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| DATE | 2025-06-15 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] Being Jewish and Captive in Gaza
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Young Israeli Hostage Says Finding Faith Helped Him Survive Hamas Captivity
Isabel Kershner
10–13 minutes
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Finding God, and Nietzsche, in the Hamas Tunnels of Gaza
How Omer Shem Tov, who was 20 years old and not particularly religious
when taken hostage, survived 505 days in captivity.
A man wearing a yarmulke and a Jewish prayer shawl standing at prayer,
wrapping the ritual leather tefillin straps around his left arm.
Omer Shem Tov, now back at home, says that turning to Jewish rituals and
prayer helped him survive after he was seized during the Oct. 7, 2023,
attack on southern Israel. Credit...Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New
York Times
By Isabel Kershner
Isabel Kershner has been reporting for 18 months on the hostages seized
in the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and interviewed Omer Shem
Tov in Herzliya.
June 10, 2025
Each morning, Shelly Shem Tov would enter her son’s empty bedroom and
recite Chapter 20 from the biblical Book of Psalms, an ancient plea for
deliverance.
All the while she was unaware that her son, Omer Shem Tov, happened to
be uttering the very same verses of Psalm 20 — “May the Lord answer you
on a day of distress.”
He had adopted the same daily ritual about 130 feet underground, alone,
in a Hamas tunnel in Gaza.
Mr. Shem Tov was 20 when gunmen seized him during the Oct. 7, 2023,
attack on southern Israel. He had grown up in a largely secular home,
and was living a relatively carefree existence after completing his
compulsory military service — waiting tables in a steakhouse to earn
money for a post-army trip to South America, a popular rite of passage
for many Israelis of his age.
He was captured while fleeing the Nova music festival, a rave party
attended by thousands near the Gaza border.
Image
A landscape strewed with debris and a few empty cars.
Mr. Shem Tov was captured while fleeing the Nova music festival, a rave
party attended by thousands near the Gaza border.Credit...Sergey
Ponomarev for The New York Times
A few days into his captivity, he said, he began to speak to God. He
made vows. He began to bless whatever food he was given. And he had
requests — some of which he believes were answered.
“You are looking for something to lean on, to hold onto,” Mr. Shem Tov
said in a recent interview at his family home in Herzliya, north of Tel
Aviv. “The first place I went to was God. I would feel a power enter
me,” he said.
“Faith kept me going,” he said, adding, “I always believed I would get
home, though I didn’t know how or when.”
He was eventually released in late February as part of a temporary
cease-fire deal after 505 days in Gaza.
Mr. Shem Tov, who turned 22 in captivity, said he had always had faith,
but had never been religiously observant.
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Many other released hostages have spoken of similar experiences, finding
solace and the strength to survive by connecting or reconnecting with
God and recalling oft-forgotten Jewish rituals.
Some taken hostage said they found the will to go on in a motto they
heard from Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an Israeli-American hostage, before he
was killed by his captors. It was a version of a quotation about having
purpose in life, from the atheist German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche
and often echoed by Viktor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist and
Holocaust survivor: “He who has a why can bear with any how.”
Among those hostages is Eli Sharabi, who emerged emaciated after 491
days in captivity to learn that his wife and two teenage daughters had
been killed in the October 2023 attack. He recounted how he had recited
the Shema Yisrael, a central Jewish prayer, daily in the dark, dank
tunnel space he shared with other hostages, and had tried every Sabbath
eve to make kiddush, the blessing over wine, though they only had water.
Image
A hostage on a stage with masked gunmen on each side.
While captive, Eli Sharabi recited each day the Shema prayer, the Jewish
proclamation of faith, in the dank tunnel where he was held with other
hostages.Credit...Eyad Baba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Mr. Sharabi told how Mr. Goldberg-Polin’s adage inspired and sustained
him after the pair spent a few days in a tunnel together. 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.
And like several other family members of hostages, Mr. Shem Tov’s
mother, Shelly, experienced her own spiritual journey while her son was
in Gaza. She too began observing the rules of the Sabbath. 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.
For 27 days in early 2024, while Mr. Shem Tov was in a Hamas tunnel, he
could hear Israeli troops above him. After they moved on, he said that
his captors brought him some reading materials the soldiers had left
behind, including some religious literature that Mr. Shem Tov’s captors
asked him to decode, thinking they might be military instructions.
Image
A small stack of Hebrew documents.
A name tag of Mr. Shem Tov and items given to him by Hamas upon his
release.Credit...Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times
Call it coincidence, but among the materials, which the captors allowed
him to keep, was a card printed with Psalm 20 — though without his name
on it.
The Capture
On Oct. 7, Mr. Shem Tov fled from gunmen through a furrowed field near
the festival site with his good friend Maya Regev and her brother, Itai
Regev, who was then 18.
Ori Danino, another member of their party whom they had only met a few
hours before the festival, had managed to drive out of the danger zone.
But he called them, asked them to send him their location and came back
to get them.
Back on the road gunmen shot up their car, wounding the Regevs. All four
were abducted to Gaza. Mr. Danino was taken separately. He and five
other hostages — among them Mr. Goldberg-Polin — were shot to death by
their captors, the Israeli military said, in a squalid tunnel in
southern Gaza last year in August.
Image
Photos of Mr. Shem Tov and his family.Credit...Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for
The New York Times
Image
A photograph of Shelly Shem Tov, Mr. Shem Tov’s mother, alongside his
picture and the caption “Bringing Omer Back Home.”Credit...Avishag
Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times
Mr. Shem Tov said that as soon as he arrived in Gaza he was lowered into
the ground in a plastic tub, by a winch. His first instinct was to try
to connect with his captors, he said, by introducing himself and asking
their names. One asked if he knew the songs of Eden Ben Zaken, an
Israeli pop singer. He sang the chorus of “Queen of Roses,” one of her hits.
He said he was forced to walk through the tunnels and came up into a
house with yellow couches and a chandelier. From there he was driven to
the first apartment where he would be held and was soon joined there by
the Regevs, who had received some rudimentary treatment for their
wounds. Maya Regev was later transferred to a Palestinian hospital and
the siblings were released along with scores of other hostages during a
brief cease-fire in Nov. 2023.
Mr. Shem Tov said he was moved several times, usually at night and once
dressed as a veiled Muslim woman. He said he and Mr. Regev narrowly
missed being hit by Israeli airstrikes, including one that shattered the
windows of their room and filled it with thick black dust.
A week after being captured, Mr. Shem Tov said, he decided to keep
kosher as much as he could, eating either the cheese or the canned meat
when they were given both, in line with Jewish dietary laws that
prohibit mixing meat and dairy products. He promised God that if he got
home, he would pray daily with “tefillin” — the small leather boxes
containing scriptures that worshipers tie onto their heads and one of
their arms for morning prayers.
Image
A brother and sister speak in front of a crowd carrying signs in English
and Hebrew calling for return of hostages.
Siblings Itai Regev and Maya Regev attended a rally for hostages in Tel
Aviv, after they were released from Gaza. Credit...Avishag Shaar-Yashuv
for The New York Times
He said that the first miracle was that he had survived the initial
ambush unscathed. A photo of the blue car showed the windshield on the
passenger side, where he had been sitting, shattered by bullets. “Even
as I look at it now, I’m shocked that I got out alive,” he said.
After the November 2023 cease-fire collapsed, Mr. Shem Tov was taken
back down into the tunnels and spent the rest of his captivity alone,
save for the gunmen who would look in on him.
In Hamas’s Underworld
For 50 days, he said, he sat in a small, stifling cell with hardly any
food — as little as one biscuit a day and a few drops of salty water. It
was pitch dark most of the time. An asthma sufferer, he could barely
breathe. His captors brought him an inhaler. One day, at breaking point,
he begged God to take him somewhere — anywhere — else.
Ten minutes later, he said, the captors came and moved him to a larger
underground chamber with white tiled walls and electricity.
“It was paradise” by comparison, he said.
Image
A young man sits on the floor of an apartment.
Mr. Shem Tov made efforts to keep on good terms with his captors. He
prepared their food, cleaned the living quarters and washed dishes in an
unspoken agreement that he believed earned him better
treatment.Credit...Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times
Two days later, his captors told him they were taking him back to the
previous cell, which distressed him. But he said that the Israeli
military struck part of the tunnel network that night, and the passage
was blocked, so he remained where he was.
Mr. Shem Tov tried to keep on good terms with his captors. He prepared
their food, cleaned the living quarters and washed dishes in an unspoken
agreement that he believed earned him better treatment. When another
part of the tunnel collapsed, he labored, seven hours a day for two
weeks, to help his captors clear a passage large enough to crawl through.
Image
A close view of a hand touching a Jewish prayer book.
Mr. Shem Tov prayed from a siddur, a Jewish prayer book at his home in
Herzliya. Credit...Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times
Mr. Shem Tov clung to his newfound faith.
He blessed his food and eked out a small bottle of a grape-flavored
drink he’d been given by his captors, saving it for the blessing over
the wine on Friday evenings. He said his captors were amused when he
placed his hand on his head, instead of a skullcap, and uttered the
familiar prayer.
Now home, Mr. Shem Tov, like other released hostages, is still recovering.
His father said he came back more mature, more focused. Mr. Shem Tov
wants to study acting, and he recently returned from a speaking tour of
Jewish communities in the United States.
And he said that he prays daily in his bedroom with tefillin.
Natan Odenheimer contributed reporting.
Isabel Kershner, a Times correspondent in Jerusalem, has been reporting
on Israeli and Palestinian affairs since 1990.
A version of this article appears in print on June 11, 2025, Section A,
Page 4 of the New York edition with the headline: Finding God, and
Nietzsche, in the Black of a Hamas Tunnel. Order Reprints | Today’s
Paper | Subscribe
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