He is finally free – child of light, love and peace

At Hersh’s funeral last week, with hundreds of thousands watching live and on livestream, his mother screamed out in liberated pain that her son was finally, finally, finally free! Free from almost a year forced underground as a hostage in Gaza.

How did this 23-year-old young man described as a child of light, love and peace survive 329 days without sunlight and fresh air, with barely enough food and water to wake up day after dark day, with the uncertainty of being killed at the whim of a terror group?

Hersh was an American citizen, born in California, and then moved with his family to Israel, to Jerusalem when he was eight years old.

He was a free spirit who slept in a room filled with maps and globes by night and planned adventurous trips by day. He had spent the previous summer with a bag on his back traveling across Europe on a route from music festival to music festival.

He followed the music. So……

How did Hersh become a hostage in Gaza?

He was celebrating peace and love at the Nova Musical Festival on October 7, 2023 in the south of Israel close to the Gaza border. He was surrounded by thousands of others who would have accepted anyone willing to just dance and laugh beneath the stars.

And then sunrise, a time that should have been both peaceful and exhilarating after a night of dancing with friends, arrived with missiles and terror.

The music and laughter were silenced.

Instead, screams of fear and panic rose above the trees as truckloads of barbaric terrorists yelling a perverted “God is great” in Arabic (Allahu Akbar) chased after these peace lovers with the determined goal of mutilating, violently raping and murdering as many Jews as possible. A real evil was unleashed that cannot and must not be reasoned away.

Hersh and his best friend Aner Shapira thought they found refuge as they crowded into a small, nearby roadside bomb shelter with over twenty other terrified people. The terrorists found them and began to throw grenades inside. Aner bravely stood in the entrance and managed to throw back seven grenades until the eighth blew him up. As more people died around him Hersh managed to text his last words to his parents — I love you and then the final I‘m sorry.

He was one of the few survivors dragged out, with half of his dominant left arm blown off, and pushed up into a dirty pickup truck. I think about the spiraling levels of fear and shock he must have felt as the memories of a beautiful dance party dissolved into a new horrible reality.

I have never met Hersh, and yet for those long 329 days I have wept with his mother Rachel over his stolen life, have repeated her words to him — I love you, stay strong, survive — as I lit an extra Shabbat candle for him, that child of light, week after week.

I took time to notice his friendly, genuine smile on posters all over Israel and in my house.

After 329 days, after surviving so long in horrific conditions, after his mother screamed his name into a megaphone at the border of life and death in the hope he would somehow hear, after a rescue mission (God bless our soldiers!) deep in the tunnels edged around booby traps and closer to his prison, after all this…..  news of his cruel execution with five other hostages (Carmel, Eden, Alex, Almog and Ori)  pulled our country and beyond into thick mud of mourning.

Whenever sorrow and grief threaten to pull me low and into a narrow place of despair, I hold onto my faith in God and the comfort of an expansive, vibrant nature.

Dor Habonim Beach Reserve

While walking the scenic coastal trail in Dor Habonim Beach Reserve near Haifa, I thought about Hersh, who lived the last 329 days of his short life in the darkness of Gaza before his strong light of survival was extinguished by Hamas. Hersh, who was described by his family as the child of light, love and peace…. and also I thought about my favorite poem by Hannah Senesh (tortured and killed at the same age as Hersh, 23, after paratrooping into Hungary during WW2 on a mission to rescue Jews), written just a few km from this spot… such simple yet profound words that filled my soul with the sound of the waves:

O Lord my God
I pray that these things never end
The sand and the sea
The rush of the waters
The crash of the heavens
The prayer of the heart (of Man)

Of course we prayed he would return home alive. But at least he is free from his tortured body, free from the evil claws of Hamas.

And to his mother we boomerang her words back — “We love you, stay strong, survive”.

And we pray the other 101 hostages across a spectrum of ages and backgrounds still held captive in Gaza are either rescued or released to the people who love them.