Even though the seder is long past, the “fifth son” is still with us. The late Lubavitcher Rebbe identified the fifth son as the one who didn’t show up for the seder at all. He did not pose a question and did not receive an answer.
Identification of a fifth son implies a condemnation of those who have not motivated the masses of Jews who have fallen away from the Jewish community to rejoin it.
But there is a different fifth son. He wants more than anything in the world to join the Passover seder and the Jewish community, but he cannot.
He is held in captivity in Gaza.
By the time you read this, I hope everything that follows will be outdated. I hope that all of the hostages will have been liberated. But as of the second intermediate day of Passover, when I write, the fifth son is very much a reality. By best estimates, there are actually 59 fifth sons, none of whom were at the seder because they were robbed of the opportunity. They are imprisoned for the sole reason that they are Jewish.
It has been learned that a hostage thought to be dead might still be alive. News such as this is what accounts for the “estimated” number of living hostages.
I am told that a rabbi asked the International Committee of the Red Cross to deliver matzah to this newly discovered fifth son, since it is Passover and since the captive is reportedly malnourished. The International Red Cross has shirked its duty, despoiled its neutrality and not visited the hostages.
We cannot get the fifth sons off our minds. Unlike the fifth son who did not show up for the seder, the fifth sons in captivity do not cease to animate our prayers and our hate of the evil that created them — and our hate for the emotional and political quandary that Hamas’ kidnapping created. Do we make any concession to free the hostages, allowing Hamas to survive? Do we eliminate Hamas, risking the survival of the hostages? No people and no country should ever face such a quandary.
It is true that the failure of the International Red Cross to visit the hostages is a source of anguish and activism. It is true that there are other such sources: the military difficulty in extricating the hostages; the collateral damage when they are extricated; the refusal of feminist organizations to acknowledge and condemn the abuse of female hostages; the moral bankruptcy of those “activists” and professors who validate and salute Hamas’ atrocities.
But the heart of the matter remains: the captivity itself. The robbery of human beings. The torture to which they are subject. The separation of families. The sheer inhumanity.
The fifth sons will forever be with us even after, G-d willing, they are all liberated. Their stories will be with us. Their suffering will be with us. Their courage. Their wits. We shall gather a whole literature and a vast memory bank, just as we have after the Holocaust.
We shall forever recall and admire the likes of Agam Berger, who, while held hostage, spurned demands that she convert to Islam and became Sabbath observant instead. We shall name and honor her spiritual resistance, and her kindness to her fellow captives under the most horrendous conditions.
We shall forever remember the likes of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, and how he was murdered, shot in the back, out of sheer hatred; and we shall forever remember the eloquence and the superhuman fortitude of his mother, who traveled the world to shake people out of their indifference, to remind everyone of the injustice done to him and done to every human being of good will.
We shall forever gather the stories of every survivor of, and every victim at, the Nova music festival, and the same for Kibbutz Be’eri and for all of the other slaughter sites infamously created by monsters parading as human beings.
Yes, the fifth sons will be with us every Passover and long after Passover. We shall forever embrace them or recall their sacrifice, just as we embraced the Holocaust survivors and honored those who did not survive. In a way, we have all become the fifth sons.
© IJN 2025
