Learning from the hostages about beginning again

The two years since October 7 have been an emotional rollercoaster, and the past few weeks have not been an exception. On one hand I’m overjoyed for the hostages who were returned, but 13 bodies (at time of writing) still remain in Gaza, including two Americans, Omer Neutra and Itay Chen. And while the war in Gaza may be ending, the war of antisemitism we face here in the streets and on campuses in the United States is not.

From Elul into Tishrei, our tradition gives us multiple chances to begin again. In Elul, we begin teshuvah — asking forgiveness from people in our lives, acknowledging bad behavior with the commitment to change in the year ahead. Then comes Yom Kippur, when we ask forgiveness from Hashem and seek spiritual renewal, so we can be inscribed in the Book of Life. It’s a a new beginning for our souls.

But perhaps nowhere is this theme of beginning more appropriate than on Simchat Torah, when we finish the Torah with V’Zot HaBerachah and immediately begin again with Beresheit.

This year, as it became clear that the living hostages would be returned just before Simchat Torah, exactly two years after they were taken, I couldn’t help but think about the symbolism. We were about to begin the Torah again with the story of creation just as these men and their families were given the chance to begin again.

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Chasidic thought reads Beresheit not as “in the beginning” but “for the sake of the beginning.” The world, it teaches, was created for the sake of renewal, Torah, and the Jewish people, who must constantly recreate and rediscover themselves.

Our liturgy mirrors this idea every morning during Birkhot HaShachar. We bless God who “renews in His goodness each day, continually, the work of creation.”

The Baal Shem Tov taught that Beresheit represents a constant act of creation — not something that happened once thousands of years ago, but something happening right now, in every moment. He said each of us must find the courage to accept a new beginning. As he put it: “Let me fall, and my new self will catch me.”

Even though we just began a new year, how much are we really changing? They say old habits die hard, and it’s true. True, Yom Kippur is that time that we have our slates wiped clean, but if we go back to doing the same things, the same bad habits, what good is that? Many people make resolutions for the secular New Year — like going to the gym — that last only a few weeks. So how do we find the inspiration to really begin again?

I found that inspiration in the stories of our hostages.

I was struck by returned hostage Matan Angrest’s request to see sunlight. He had spent two years underground. His mother described him remembering “being beaten so badly that he lost consciousness.” She said for the last four months of his captivity he was confined to a dark tunnel. So naturally he wanted to see the sunlight. Hearing the horrific stories of what the hostages endured allows us to think about all we take for granted. What if we had to live underground for years? How would it make us think about what we really need? Would we feel less uncomfortable trying to change if we had to? But why does it take a tragedy or hardship for us to be able to learn how to begin anew?

Rabbi Nachman of Breslov taught that true spiritual growth comes from constantly beginning again — even multiple times a day.  I can visualize it as restarting a video game, like Super Mario Brothers, where each time you restart the same level, you do so with new knowledge and determination to get to the next level. Nachman taught that we see not only the world but ourselves as reborn anew each day, as able, each day, to decide anew who we are going to be in the world this day.

He taught: “Even if you fall, you must get up. The true ascent only comes after the fall. There is no ascent without a descent.” These teachings invite us to see every challenge as an invitation to renewal, and every failure as the soil from which new life grows.

And so we return to Beresheit itself: The first act of creation is the separation of light from darkness. “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness.”

This is the blueprint of all renewal, that light can emerge even in the deepest darkness. As the hostages began returning home, we witnessed this creation story come alive. After years in tunnels of darkness, they emerged, blinking into the light.

Each returned hostage represents a new creation, a Beresheit moment, and proof that even after unimaginable suffering, renewal is possible.

Every morning, Omer Shem Tov’s mother, Shelly, entered his empty room and recited Psalm 20 from a prayer card. She came by Psalm 20 randomly: A group supporting hostages’ families handed out cards printed with chapters from the Book of Psalms, and that psalm happened to be the one that had Omer’s name on it.

The line “May the Lord answer you on a day of distress” gave her comfort.

Unbeknownst to her, Omer, 130 feet underground in Gaza, was reciting the same psalm each morning —the same words, the same plea, from a similar prayer card his captives found, probably dropped by IDF soldiers.

In captivity, Omer began to pray, to bless his food, to promise God that he would put on tefillin when he returned home. After 505 days underground, he kept that promise.

Eli Sharabi recited Shema every day in the tunnels, and he made kiddush over water every Friday night.

Matan Zangauker demanded tefillin and a siddur from his captors, and he prayed three times a day, every day, for two years. He said, “It protected me. It gave me hope.”

Rom Braslavski was starved and beaten but refused to convert to Islam. When he came home, the first thing he did was put on tefillin. He told his family, “I am Jewish. I am strong.”

On the way to the hospital after being freed, Agam Berger wrote that she “chose a path of faith and I returned through a path of faith.” She refused to eat meat in captivity, because it wasn’t kosher; she gave up hametz during Pesach; and when she received a siddur, she davened each day.

These are not just stories of survival. They are stories of faith reborn in darkness, of light separating from the void.

Dr. Einat Yehene, who works with the hostage families, observed that after trauma, people often rediscover faith to make meaning of the unbearable. They realize that if they cannot control what happens to them, they can still choose how to respond, and that choice becomes an act of creation.

That’s what Rabbi Nachman meant by “descent for the sake of ascent.” The hostages’ faith and their courage to find light in darkness teach us how to begin again in our own lives.

It is not only the hostages who are renewed,  it is the entire people of Israel. For two years, we have prayed, marched, worn yellow ribbons, and said their names. We have rediscovered what achdut — unity — really means.

The Talmud says all of Israel is responsible for one another. We have lived that truth. And we have learned from the families that even when the human world breaks, God’s world continues to recreate itself.

I will never forget paying a shiva call on Oct. 20, 2023, Friday afternoon, to a charedi family who had lost their only son on October 7. He had traveled to the Nova Festival with friends, and he was murdered there. I was truly in awe of the emunah (faith) the mother emanated as she described her son, who was still very much a part of the family despite his more secular life. She spoke about all the light he had brought to the world in his 18 years. Her neighbors said her emunah was literally keeping their entire community going.

That is what it means to begin again.

Rav Soloveitchik wrote that the most fundamental Jewish principle is that “a person must create themselves.” Judaism introduced to the world the radical idea that we are not passive creatures of fate, but partners in creation.

That is what we see in the hostages’ return — and in their families’ faith.

Before he was killed, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, z”l, told others in captivity: “He who has a why can bear almost any how.”

That why — faith, love, purpose — is what kept many of these hostages alive.

Eli Sharabi said Hersh’s adage inspired and sustained him after the pair spent a few days together in a tunnel. Another hostage, Or Levy, who was later held and ultimately released with Mr. Sharabi, even had the maxim tattooed on his arm after his return home.

Beresheit teaches that creation begins with light breaking through darkness. The hostages’ return — and our unity as a people — are part of that same act of creation.

May we, too, find the strength to begin again, to create light where there is darkness, to turn despair into faith. And to believe, once more, that the world is being created anew every single day.

Stephanie Hausner of Teaneck is COO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.