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Any person who can survive captivity under extreme conditions is a hero in anyone’s book. Yes, there are variations in the degree of starvation, torture, mental anguish and deprivation; the degree of exposure to respiratory and gastrointestinal infections; not to mention the compounded torment for those who have been injured, beaten or shot, and for those with underlying medical conditions that aren’t being treated. But what all the 20 living hostages released from captivity in Gaza on Monday, Oct. 13, have in common is courage, hope and life. That is not to say they aren’t suffering or won’t continue to suffer. Still, they can hold fast to the belief that they have been chosen by God to survive.
Twin brothers — the 28-year-old Bermans — were seen smiling and hugging when they arrived at Sheba Medical Center outside Tel Aviv, on Monday at one of the top medical centers in the world. But what unimaginable suffering was taking place beneath those smiles? How long will it take to treat the flashbacks, nightmares, extreme anxiety and episodes of depersonalization they will surely experience? What are the long-term effects of being dehumanized for prolonged periods while living in absolute terror?
Unfortunately, these questions are not new. President Donald Trump’s words in Israel this week, delivered before the Knesset — “Never again” and “Never forget” — refer not to Hamas but to the Holocaust, when millions of Jews and non-Jews were exterminated in Auschwitz and other camps.
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Barely surviving under those circumstances often involved prayer. It brings to mind a scene from my new book, “The Miracles Among Us.” Praying directly to God can affect the outcome, but God grants us the miracles He wants to give, not necessarily those we ask Him for.
In 1944, Isaac Mittelman was interned in a labor camp in Hungary when he was discovered praying on Yom Kippur. He was strung up on a tree and left to freeze. Somehow he managed, barely, to survive the night. Doctors later placed him in a hospital and simply watched as his frostbitten arm became increasingly necrotic. Eventually, the cruel hospital doctors amputated it with only a towel between Isaac’s teeth for anesthesia.
Still, Isaac managed to survive, and weeks later he was again praying to God — reciting the Shema (“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one”) — when bombs hit the hospital where he was recovering, killing everyone but Isaac. He escaped wearing a Hungarian soldier’s uniform, and in Budapest was mistaken for a soldier because he spoke fluent Hungarian. When the Allies liberated the city, they nearly shot Isaac on sight but stopped when they heard him speaking Yiddish.
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Why did God save him? Isaac later told his son Barry he believed it was so that he could go on to become a great rabbi and kosher butcher (mashgiach) later in life.
Why did God save Dr. Ellay Hogeg Golan, her 18-month-old baby and her husband after Hamas set fire to their home on their kibbutz on Oct. 7, 2023? Many months later — after the baby survived, thanks to her mother’s breast milk, and Ellay herself survived a month-long coma at Sheba Medical Center, overcoming severe burns, blood clots and multiple infections including COVID — it became clear that God’s purpose was to have Ellay return to her work as a critical care anesthesiologist, where she could save others using the same ventilators that once kept her alive.
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I tell this story in my forthcoming book, “The Miracles Among Us,” though it practically tells itself. Ellay and her husband, Ariel, told me they don’t consider their family’s survival a miracle because that would dishonor those who weren’t chosen to survive.
The return of 20 hostages to Israel on Monday — thanks to the efforts of President Trump, Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner and others—was a miraculous event.
In October 2023, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quoted Ecclesiastes, saying there is “a time for war.” Again, this week, Netanyahu referred to the Bible’s book of Ecclesiastes and to the teachings of wise King Solomon, who said the path to righteousness and meaning involves fear of God and obedience to His commandments.
That remains the wisest path for Israel and the world now, with the hostages’ example of fortitude and resilience inspiring many of us forward.
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