Praying with the hostages at daybreak

Ever since October 7, the hostages in Gaza have accompanied me throughout my days and nights. I wake up with them, go to sleep with them, and check the news for updates about them countless times in between. They peer out at me from banners with human mosaics of shining, colorful faces in little black squares – men and women, young and old, on fences and facades, with two little redheads incomprehensibly included in the mix. They look over my shoulder at bus stops, call out to me from news sites, greet me on recycle bins, and suddenly appear in my living room on the screen saver of my TV. They are constantly in the background – at family celebrations, when I get together with friends, and when I see a beautiful sunset that they cannot enjoy.

My world is colored by concern for people I don’t know but have come to know. The images of their capture haunt me; the words of their family members echo in my mind. I recognize their faces, can identify them by name, and know their stories. When there is hope for their release, it’s a good day; when the prospects are slim, it is bad. Every once in a while, there is an amazing day when they are rescued alive; occasionally, there are mixed days of heartbreak and relief when their bodies are retrieved. In recent weeks, our days have careened wildly between those poles, hurtling us from hope to despair and back again, sometimes within hours on the same day.

My heart, like the hostages, is being held captive in Gaza.

The hostages have been in my prayers since the start of the war. On Shabbat mornings, their first names ring out in my synagogue, followed by the names of their mothers, as customary in Jewish prayers for those in need of Heavenly mercy, and no matter how much the list has been shortened by hostage deals and rescues, it is still overwhelmingly long.

On a daily basis, in my personal prayers, the hostages have informed my understanding of a string of short blessings recited at daybreak that I have been rattling off since childhood without giving too much thought to their content. As I silently recite each blessing, I am keenly aware of the experiences of the hostages, both those who have been freed and those who remain in captivity. Noa Argamani and Agam Berger are with me, cooking and cleaning for their captors, and Amit Soussana is bravely speaking of the assault and abuse she suffered at Hamas hands. Naama Levy is with me too, with her slit ankles and bloodstained pants, surrounded by the other female surveillance soldiers taken with her from their army base. Holocaust survivor Yaffa Adar is holding her head high while being driven to Gaza in a golf cart and Rimon Kirsht is looking a masked terrorist straight in the eye, talking to him sharply and then striding defiantly, as she is transferred to Red Cross intermediaries while being released.

As I pray, Shiri Bibas is walking shoeless in Gaza, toting her ginger-haired tots, and Maya Regev is hobbling on crutches as she returns to Israel. Ohad Ben Ami is in the boxer shorts he was wearing when abducted, while other hostages, still in their pajamas, are longing for clean clothes and showers. In the dark, dank, deep tunnels, Omer Shem Tov is pleading for an inhaler and Omer Wenkert is in need of his pills, while Nurse Nili is tending to elderly hostages who are bereft of their glasses, hearing aids, and medication. My neighbor Aner, of blessed memory, is heroically lobbing hand grenades back at terrorists from inside the packed shelter from which Hersh, Eliya, Or, and Alon were kidnapped after his death. But there are also spots of light: The heart-stopping pictures of Emilia Aloni hugging her grandmother after her release, Avichai Brodutch covered in his children after their return, and Louis Har and Fernando Marman reunited with their wives, leave me aching for more.

Against the backdrop of the ongoing war, the images of the hostages and of those who have fallen in attempts to save them have transformed my awareness and created a new version of my morning blessings: they are now the prayer of a Jew waking to an unending nightmare, but who is at the same time grateful for aspects of life that were once taken for granted. My lips recite the ancient Hebrew words, beginning with thanks for a rooster’s ability to know when to crow, but in my heart, the blessings read something like this:

Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who enables us to mark the passage of time and distinguish between day and night – despite the challenges of sustained darkness, even in the tunnels, even when we have been trapped in one long terrible day since the seventh of October, and even as our society has traveled back to the fragmentation of October sixth.

Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who has made me a Jew – despite the murderous assault on my people in the past and present, and no matter how much we are targeted, reviled, maligned, and misunderstood by a hostile world.

Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who has granted me freedom and kept me from bondage and servitude.

Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who has made me a woman, although I am painfully aware that my sex makes me vulnerable, abusable, susceptible to sexual assault and rape denial, and that women face the threat of carrying unwanted new life due to violence.

Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who enables our eyes to adjust to bright light after prolonged darkness, gives us glasses to help us to see, and provides us with all that we need to experience the sensory world.

Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who clothes us in appropriate garb, protects us from heat, cold, and the ravages of the elements, cloaks us in kindness, and enables us to maintain our personal hygiene.

On mornings following the release or rescue of hostages:
Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who releases the imprisoned!!!

On other days:
Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who releases the imprisoned and brings home hostages – may they all be returned speedily and in our day.

Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who enables captives to retain their dignity, sit upright, and stand tall with pride and defiance.

Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who has created the groundwaters beneath the damp tunnels, the solid ground on which we stand, and the fresh air that we breathe.

Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who provides me with sustenance, medicines, nourishment for my soul, companionship, feelings of love and hope, and all that I need.

Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who enables us to walk, sometimes barefoot, despite injuries, and protects our limbs.

Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who girds the soldiers of Israel with might, courage, self-sacrifice, and honor.

Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who crowns Israel in splendor, provides us with a moral code and enables us to live by it, and who will restore Israel’s tarnished reputation so that we may fulfill our role as a light unto the nations.

Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who gives strength to the weary and enables us to continue moving forward, step by step, despite the difficulties that we face.

As the war goes on, the last blessing, which asks for strength, resonates for me on both a personal and national level, and I say it with increasing fervor. We Israelis are emotionally and physically exhausted. We are haunted by the horrors of October 7, mourn the continuing deaths of our soldiers and civilians, and are traumatized by the ongoing plight of the hostages and their families. We are torn between the precept that redemption of hostages is the greatest of all commandments and the warning that hostages should not be redeemed for exorbitant ransoms, lest it encourage further kidnappings. We are caught between the imperative to save the lives of real people in the here and now and the fear that the proposed deal with the devil will doom other people to death in the future. Our values of solidarity, mutual responsibility, and sanctity of life demand that the hostages be returned, but at the same time, these values conflict with our fear that the release of murderous terrorists will imperil our country’s security needs.

The colorful banners with mosaics of hostages crying out to be freed are now counterbalanced by banners with mosaics of fallen soldiers urging us to continue fighting until victory is achieved. Sometimes, these banners hang side by side in the same intersection, as if presenting a choice between two competing war goals that are mutually exclusive: defeating Hamas and rescuing the hostages. The unity that characterized the early stages of the war has frayed, discourse in Israel is heating up, and once again the lines are being drawn between right and left and religious and secular, this time with the focus on the hostage deal.

Looking outside our borders, we reel from being accused of genocide when we know that our fight is against terrorists and not the people of Gaza. We are haunted by the pictures of destruction, devastating numbers of civilian victims, and heartbreaking images and stories about wounded and dead women and children, which we see in the foreign press. We rage at Hamas not only for what it has done to us, but also for embedding itself among the civilian population and putting them in harm’s way.

As the war continues with no end in sight, we watch as the empty north of our country burns, brace ourselves for retaliations from Iran and Hezbollah, worry that we are alienating our allies, and live with the fear of a regional war. We listen to infighting and incitement between our political and military leadership and long for leaders who are motivated solely by the good of the country and not by personal or political considerations. We see families buckle under the burden of reserve duty, hear how our economy is being destroyed, and worry about our children’s future. But at the same time, the chilling rise in antisemitism abroad reminds us that Israel is our only home.

This week, we were graced with an amazing day. On Tuesday, Israeli soldiers rescued Qaid Farhan al-Qadi, a Muslim Bedouin Arab citizen of Israel, who was working as a guard at a packing factory on Kibbutz Magen when he was taken hostage on October 7. The images of his brothers and sons galloping through the hospital to greet him moved an entire country to tears. But there are still 107 hostages left in Gaza, 72 of whom are still presumed by the IDF to be alive. As Jewish tradition teaches us that saving a life is comparable to saving an entire world, there are 72 worlds in Gaza waiting to be saved.

As the negotiations for a hostage deal and ceasefire continue in Qatar, perhaps as the last chance to bring hostages home alive, we pray that the mediators will succeed in convincing Hamas to compromise on their demands. We pray that our leaders will be granted the wisdom and courage to accept proposals that will maintain Israel’s security and release our hostages. We pray for a solution that will bring the hostages out from darkness to light, end the plight of their families, let their journey to recovery begin, and enable Israeli society to heal.

And when the hostages come home, our grateful hearts, bursting with joy and relief, will soar and sing, over and over again, “Blessed are You, Lord our God, Ruler of the Universe, who releases the imprisoned,” with no transformation of the ancient words at all.

Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg Polin calling for their son Hersh at the Gaza border, August 29, 2024 (Courtesy of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum)