It’s a song that has been a part of our community’s musical culture as far back as I can remember.
How many concerts has it been played at? How many gatherings has it been sung at?
It’s the popular verse from Isaiah 51:11. “Ufduyei Hashem be-rina . . . The redeemed of Hashem shall return, and come with singing into Zion; and everlasting joy shall be upon their head: they shall obtain gladness and joy; and sorrow and mourning shall flee away.”
It was always set to upbeat musical notes and felt like a song permeated with tremendous joy.
After all, it speaks of captives returning! Of pain disappearing!
But all these years, did I ever pause to think about the horror of the captivity they were returning from? About the suffering of what the captivity these returning captives endured?
Honestly, would I have even had a clue what it means?
Sadly, our generation now understands this verse and all that is unsaid in the white spaces between the black shape and print of the letters that speak of the joy of release from captivity.
Sadly, within this palpable ecstatic joy, we now also understand that this moment of joy and return is simultaneously the moment that commences these returned hostages challenging physical, emotional and mental journey to what will hopefully be a journey that leads to their rehabilitation, recovery and healing.
So much of the discourse of many of the returning hostages seems to be laced in a language of faith and Jewish tradition.
The words of the psalmist in Psalm 118 and the famous Psalm 23 speak of diminishing fear because of the presence of G-d, “Though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: For thou art with me” has come to life in our lifetime on a national level.
Time and again, as these returned hostages, many of them in their twenties, speak of the strength that got them through it all, the faith and palpable presence of G-d.
They speak of each night counting their blessings and paying attention to the positives of their day in captivity.
Positives?
Underground, in pitch black, barely any oxygen, shackled in cages, barely able to move, sustaining beatings, and knives coldly sliding across their necks, in the stench of filth — positives?
If the exceptionally vicious captor whose bloodcurdling and threatening screams of “Allahu Akbar” hadn’t joined the other captors screaming on that day.
They speak of the prayer they engaged in, silent dialogues in the darkness, or “Shema Yisrael” they whispered daily.
Or how they fasted on Yom Kippur, even as they were already starved.
It seems that in inverse proportion to many of these hostages physical stature diminishing, their spiritual statue strengthened.
There have been nuggets of wisdom too. As if you are listening to a 90-year-old Auschwitz survivor speaking.
But they are not much older than kids.
Many of these hostages were raised secular, but their Jewish identity and soul pierced through every torment and torture, their Jewish will as strong as steel.
Some of the hostages were in captivity with others, a captivity camaraderie to pass the time with — even as they didn’t necessarily have the strength or even the oxygen to talk. Others were on their own, struggling in solitary confinement own. For two torturous, long years.
Understandably, as is to be expected in surviving profound life-changing trauma, I’m sure some captives feel the abandonment of G-d versus any comfort from G-d. But the motif of belief and faith has been undeniable.
We have seen this before, where the terrifying experience of captivity yielded a kind of transformation.
Noah Hertz, an Air Force pilot who fought in the Yom Kippur War, fell into Syrian captivity for eight months. He left captivity a changed man, ultimately embracing observant Judaism.
I learned of Noah Hertz and his story right before Oct. 7 when increased content and programming to mark the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War filled the Israeli networks.
Captivity was still such a deeply foreign notion at the time, a word and concept that to my mind hearkened back to the Middle Ages. When I learned of Noah Hertz’s Yom Kippur War captivity story 50 years on, it struck deep within me.
A mere few days later, on Simchat Torah, Oct. 7, 2023, when in between the blaring sirens that had us in the bomb shelter I stood on the street as I watched the cars of parents and their young sons being driven to the their army bases, when my nephew who was in the IDF and had apparently received some intel, said — very amorphously, “I don’t know — they’re saying some people may have been kidnapped and taken captive . . . ”
That 50th anniversary program I had just watched about marking a date in the past forcefully collided with my present.
Part of the program was showing black and white footage of a post-captivity interview with Noach Hertz. The interviewer, Nachman Shai, asked him if his religious expression changed or expanded while in captivity? To which the secular-raised and seemingly still secular Noach Hertz responded that it absolutely did, and he goes on to detail Kabbalat Shabbat and Havdallah, and then as he — this young 26-year-old Noach Hertz is speaking and answering, going on to say “even a Pesach seder . . .” — you suddenly see an older religious man, yarmulka-clad with a white flowing beard, leaning over, watching his younger interviewed self, alongside the current interviewer he is in conversation with.
For Noach Hertz, his captivity catalyzed a complete religious transformation.
Since I had just watched this program about a released captive, it rushed back to me on that traumatic Simchat Torah.
For nearly two years, it had hadn’t crossed my mind.
For two years we were steeped in a paralyzing kind of national survival and national holding of hope and anxiety that the hostages should even be alive, that they shouldn’t be too tormented, that somehow, they should one day return — it hijacked so much else and almost became the singular thought we lived and breathed.
A few months back with one of the hostage releases, the story of Noach Hertz flashed back to me.
Now, since this final release, with so many of the hostages speaking of their unwavering Jewish faith and Jewish acts they found the wherewithal to eke out in the terrorizing darkness of basically being buried alive, I’ve circled back to that interview.
It makes sense that when there is an earthquake level trauma, change is inevitable.
Time will tell how the current trauma and hostage release will all unfold.
I think Israel will obviously be changed forever. But I wonder whether there will be a religious change too, one that is already underway.
I wonder whether the rigid definitions of religious and secular will finally fall away, as people’s connection to G-d and faith and living lives in connection with Jewish tradition — regardless of strict observance — will grow.
Rather than Jewish connection, what matters, and all that matters to me right now, is that these hostages find a way toward physical and mental healing for a refua sheleima, a refuat hanefesh and refuat haguf” — a healing of body and soul.
Reconnecting with the source of Jewish roots and idnetity might be part of that healing too.
Personally, I have found the Jewish vignettes of their faith and valiant heroism of these hostages in captivity genuinely humbling and inspirational. Gobsmacking, actually. By the sheer choices they found within themselves to choose in these soul-destroying circumstances they were caught in.
Seeing one of the surviving hostage’s eyes I almost look away from the video footage, it’s so painful to see the brokenness. How can anyone depart from the clutches of such evil and ever be OK?
Movingly, one hostage said that his sole desire right now, is to see the expanse of the sky, nothing more. That’s his ultimate. When word went out about it, in solidarity, tens of thousands of pictures of skies from all over the world, were sent to him. So he can see endless skies, in Iceland, Italy, America, India, Africa . . .
What we take for granted each and every day, just the blessing of looking up and seeing the sky, is this young guy’s everything.
Although I actually often connected with the gift of nature, I now feel more sensitized to a whole deeper level, for the gift of the open skies above.
Whether or not for the hostages now home, looking toward the sky, the heavens above, also means connecting with the presence of G-d or not, it certainly brings the presence of peace of mind, and a symbol of their newfound freedom.
That in and of itself can be G-d’s greatest gift right now.
© IJN 2025
