The thumping sound of a shofa echoed through the small crowd gathered in Hostage Square on Sunday night to take part in an evening of serikhot, penitential prayers recited before a high feast.
Shofar-playing singer-songwriter Kaylee Halperin reflected on what was going on in her mind as she played the shofar.
“We hoped that somewhere deep in the tunnels of Gaza, someone would hear it and know that we were calling home,” she said.
Halperin was part of a five-person ensemble that came together to lead a musical ceremony that combined popular Hebrew songs with traditional Selihot liturgy. Both religious and secular texts have taken on new meaning since Oct. 7, Halperin said, citing lyrics from iconic Israeli singers including Shlomo Artzi, Naomi Shemer and Chava Alberstein that call for the return of loved ones.
The evening was hosted by Tel Aviv resident Rabba Anat Sharbat, who one attendee at the event referred to as “the rabbi of Hostage Square.” Many attendees at the Hostage Square Serihot service sat in yellow chairs, a color that represented the plight of the hostages. (Photo by Deborah Danan)
Sharbat, a rabbily appointed by Yeshivat Maharat, a liberal Orthodox Jewish organization, began organizing weekly Kabbalah Shabbat services and Havdalah ceremonies welcoming the Sabbath a few days after October 7, when Shabbat tables were set up in the square (before it was renamed Hostage Square) in anticipation of the hostages’ imminent return.
“We were naive then. We thought they would come back soon,” Sharbat said, “but when we saw the tables, we realized we needed a Kabbalah Shabbat here until then. This place needed prayer.”
The following Saturday, Sheri Shem Tov, whose 22-year-old son, Omer, was among the hostages, asked Shabbat to lead the havdalah, the prayer that begins the Sabbath. “It’s a tradition that started that night, but we hope it will end as soon as they return,” Shabbat said.
Saturday night will be a time of protest.
In recent months, Saturday nights in Tel Aviv have become synonymous with protests calling for a ceasefire to free the hostages. The rallies take place just around the corner from the Defense Ministry headquarters, but efforts are made to keep Hostage Square a neutral space out of respect for the families on different political sides.
But as attendee Lena Egurski pointed out, despite the best intentions, the square has sometimes become a forum for politics. “If a member of a hostage’s family makes a speech against the government, no one can stop them,” she said. “What was unique about this event was that not a single political word was spoken.”
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“Maybe it was the prayers and petitions, I don’t know. It wasn’t a religious thing, it was more the connection with people that came through the prayers and petitions. It was very powerful,” added Egurski, who said he is not religious. “The range of people who passed by, from Haredi to very secular, shows that there were people who were drawn to the event and stayed until the end.”
Tehila, an attendee who dressed modestly for religious reasons and declined to give her last name, said one of the things that stood out to her about the event was the lack of politics. “It’s not always comfortable coming to these events,” she said. “I’m not involved in politics, and often I feel like there’s no place for people like me.”
Varda Alexander, a relative of Sharbat’s, said her grandson, Edan, an American who was captured by Hamas while serving in the Golani Infantry Brigade, paid attention for the first time in his life to the words of the liturgical poems, known in Hebrew as piyutim.
“This time of year means a lot to me,” she told the crowd, adding that since he was kidnapped she has recited the Avinu Malkeinu prayer every day, a staple on high holy days and during times of hardship. “For us, the high holy days never ended. They started on October 7 and have continued until today.”
Elena Turfanov, who was released with her mother in November at the request of Russian President Vladimir Putin, also spoke to the crowd, saying she hoped her son Sasha, who remains in detention in Gaza, would be home in time for the holidays. She said she knew Varda Alexander because she used to pray at the Tomb of the Righteous. In a documentary aired by Kan state television earlier this year, Turfanov, who is from the secular Nir Oz kibbutz, said she had become more religiously strict since October 7.
“I’ve seen a lot of things that I can’t explain,” Trufanov said in the documentary. “I believe they are not coincidences.”
Hanna Katzman, whose son Haim was killed on kibbutz Holit on October 7, has been heavily involved in both last year’s protests against the government’s justice reform plans and the more recent war-related protests. She said religious content was increasingly creeping into the protests, despite the protests’ reputation as left-leaning and secular.
“Everybody always talks about polarization, but there’s also a lot of cooperation that we haven’t seen before. Different groups are becoming closer,” Katzman said. “We’re seeing people reclaiming Jewish tradition in their own way. They’re finding comfort in its source.”
Katzman said that as part of her self-protection, she is picky about the events she attends. “I count every emotional interaction, and as a grieving mother, you have to limit those interactions,” she said.
For example, she didn’t attend the funeral of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, the Israeli-American killed in captivity last month, nor did she join the flag-carrying crowds that gathered in the streets to accompany him on his final journey, even though they lived in the same Jerusalem neighborhood. Even events honoring her own son, an Israeli scholar who studied religious nationalism, can be overwhelming and exhausting, so she decided this week to host an event focused not on a reflection on his life but on the study of ancient and modern texts that build on his research.
Meanwhile, Serihot’s events were okay, even for her visiting sister. In honor of the season, Katzman reflected on how regret has shaped her own emotions, recalling arguing with her son “about everything” growing up.
“I think about how my relationship with my son wasn’t always ideal, how that affected relationships with other children and family members, and what I could have done to make things better when my son was alive,” she said.
It’s hard to forgive those in power
She says it’s been hard to forgive those in power, because she feels they have yet to show any remorse or even acknowledge the situation. Like many others, she hasn’t heard anything from the government beyond a run-of-the-mill letter sent four months after Haim’s death. But what’s more painful, she says, has been the lack of empathy from some Israelis, some of whom have suggested that because her son was a secular peace activist from a kibbutz, “he somehow let Hamas into his home.”
She also singled out the “Heroes Forum,” formed by the families of soldiers killed in Gaza, which she said was using the soldiers’ deaths “to justify the continuation of the war.”
“They’re basically saying, ‘Our children were killed, so now we want everyone else to kill their children so that our sacrifice will be rewarded.’ It’s like a sunk cost fallacy,” she said.
Promoting on new channels
Egursky also blamed the right-wing for an increasingly hardline stance, which he said was being fuelled by “propaganda” from Channel 14, a right-wing network widely seen as sympathetic to the government. Egursky’s daughter, Lianne, a former IDF observer, attended the event holding a sign with pictures of the five female observers abducted from the Nahal Oz military base.
Egulski has long stopped sharing photos of hostage-related events in his family WhatsApp group, but made an exception Sunday night because of the nature of the events. Egulski’s family are mostly, but not all, deeply religious people who are on opposing ideological sides on the hostage issue and firmly believe that any deal guaranteeing the return of the hostages would lead to more terrorist attacks in the future.
Egurski said there has always been an agreement since the country’s founding that families could say whatever they wanted. “Somehow, this principle that we all hold sacred doesn’t apply to the hostages’ families, even though they deserve it more than anyone,” she said.
She was careful to send her family only videos of religious poems sung on Sunday nights, believing they couldn’t be considered offensive. “I was wrong. I got backlash,” she said.
“Just seeing the yellow chairs is an insult to them,” she continued, referring to the color that symbolizes the hostages’ plight. “I don’t understand how anyone could be moved by such a purely spiritual, religious, emotional event.”
Meanwhile, Sharbat is adamant that unity remains a central element of all the events he hosts at Hostage Square.
“It’s very important to me that this square is a place where people from both the right and the left can come together,” she said. “It can accommodate everyone. There is not a single person who is not praying for the return of the hostages.”
