How do we respond when our world falls apart? Earlier this week I and many members of our community had the opportunity to hear Eli Sharabi speak. Eli is a member of Kibbutz Be’eri who was taken hostage by Hamas on October 7th, and was released on February 8, 2025, after 491 days in captivity.
Eli wrote a book about his time in captivity, called Hostage, which I read on the plane to Israel for our JewishColumbus mission. Now he is traveling to communities all over, and on top of all of the horrors of everything he has been through, he somehow manages to have the strength to retell his story over and over again to audiences around the world. Sitting on a stool at the front of the room, he retold horrors no human should have to experience in a monotone and matter of fact voice.
From the very moment he was taken into captivity, Eli kept faith. He just wanted to get back to his wife and daughters, back to his home. And everywhere he was taken, he found a way to share his quiet strength, conviction, and care with other captives. First with a Thai agricultural worker named Kohn who was taken captive in the same car as him. Khon spoke no English, Hebrew, or Arabic, and Eli, through pictures and gesturing and patience, was able to help Kohn through his time in captivity until Kohn’s release in the first few months.
In the tunnels, Eli spent most of his time in captivity with Eliya Cohen and Alon Ohel. Alon described Eli in multiple interviews as like a father to him. Eli, through a seemingly superhuman act of will, hope, and faith, was able to bring his fellow captives together, keep them alive, help them share food, pray with them, teach Eliya English, and offer guidance and comfort all while suffering through the worst conditions a human being could bear. At one point, the food conditions became so severe that he and the other prisoners made a plan, he cut his eye with a razor, went towards the bathroom and pretended to faint, after which his captors doubled their rations.
His story is one of heroic bravery, one of perseverance, determination, and fortitude. He looked around at his surroundings, and never let them overtake or consume him.
We have one powerful example of this kind of fortitude in this week’s parsha. Tamar, daughter in law of Judah. When her world falls apart, what does she do? You can read her story for yourselves, but I think what is most important to note is that she does not let her fate define her. Like Eli, she takes matters into her own hands, strategizes about how to achieve her goals even in the most impossible of circumstances, and changes her fate forever. The rabbis teach us that because of her acts, she merits to be the ancestor of the great King David.
Time and time again we see examples of this incredible perseverance in our Jewish stories. How do people manage to keep up the strength? The courage? Somehow it has always been part and parcel of the Jewish story. In the laws about lighting Chanukah candles in the Talmud, we learn that it is a mitzvah to place the Hanukkah lamp at the entrance to one’s house on the outside, so that all can see it. If one lives upstairs, they place it at the window adjacent to the public domain. And in a time of danger, it is sufficient to place the hanukkah lamp on the table to fulfill his obligation.
The main mitzvah of Chanukah is pirsumei nisa, publicizing the miracle, proudly proclaiming who we are and what we stand for. What do we do in times of danger? We don’t hide who we are. We don’t hide our candles away. We find ways to continue to share the light, even if only with each other around our tables.
There was an unbelievable video that was released a day or two ago of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Uri Danino, Alex Loubnov, Almog Sarusi, and Carmel Gat lighting Chanukah candles in a tunnel. The camera looks around at each one of them in turn as they sing shehechiyanu v’kiymanu v’higi’anu lazman hazeh, Praised are you God who has kept us alive, who has sustained us, and who has brought us to this day.
To watch the video is almost too much to bear. To see Hersh’s smile, to know they were murdered months later. Liri Albag, another hostage who was thankfully released last January, shared the post with the following message,
“We were at one point ten hostages together. We had nothing, sleeping on top of each other, very little food, no shower, no air. But we were together and we gave hope one to another. We held each other. Each one of us as if dead within, but together we were alive.
At some point five of us were left, and December arrived. We knew the holiday was coming, and we looked for any sort of light or candle we could use for the mitzvah. We received one solitary electric light, and on it we sang Chanukah songs and prayed to be taken from the darkness to the light.
Seeing these pictures, these videos, brings up the memories and the trauma. It reminds us that from within the darkness we were able to find the light in our Jewish heritage. From within the abyss we found the hope together that we would be freed from the hell. I’m so sorry that your ending was not the same.”
I was speaking to a friend the day after listening to Eli’s story and she remarked that when we were little, we would sit on Yom Hashoah and listen to the stories of Holocaust survivors and bear witness. And now here we are, listening to the stories of our newest survivors. October 7th survivors will be the testimony this next generation will bear witness to.
But we must not only bear witness. We must take up the meaning of Chanukah in its truest form, and stand up with Jewish pride wherever we are. If they could find a way to light Chanukah candles and sing Shehechiyanu beneath the streets of Gaza, we must hold fast to each other, to our heritage, to our people, to our rituals, to our family now.
How do we respond when our world falls apart? We do this. We gather for Shabbat. We celebrate an excited and talented bar mitzvah who has chosen to take on a leadership role today in our community. We sing and pray together. We rise and ignite our hearts with love and pride and faith and hope, because a single candle can light up even the darkest room, and when you share a candle’s light the original light is not diminished, it only grows. So may our hope grow, so may our light grow this Chanukah and beyond.
Shabbat Shalom.
