast and dramatically, when the country around you is at war, when obligations and interruptions make steady commitments feel impossible.

Were there nights that I said a perek of Tehillim before bed? Whispered names by my candles? Sure. But regular, consistent, can’t-go-to-sleep-before-doing-this? I lost that.

I followed every news update about possible releases, rejoiced as each deal or partial deal came through, cried through reunion videos. But there was no name I held on to, start to finish. There were names I connected with. The tatzpaniyot. The Berman twins. Omri Miran with his two sweet little daughters.

But when I heard the incredible, miraculous news on Succos… something inside me felt ashamed. That I hadn’t held on for the long haul. That with all the thoughts and feelings and halev sheli shavui b’Aza, I hadn’t… done it. Hadn’t seen this through. Hadn’t played a part in this miracle.

And then it was Simchas Torah night, and I was lighting candles. I took out my hadlakas neiros booklet and opened it to the back, for the brachos for Yom Tov. Two papers fell out.

One: handwritten. Edan ben Yael. Matan Shachar ben Anat. The names trailed down the page.

I remembered writing it. One week, just before candlelighting, our printer was out of ink, and I’d wanted to print the updated names of hostages. Without a printer, I’d quickly scrawled the first several in the too-long list and taken that to the candles instead.

Two: a printout from some months later. An updated table of names, the living hostages, and below, the ones awaiting kevurah. I remembered printing that, too; it had been a hectic Friday, I hadn’t had much time to daven by the candles, one kid crying, baby hungry. But I had the names.

And that’s when I realized.

I hadn’t done anything with consistency for these past two years. But there had been moments. So many moments. Haphazard, maybe.

But these papers… told my story. Of names, all the names, that never left my heart, even when they didn’t make it past my lips.

I looked at the papers again. They’re home, they’re all home, I thought. But I couldn’t bring myself to throw those lists away.

I folded them and tucked them inside the sefer.

Because it was the names on bracelets and the tefillos and the Tehillim and the kabbalos. It was the tape and the ribbons and the hours.

And it was also the moments. Hundreds upon thousands, millions of moments, yours and mine and every Jew around the world, building one upon the other. Until moments formed miracles and our brothers came home.

Finding the Names

As told to Elana Moscowitz by Gitty Normile

IT’S

been 738 days of relentless tefillah for our hostages, and finally they are home. Over the last two years, we’ve been davening for endless rows of names, unfamiliar people who gradually became intimate friends, until their names rolled off our tongues effortlessly. We learned of their families, their hometowns, their hobbies; we envisioned their final moments of freedom before horror struck.

I’ve always been very connected to tefillah, and I knew that anyone davening for our brothers and sisters would want to ensure they were davening using the correct names. After October 7, with the first of the hostage lists circulating, I realized we had a problem.

Bring Them Back Home produced a comprehensive list of names, but as a secular organization they had only written the first and last names of our hostages, hardly a prototype for tefillah. A religious organization also compiled a list catalogued in traditional fashion, as “hostage ben/bas mother’s name,” but without an identifying last name. Kesher Yehudi, an organization that builds bridges between secular and chareidi Jews, had their own list as well. The lists were flying thick and fast. I knew that if we could consolidate them and come up with a uniform, verified master list, we would have many more people davening and our collective tefillos would be so much more effective.

Easier said than done.

Imagine 200 first and last names of hostages. Now picture over a hundred names of hostage-ben/bas-mother. Now match them up. Sisyphean is an understatement.

I worked through nights on that first list, meticulously researching each first and last name and pairing it with its partner on the frum list. I thrilled at each successful pair, enthusiastically calling to my husband, “I found a match!”

Challenges materialized almost immediately, some unique to Israeli society. For example, there were some names that weren’t immediately identifiable as male or female; some names were used for both.

Sometimes first and last names were interchangeable. Was that a first or last name? What about Daniel? Or Nimrod?

I adopted detective mode, searching for clues and collecting crumbs of information from myriad places. When I’d get stuck verifying a mother’s name, I’d google the hostage’s name prefaced by “Ima shel”; often, I’d discover an interview with the hostage’s mother. When she was introduced with her full first name, I knew I’d hit gold. Even if that wasn’t her authentic Hebrew name for tefillah, I was now able to match it with a name on the religious list with relative ease.

Of particular importance to me was that this wouldn’t be regarded as an anonymous list of names, rather seen as individuals who were beloved and missed by their loved ones, and as real to us as our own. With this goal in mind, I made two changes to the traditional lists I’d been working with. First, I grouped the hostages by family. The devastating reality of a grandmother, mother, and child taken captive together is a huge impetus for tefillah.

I also added the age of the hostage next to their name, which gave important context. Yes, there was an 80-year-old grandmother in captivity! A four-year-old child was languishing in Gaza!

After a week of intensive research and a hefty dose of siyata d’Shmaya, on October 16 the first comprehensive hostage tefillah list was ready. Now it was a question of publicizing it.

I reached out to Hamodia, with whom I had an existing relationship, and asked them to publish the list. A prominent frum website had posted a list that was hopelessly outdated and flawed. I insisted they update it, and offered them my list instead. I tried to post the list at every place that was magnet for tefillah, such as Kever Rochel, Rabi Meir Baal Haneis, Rabi Shimon bar Yochai, Shmuel Hanavi, Shimon Hatzaddik, the Zhviller Rebbe, and the Kosel Plaza.

A woman who worked at a printing house made thousands of copies that she disseminated in Israel.

People passed the list to friends and acquaintances, work associates and schoolmates. It materialized in yeshivos and seminaries. The list went viral, crossing international borders to reach as far as England, Australia, and Brazil.

Keeping the list updated was its own endeavor. I updated the list when someone was released, as well as when we heard heartbreaking news.

At some point, someone suggested I put contact information at the bottom of the list so people would be able to reach me if they had verified updates to share. This proved fortuitous, as in the case of Karina Ariev. A friend of her mother used the contact information to email me and shared that Karina’s mother used a Hebrew name at work that wasn’t her authentic name for tefillah, but had made it onto my list. She gave me the correct name and I made the change. I was deluged with emails about corrections.

I received a few specific requests for how to formulate the list. I was asked to sort the hostages by age, by first name, by mother’s name only, and I was happy to accommodate any permutation requested. If the list is easier for someone to read, they’ll be more likely to daven for the hostages on it.

Though it’s been a long two years for our nation, now that the living hostages are finally home, we can let out a collective sigh of relief. But our joy is tempered with the knowledge that for some families, it’s a bittersweet moment. I attended the funerals of hostages whose bodies were returned and it was an excruciatingly painful experience, but also a reminder that our tefillos are still crucial until the last body is brought to kever Yisrael and the families have closure.

Last week I received an email thanking me for my efforts. “You were the thread that tied the chareidi world to the rest of Klal Yisrael. We will keep on davening.” As much as I’m gratified to hear this message, that was not my intention. I knew all of Klal Yisrael wanted to daven for the hostages. My only purpose was to provide the means for them to do so in a concrete way.

The Card by the Candlesticks

Lori Holzman Schwartz

L

ast year, my eight-year-old came home from school with a card with a photo of Rom ben Tamar. “In the merit of Rom Braslavski and all the hostages, I, Ayelet, will take on the following mitzvah to do at school today….” Scribbled in the lines beneath, she had written, “Hold the door.”

“That’s such a nice mitzvah!” I told her. “Let’s put this card by my candlesticks and every Friday night, as I light the candles, we’ll pray for him.”

Ayelet and I decided that Rom would be “our” hostage — the one that we prayed for, did mitzvos for, and held in our hearts. I later learned that Rom had risked his life during the Nova massacre to help others.

Every Friday night, I’d pray for him as I lit Shabbos candles — that he would survive and come home to his family. Sometimes I’d speak directly to him. “Stay strong, Rom — we love you.” It wasn’t long before he felt like a brother.

In August, a horrifying video was released. Palestinian Islamic Jihad showed Rom looking bone-thin and crying, unable to stand from his injuries. It was clear he was being starved and tortured. I cried. At that point, I wasn’t at all certain that he would ever make it out alive.

And then came Hoshana Rabbah. What a holy, glorious day! Rom came home pale and skeletal but alive. With a prayer of thanks to Hashem, I watched the video of his parents hugging their son for the first time in two years.

My husband picked up the card next to my candlesticks with a smile. “Do you need this anymore, now that he’s home, or should I throw it out?”

“Leave it,” I told him. “After everything he’s been through he’s going to need more prayers.”

I’m still davening for Rom, who lost 30–50 percent of his body weight in captivity. Rom was mainly held alone or with corpses. His captors offered him more food if he’d convert to Islam, but he refused. After two years in the Gehinnom of Gaza, he’s going to need physical, mental, and spiritual healing. I’m keeping his photo by my candlesticks.

Color On Hold

Sarah Spero

F

ollowing the October 7 massacre, I did two things so contradictory to who and what I am. You have to know me to appreciate this: I stopped polishing my nails and I started a Tehillim group. (Not necessarily in that order!)

Since I was a very young teen (and that’s been over three score years) and I first discovered the intoxicating smell of fresh polish, except for a few hours here or there, my natural nails have not seen the light of day. Neat hands and smooth, filed, and polished nails were the finishing touch to any outfit, or at least it was until that fateful October 7 day.

And now, after too many months, too many losses, and even more broken hearts, the day came and the living hostages are home.

I still haven’t gotten that manicure.

Some reminders deserve to be respected.

The Last Flame

Rivka N. Teitelbaum

IT

was just a standard glass candlestick, curved inward toward the middle. Simple. No design.

I started lighting it every week, soon after October 7, as a zechus for the hostages. I don’t remember the specific Shabbos I started, but I do remember telling myself that lighting this was conditional, temporary, and when the hostages would come home, I’d stop. Week after week when preparing the leichter, my husband placed the simple candlestick next to it. When I lit the flames for Shabbos and for my children, I lit the sole candle, silently begging Hashem for the safety and the imminent release of our brothers and sisters in Gaza.

And then the day came. I stayed up till the early hours, watching and waiting, disbelievingly at first, for the news on Hoshana Rabbah. Was this really happening? By morning the wonderful news was in. Our hostages, our fellow Yidden, the people we got to know, care for, and daven for, were finally home!

And then I thought of my candle. That burning flame, every Friday night. It would be surreal not to light it anymore. We prepared the candles for Shemini Atzeres, and I placed the lone glass candlestick back on the shelf.

Place in My Heart

Esther Shaindy Leshkowitz

WE

were in Eretz Yisrael for Yom Tov, and on Hoshana Rabbah, my friend texted. How amazing you’re there during the hostage release. It was special to be close by — my son had put a telescope in the succah and was scanning the highways for the presidential motorcade. But our happiness would have been just as deep back in New York. It wasn’t the place that made us feel. We didn’t feel joy because we were in Israel; we felt it because we are Jews, and the hostages are our family members.

New Light

Batsheva Rosenberg

T

wo years ago, on August 2, 2023, we moved into a new apartment. It was on the fifth floor, true, but do you know the views of Yerushalayim that I see when I pull the tris up? The only thing our new home really needed was new light fixtures. There were some loose hanging bulbs, some fishbowl fixtures, and some bronze doilies over other random bulbs. I filled up a cart, debated the pros and cons of local shopping versus Temu and AliExpress, and set aside some funds every week.

And then came Simchas Torah. Our innocence was snatched from us. Never again would our greatest worry be if the makolet was carrying American garlic powder. We were a nation sitting shivah, stumbling around, trying to breathe, trying to catch our breath, trying to make the hurt stop — but there was nowhere to turn, mei’ayin yavo ezri?

And I was going to buy light fixtures?

So I didn’t.

Yesterday, I got an email from one of my besties.

“Go crazy!” She pasted a picture of the shopping cart that I had sent her for approval all those months ago. I peered at the photos of gorgeous light fixtures, a smile on my face. She was right! I could. I still had the cart, even still had some funds.

My niece was next. “Hey! You can finally replace these horrible lights!”

I could.

They were home! Ziv and Evyatar and Eitan and Noa and Agam and all those names that had accumulated, and then one by one, been crossed off.

But what about the rest?

What about Shiri and Uriel and Daniel and Inbar?

What about the 915 beautiful Jewish boys who gave up their lives?

What about the 915 Jewish mothers with permanent holes in their hearts, who struggle for breath every single day?

And I should buy new light fixtures?

We Danced

Mindel Kassorla

T

hroughout the war, I often “lived vicariously” through my then-nine-year-old, Chaya. She davened, told us stories of courage from her teachers, asked daily if the hostages were home yet. She carried the hope that I could not always access — and the fear. Chaya woke from nightmares of sirens, running half-asleep to the safe room in our building’s basement. When we moved to Orlando two months ago, she couldn’t believe our new home had no safe room. Her heart jumped at the sound of ambulance sirens, and I had to remind her, “not here.” On Hoshana Rabbah morning, after a sleepless night following the news, I scrolled again and saw it: 20 hostages home!! I breathed, sang quietly in my heart — and then went right into the dizzying responsibilities of Erev Yom Tov. Late morning it hit me — I hadn’t told Chaya. When I showed her the videos of homecoming, her whole body lit up.

“ALL the hostages are home?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Through Chaya, I felt the joy I hadn’t yet fully allowed myself. I threw aside the pots and pans, and together, we danced.

Counter Connection

Laura Pater

AT

a challah bake held in Kikar Hachatufim, I decided to write the names of all the various people I usually daven for on stickers and plaster them all over my huge red bowl, including the names of “my” hostages.

It was strange to see the contents of my prayers on display like that, but family members of the hostages who were at the challah bake expressed their gratitude to see the names in writing, and to know that so many people were keeping them in their prayers.

Soon after that, I decided to add these names to my mixer that sits on my kitchen counter.

My family has noticed and commented, my Shabbos guests have asked questions. Sometimes I feel uncomfortable having my prayers exposed, but I am proud to be connected in this way.

Let Our Eyes Behold 

Avigail Sharer

T

he auditorium is dark, the only illumination a red spotlight shining on Ishay Ribo, who stands with his guitar.

“Two years ago,” he begins, “this song was my way of beginning to express what it meant for me, the seventh of October.”

We all know the song; I had it on repeat for the first months of the war, alternating with “Bring Them Home.” When the months passed, I played it each morning, a prayer to start my day: kol hademaot hake’ev shebaku meihalev od yatzmichu olam.

All the tears — the pain —
That ripped from the heart
Will yet grow a world
Fields and orchard fields of truth — anemone and almond
Will bloom for their return

It’s Leil Hoshana Rabbah.

They might… they will… return.

“Let’s sing it again,” he says.

The song was always a prayer, now it becomes an entreaty, 4,000 of us with one tearful plea: We’re so close, please, please, make it happen. Make this new world blossom for their return.

From Yom Kippur to Succos, through Chol Hamoed, as the ceasefire agreement took shape and firmed up — in 72 hours, they would come. Starting from when? All together or in groups? What of those who were deceased? Could it really happen?

My own trepidation grew.

There were obvious reasons. What if it didn’t work out? How can one make an agreement with sadistic murderers, intent on our destruction? Could we swallow the costs? And at the same time, I found myself aggravated by the naysayers, by those people who point out that our boys have been tortured and starved for two years. Yes, of course, but for a moment, a single moment in time, can we not just celebrate? Can we not leave the pain behind, forget it all, and dance like the lulav that has finally been released from its binding on this day, to wildly wave in the air? For so long, our wounds have wept blood and tears. Give us a moment, a moment for the tears to be joyous.

A sh’eilah is asked to Rav Yitzchok Zilberstein shlita: Do we continue saying Tehillim after each tefillah? Of course, comes the emphatic reply. Our boys need continued tefillos after all they have been through, and so do all the soldiers, who have been wounded physically and emotionally by this war.

The answer soothes me; it seems to hold the complexity in a way that is both real and compassionate.

As the day approaches, I realize there is a deeper reason for my disquiet.

Ever since its release, Eli Sharabi’s account, Hostage, first in Hebrew then in English, has been sitting in my Steimatzky shopping cart. I did not press Buy Now.

I couldn’t quite face it.

Easier not to know. Easier to close my eyes, rather than allow the thick blackness of a Hamas tunnel to smother me.

Now, though, I would open my eyes. Watch the reunions, the joy, as well as the hostages themselves — skeletal, hair shorn, eyes that had seen — who knew? I would see a mother’s heartbreak and father’s sobs that had built up for 738 agonizing days.

When your eyes are open, there’s so much that appears in your field of vision.

Again and again and again, we have watched the processions of grief: The streets line with flags as the mourners pass. Our boys have been taken from us. I have been in shivah houses, seen fathers dip their heads and mothers cover their faces.

My town is full of wives who have sent off their husbands, children who long for their fathers, siblings who have lived in fear. Men who have put down the tools of their trade — teachers and computer programmers and taxi drivers and therapists and electricians, all of them, and pulled on khaki uniforms and taken up guns to protect our lives, so that we can take our children to school each morning where they can pass notes during math and argue during recess.

I talk to a teenager who has lost a brother in Gaza; almost two years ago, now. She has still not visited the grave. When I think of the future, she tells me: I think, And who else will I lose? A mother tells me that she is fearful of her son’s return; he is different now.

I am not sure if I can rely on my own words, they seem impoverished; but maybe there is some simple wisdom there, all I have at present. I tell her: When you come in from a storm, you’re not immediately dry and warm. But you unwind your scarf, shrug off your soaked coat. You put on the kettle, then make a mug of tea. You pull on a dry cardigan. Slowly, you thaw, and then you warm up gradually, as well.

Then, there are those, too, whom we do not see: those whom we pray will be returned home for burial, among them Itai ben Reuven (Chen), Aryeh ben Tzvi (Zalmanovitch), Meni ben Yaakov (Godard).

Who, too, can forget the sight of Shiri Bibas, clutching her babies?

V’sechezena eineinu — let our eyes see.

B’shuvecha l’Tzion b’rachamim.

Your return. Light glowing from the mountains around Jerusalem. A gleam of light reflecting off the cymbals and flutes of the Leviim.

And now, it has come. It’s a day that’s too big for us.

The lips and tongue grow slack with a rush of prayers that I cannot articulate. Bring them home. Bring them home. Bring us all home to You. Words penned thousands of years ago could have been written for today.

Ana Hashem, hoshia na.

Hoshia es amecha — save Your nation, bless Your homeland.

Tear down the wall of iron that separates us.

Mah ashiv l’Hashem.

Then they come. The footage: blurry Al Jazeera images from Gaza. Reports from the Red Cross that they have received the first group of hostages. Thousands singing and dancing at Nova while a helicopter flies overhead. The first video calls to loved ones. And then, they are here.

They are home.

The brothers we did not know we had until they were taken from us.

We watch the reunions, tears falling. Mothers and fathers embracing their children:

“Chaim sheli, my life, my world, my child.”

Something inside me crumbles: Tear down the wall of iron that separates us.

People pour into the streets and dance; in the fruit store, strangers give each other wide, disbelieving smiles and greet each other: Besuros tovos, we should just hear continued good news.

We dare to look each other in the eye. We let our hands drop from our faces, we allow ourselves to gaze.

I see a nation that has learned that our unending arguments is the bickering of brothers.

I see that we are a nation of lions, with a spiritual strength that can only come from the One Above.

I see the love — iron and silk — of parents and brothers and friends.

And in every set of eyes that I meet, I know that above all we are a nation that knows how to hope.

Just outside Jaffa gate, a lone saxophonist pushes back his long hair as he plays.

Oseh shalom bimromav.

The melody wafts into the air, into my heart, shaping the inchoate whispers of my heart into a prayer.

Another prayer on this day of salvation.

Never Forget

Millie Samson

MY

list of hostage names is yellowed, aged, now in three fragile pieces, but to me it is a symbol of the war to be kept as a remembrance, and to daven that we can live in peace. And when my grandchildren ask why I still have the old torn page I will tell them — we will never forget.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 965)