Drash on Seventh Day of Pesach 2025

Rabbi Jacqueline Ninio OAM

Emanuel Synagogue

As we come to the final days of Pesach, we pause in our journey towards Sinai to remember those we love who no longer walk the earth beside us. We gather in community to recite the prayers of yizkor, we speak their names and we hold hands with them across time. We feel their presence, their love, their embrace. This most poignant of moments in our calendar, enables us to carve out space to meet them once more. The power of our tradition to help us grieve and mourn, to guide us to find hope and solace, the prayers, the ritual, hold us and gently usher us to a place of peace and memory.

In recent weeks, we have been hearing the stories of the hostages who have been freed from Gaza and they have been asked what it was that helped them to survive in the depths of their suffering and struggle. How did they find hope? From where did they derive their strength? And one after another they answered that prayer and ritual helped them to go on. Many of the captive and missing were from secular kibbutzim; prayer and God was not a part of their lives, their world or even their consciousness. So too, many of the young people from the music festival, they also had little, if no, connection to God or prayer. But in the depths of their Mitzrayim, their narrow, confinement, they reached out and they found release and relief. Many spoke of the fact that their bodies were imprisoned, but their minds were free and that was their defiance, their comfort and their hope.

Omer Shem Tov spent 505 days in captivity in the tunnels below ground. One day he was given a small bottle of grape juice. He kept it with him and counted the days, and when it was Shabbat, he said the blessing and took a sip. He said it felt like the miracle of Chanukah that the grape juice came, it lasted for as long as it did without spoiling and he said: “it showed me how much God was with me there.” God did not release Omer from captivity, but God brought comfort with presence and helping him to feel he was not alone. Omer said: “I felt every prayer which was said for me…even in the darkness, I had light.” On the day Omer was released he said: “Creator of the World, thank you for being with me every moment.

Eli Sharabi, held for 404 days said: “I am not a religious person but from the first day I was kidnapped, every morning I said shema which I had never said in my life. The power of faith is insane. There’s someone watching over you.”

Keith Segal also started saying shema. He remembered it from his childhood, had never said it in his adult life. He said: “even in the tunnels I found ways to feel God’s presence.” When he was given his one piece of often stale pita bread to eat, he said the prayer for bread. He could not remember any others. When he was released, his daughter asked what he wanted for his first shabbat at home, expecting he would list a series of food items and she was shocked that her father asked for a kiddush cup and a kipah.

Ohad ben Ami said: “I got stronger in captivity, I really felt someone was watching over me and I needed to be strong…it strengthened me and saved me…our faith gives us strength at times when we feel crushed.”

There are so many more stories, including from hostages who did not survive. God did not rescue them, but the heart of the stories it is not God’s physical rescue, for the hostages there was no parted sea, no miracle, the miracle was their ability to find freedom even in captivity, to find strength and solace in ritual, tradition and prayer.

Our rituals and traditions are powerful, they help us to feel connected and embraced, to recognise we don’t walk this earth alone. There are prayers we say together, shedding on each other the light of community about which Omer spoke. He felt the prayers, the love, pouring to him and surrounding him. And they all spoke of the essence of God being love, strength, hope, helping them to feel they were always embraced.

At this time when we remember our loved ones, we can feel vulnerable, overwhelmed by grief and sadness, but the hostages remind us we are not alone, we walk with beautiful companions, cocooned by traditions, rituals and prayers which help us to connect across time and space and to find comfort and hope even in the darkest of days.

We pray for the release of all the hostages and healing for those who are home but holding deep wounds in their bodies and souls. And we plead that peace come to our world speedily and soon.