One of the most lasting images of late November 2023 — alongside tearful photos of freed Israeli hostages reuniting with their loved ones — was a video of a resident of Kfar Aza breathlessly listing the names of the liberated captives before shouting the Shema.
The clip epitomized the joy and relief felt across Israel that week, as a ceasefire brought more than 100 hostages out of captivity and provided a balm for a nation in mourning.
Now, as another set of hostages is about to be released, the mood is not the same.
Fourteen months of war have passed since the last hostage release, and in that time, much of Gaza has been destroyed, dozens of hostages have been confirmed killed, and divisions in Israeli society have only grown.
And as Israel readies to receive dozens of liberated hostages, its citizens and Jews around the world are preparing for heartbreak.
“My hopes are up. But my heart is heavy,” wrote Ori Hanan Weisberg, an American immigrant to Israel, in a viral Facebook post noting that this week’s ceasefire deal had been on the table for months. “I will say a blessing of thanks for every soul released. But it will be difficult for me to rejoice (though I hope hostages’ family and friends do). Not because of the ‘price’ of doing the deal, but because of the ‘price’ we have paid over the last months. Even perhaps year.”
High hopes, heavy hearts
He continued, “How many hostages died or were outright murdered in that time? How many extra months of hell did those being released endure, and what effect will it have on them?”
Foremost in the minds of many is the condition of the released hostages. In November 2023, all of the freed hostages were alive. Now, it’s estimated that at least some of the initial 33 set to be released will return dead.
Family members of hostages have stressed the importance of receiving the bodies of those who have died so they can afford them a proper burial. But seeing the return of hostages’ bodies will still occasion mourning, even if the fates of many of the captives have long been known.
The Bibas family
Nowhere is that apprehension more acute than in the case of Kfir and Ariel Bibas, the two remaining children held hostage who, since the days after October 7, have become faces of the captives’ plight. In late November 2023, during the first ceasefire, Hamas announced that they and their mother Shiri had been killed.
Israel said it was investigating that claim but has not confirmed it. For more than a year, advocates for the hostages have spoken of the Bibas children, who would now be ages 2 and 5, as presumed to be alive. But now, as the Bibases are due to be released in the second week of the deal, voices across Israel are publicly grappling with the possibility that they are dead.
“We are 99% certain that they are dead, likely murdered even before the 1st exchange,” Rachel Gur, an Israeli university lecturer and longtime political adviser, wrote on X earlier this week. “Shiri, Ariel and Kfir weren’t kidnapped by a formal Hamas cell but by the enterprising civilians of Gaza. They were stolen as trophies. A woman clutching 2 babies. They never stood a chance.”
Sara Yael Hirschhorn, a historian who teaches at the University of Haifa, wrote, “If two little redheaded kids come out of Gaza in coffins, be ready for serious vigilante violence.” (She made clear that the post was a prediction, not an endorsement of violence.)
Even prayers that the boys are alive and well have met backlash. On Secret Tel Aviv, a popular Facebook group, a post from November imagining a scenario in which “the Bibas family sits together in a darkened cell, with great love as they have never before felt,” drew a stream of comments accusing the writer of being detached from reality.
Some Israelis and Diaspora Jews are turning to prayer to gird themselves for the days ahead — and in some cases, giving themselves an avenue for hope about the Bibases’ fate.
“Even though I know all of the rumors, and all of the estimates, at this Shabbat’s candle lighting I will pray for all of the hostages,” wrote Tel Aviv resident Pninat Yanay in a post that has garnered hundreds of reactions.
Referring to a photo of Shiri Bibas clutching her two children as they were abducted to Gaza, Yanai said she would “dedicate a special prayer for that mother in pajamas on Shabbat morning. … I will pray for the entire Bibas family, and the rest of our nation’s hostages, to return alive and whole. That there should be a miracle.”
Hillary Chorny, cantor at Los Angeles’ Temple Beth Am, suggested a way Jewish liturgy could reflect the mix of gratitude for the hostages’ release and grief for those killed. She suggested reciting Hallel, the traditional Jewish festival prayer of thanksgiving, following the first hostage release. But she recommended saying the abbreviated version of the prayer “because our joy is incomplete.”
The gratitude, she said, will be “muted by the pain of these past many hundreds of days, and by what is not yet resolved.”
Chorny’s congregation is one of countless Jewish communities around the world that have been galvanized by advocacy for the hostages. Now, they will need to come together to process their prayers being answered in ways that they would not have preferred.
“There is hope that has been lost and that feels weird when it’s a big aspect of Judaism to continue to always have hope,” said Dana Cohen, a clinical social worker in Chicago who said she, her colleagues and many of her clients had been emotionally affected by Oct. 7 and its aftermath.
She said people who have been invested in the hostages’ plight should prepare to feel a mixture of emotions over the coming weeks, from relief, joy and connection to anxiety, uncertainty and grief. “All feelings are valid,” she said.
And as hostage families anxiously await their loved ones, some are turning toward what will happen next. The second and third phases of the deal are set to include the release of the rest of the hostages, living and dead.
But it is far from clear that those stages, which Israeli government leaders have reportedly vowed to torpedo, will move forward, particularly as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces fierce pressure from his government partners to resume fighting.
Alana Zeitchik, a cousin of hostage David Cunio who has been advocating for the captives for more than a year from her home in New York City, said she has no plans to let up.
“No, I don’t have hope; I have the ability to take action,” she said in an Instagram video. “Hope is not some amorphous thing that we can’t touch and grab. It’s actually the action that we take. It is the sheer will inside of us to do something.”
Philissa Cramer contributed reporting.