Hostage Deal

As the gabbai at the Chabad McGill minyan, it’s my job to lead certain special prayers on behalf of the congregation. Prayers for healing the sick, for the safety of IDF soldiers, for the return of our hostages, and plenty of others.

Given the fact that there are so many different prayers, if you’re not careful, you can easily get lost in the routine and lose sight of what exactly you’re praying for. 

Whenever I would say the prayer for the hostages, I was particularly cognizant of this. Our response to our brothers and sisters being held in captivity could not be reduced to a simple weekly recitation. Their release was something that needed to happen. 

Still, many weeks began to slip by, and I worried that the prayer for the return of our hostages would become a permanent fixture of our liturgy. 

So you can imagine the range of emotions that I’m feeling as I consider the fact that, as I’m writing this, all the living hostages have just returned home to their families. 

 The hostage deal between Israel and Hamas is being carried out in stages, starting with the immediate release of all 48 living and deceased hostages. Hamas handed over the living hostages in the morning of October 13th, Israel time. The 20 living hostages were all released before noon, while Hamas only released four bodies of the 28 slain hostages as of sundown. 

After the living hostages were returned, Israel released nearly 2000 Palestinian prisoners. 250 of them are serving life sentences, 1722 were Gazans detained during the war, and the bodies of 360 Gazans were also transferred. Of those serving life sentences, 115 returned to their homes in the West Bank or East Jerusalem, and another 115 will be deported abroad, including to Gaza. 

Negotiations are set to continue regarding the later stages of the deal, including the timeline of the IDF’s withdrawal from Gaza, and the details surrounding the international force that will manage the transition to a civilian government. The deal also insists on Hamas’s disarmament, a clause that the terrorist organization has rejected.

The terms of the hostage deal were brokered by Steven Witkoff, Trump’s Special Envoy to the Middle East, as well as Egyptian and Qatari mediators. Under the conditions of the deal, the freed hostages returned in time to spend Simchat Torah with their families, a full two years after they were kidnapped. 

The bodies of Israelis who were tragically murdered on October 7th, or in captivity, are in the process of being returned to their families for a proper burial, bringing some closure to a torturous and grief-stricken two years for their loved ones. As of October 15th, Hamas has indicated to Israel that they have returned all the bodies of hostages that they could locate.

As I write this piece over the course of October 12th to 15th, the whirlwind of emotions envelopes me like a hurricane. I’m overjoyed that the hostages are finally coming home; however, I’m saddened that we did not manage to save everyone. I’m angry that it took this long to come to a deal, and I’m concerned about the security implications of the prisoner releases that Israel has agreed to. Of course, I’m aware of the fact that some of my emotions may contradict each other, and that’s okay.

In the future, there will be plenty of time for conversations surrounding the details of the deal. Today is about the freed hostages and their families. It is about Avinatan Or, who, upon his release, learned of the rescue of his girlfriend Noa Argamani, and then reunited with her soon after. Today is about Bar Kuperstein, whose father, Tal Kuperstein, suffered a neurological incident before Bar was abducted. Tal held on to his hope and vowed to be able to stand up from his wheelchair to hug Bar when he was freed. True to his word, that’s what he did. Today is about Omri Miran and Elkana Bohbot, returning fathers who are reconnecting with their young children.

As I watch the videos of the freed hostages reuniting with their families, I feel as close to them as a Canadian in Toronto can be. Over Simchat Torah, at my family’s synagogue in Toronto, the gabbai read out every hostage’s name and their mothers’ names. With each name read aloud, I felt the emotional weight of how many mothers would be hugging their children for the first time in two years. I was reminded of a line from Tehillim that I had just said during Hallel: 

זה היום עשה ה׳, נגילה ונשמחה בו.

This is the day that G-d has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it.