Former hostage Agam Berger explained that she remained on "the path of faith" for 482 days, including during Passover last year, in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, titled 'I Kept My Freedom in Hamas’s Captivity,' published Thursday.
Hamas kidnapped Berger on October 7, 2023, when the terror group invaded the Nahal Oz base. While many of her friends were murdered in the attack, Berger was taken into Gaza and imprisoned for nearly a year and a half.
In her piece, she recounted how—despite the cruelty and pressure she faced—she held tightly to her Jewish identity and faith, including observing fasts, refusing non-kosher food, and even celebrating a symbolic Passover while in captivity.
“In those harrowing moments, as I was being kidnapped, I had the freedom to choose what to say. I recited, continuously, the same verse that Jews on the threshold of death have said for millennia: Shema Yisrael.”
That moment, and many that followed, shaped her belief that no captor could take away her soul, no matter how dire the physical conditions, Berger wrote.
Berger explained that she draws strength from Jewish historical figures like Rabbi Akiva, Joseph, and Abraham, who also endured imprisonment, and finds continuity with them.
When her captors forced a hijab on her head and tried to convert her, she resisted spiritually, protecting her essence. She even managed to keep a siddur, a Jewish prayer book, wrapping it in a cloth sleeve made from the leg of torn pants.
Passover in a dark room without windows
Berger described how she and fellow hostage Liri Albag celebrated Passover in a dark room without windows.
They cleaned their sparse space, created decorations from scrap paper, and shared a makeshift Haggadah that Liri had written. They heard news of the table set for them in Hostage Square in Tel Aviv and were able to listen to the voices of their loved ones. “We cried, then sat down to eat our own ‘bread of affliction,’” she recalled.
Agam explained that her release on January 30, 2025, did not mark the end of her concern, and she also reminded readers that 59 hostages are still held in Gaza, 24 of whom are believed to be alive, now facing a second Passover in captivity. She urged the world not to allow a third.
Berger called on readers to remember October 7, to never allow such atrocities again, and to keep fighting until every hostage comes home.