From Hostages Square, High Holiday prayers aim to transcend Israel’s fractured politics

TEL AVIV, Israel — The quavering sound of the shofar pealed through the small crowd gathered in Hostages Square on Sunday night for an evening of Selichot, the penitential prayers recited in the run-up to the High Holidays.

The shofar blower, singer-songwriter Kaley Halperin, reflected on what was going through her mind as she sounded it.

“I hoped that maybe somewhere in the depths of the tunnels of Gaza, someone would hear the sound and know that we’re calling them home,” she said.

Halperin was part of a five-person ensemble that had gathered to lead the musical ceremony, which combined popular Hebrew songs and traditional Selichot liturgies. Since Oct. 7, both religious and secular texts have become freighted with new meaning, she said, citing lyrics by iconic Israeli singers, including Shlomo Artzi, Naomi Shemer and Chava Alberstein, calling for loved ones to return home.

The evening was organized by Rabba Anat Sharbat, a Tel Aviv resident described by one attendee at the event as “the rabbi of Hostages Square.”

Sharbat, rabbinically ordained by the liberal Orthodox Yeshivat Maharat, began organizing weekly Kabbalat Shabbat services welcoming the day of rest, as well as Havdalah ceremonies days after Oct. 7, when a Shabbat table was placed in the square — before it was renamed Hostages Square — in anticipation of the hostages’ imminent return.

“We were naive then, we thought they would come back in a very short time,” Sharbat said. “But I saw the table and said, until then we need a Kabbalat Shabbat here. I felt like this place needed prayers.”

The following Saturday, Shelly Shem-Tov, whose 22-year-old son Omer is among the hostages, asked Sharbat to lead Havdalah, the prayer to usher out Shabbat. “That night began a tradition that we hope will stop very, very soon, when they come home,” Sharbat said.

In recent months, Saturday nights have also become synonymous in Tel Aviv with protests calling for a ceasefire deal to secure the release of the hostages. While the rallies take place just a stone’s throw away outside the Defense Ministry headquarters, efforts have been made to maintain Hostages Square as a neutral space that is free of political content, out of respect for the families who span the political spectrum.

But as attendee Rena Egulsky pointed out, despite the best intentions, the square at times has turned into a forum where politics play out. “If a member of a hostage family gives a speech in which they say something against the government, nobody is going to stop them,” she said. “What was so unique about this event was that not a single word of politics was uttered.”

She continued, “Maybe it was the prayers and supplications, I don’t know. That’s not coming from a religious place, it’s more about the connection between people that was created through them. That was very powerful,” said Egulsky, who described herself as not religiously observant. “You could see that by the range of passersby — from haredi to as secular as you get — who were drawn to the event and who stayed until the end.”

Tehila, an attendee who appeared to be dressed in a religiously modest outfit and declined to share her last name, said the absence of politics was part of what made the event resonate with her. “I don’t always feel comfortable to come to things like this,” she said. “I don’t get involved in politics and often it feels like there’s no place for someone like me.”

Sharbat’s relative Varda Alexander, whose American grandson Edan was serving in the Golani infantry brigade when he was taken captive by Hamas, said that for the first time in her life, she was paying attention to the words of the liturgical poems, known in Hebrew as piyyutim.

Many of the attendees at the Hostages Square Selichot service sat in yellow chairs — the color that represents the hostages’ plight. (Deborah Danan)

“They have a lot of meaning for me during this time,” she told the crowd, adding that since his abduction, she has recited daily the Avinu Malkeinu prayer, a staple of the High Holidays that is also said at times of distress. “For us, the High Holidays never finished, they continued from Oct. 7 until today.”

Yelena Trufanov, who was released together with her mother in November at the request of Russian President Vladimir Putin, also addressed the crowd, expressing her hope that her son Sasha, who is still being held in Gaza, would be home in time for the holidays. She commented that she knew Varda Alexander from praying at the graves of righteous people. In a documentary with the Kan public broadcaster earlier this year, Trufanov, who is from the secular Nir Oz kibbutz, said that she had become more religiously observant since Oct 7.

“I’ve seen so many things that I can’t explain,” Trufanov said in the documentary. “I believe they’re not a coincidence.”

Hannah Katsman, whose son Hayim was killed on Oct. 7 in his kibbutz, Holit, has been very involved in the protests — both those that took place last year against the government’s plans to overhaul the judiciary and in their most recent, war-related iteration. Religious content is increasingly making its way into that scene, she said, despite the reputation of the protests as being left-leaning and secular.

“Everyone always talks about polarization but there is also a lot of cooperation you didn’t see before. Different groups that have become closer,” Katsman said. “I’m seeing people reclaiming Jewish traditions in their own way. They’re finding comfort in the sources.”

Katsman said she is picky about the events she attends, as a form of self-preservation. “I count every emotional interaction I have. As a mourning mother, I have to limit them,” she said.

She did not, for example, attend the funeral of American-Israeli Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was killed in captivity last month, nor did she join the crowds in the streets with flags to accompany him on his final journey, despite living in the same Jerusalem neighborhood. Even events honoring her own son, an Israeli scholar whose research focused on religious nationalism, can be overwhelming and exhausting, which is why she chose to host an event this week focused on studying ancient and modern texts from his research, rather than revisiting his life story.

A Selichot event, on the other hand, felt innocuous enough to attend alongside her visiting sister. In the spirit of the season, Katsman reflected on how remorse has shaped her emotions, recalling how she and her son used to argue about “anything and everything” while he was growing up.

“I think about my relationship with my son, which wasn’t always ideal, and how it affected my other children and the relations in the family, and what I could have done to improve things when he was alive,” she said.

It’s been a challenge to offer forgiveness to those in power, she said, as she feels they have yet to show any remorse — or even to acknowledge the situation. Like so many others, she has heard nothing from the government, apart from a generic letter sent four months after Hayim’s death. But more painful, she said, was the lack of empathy from some of her fellow Israelis. There were those who implied that because her son was a secular peace activist from a kibbutz, that he “somehow invited Hamas into his house.”

She also singled out the Heroes Forum, formed by relatives of soldiers killed in Gaza, who she said use the deaths of soldiers “to justify continuing the war.”

“They’re basically saying, ‘Our children were killed and we’re asking everyone else to let their children be killed so that our sacrifice will have been worthwhile.’ Like a sunk cost fallacy,” she said.

Egulsky also berated what she sees as an increasingly intransigent right-wing, fueled, she said, by “propaganda” on Channel 14, a right-wing network widely viewed as sympathetic to the government. Egulsky’s daughter, Lian, a former IDF surveillance soldier, was at the event holding a placard with the images of the five female surveillance soldiers abducted from the Nahal Oz military base.

Egulsky has long given up sharing photos from hostage-related events to her family WhatsApp group but she made an exception on Sunday night because of the nature of the event. Egulsky’s family, most but not all religious, are on the other side of the ideological fence when it comes to the issue of the hostages, firmly believing that a deal to secure their return would result in many more terror attacks in the future.

According to Egulsky, since the country’s inception, there had always been a consensus that bereaved families had a license to say whatever they want. “For some reason, this principle that we all held sacred isn’t extended to the families of the hostages, even though they deserve it more than anyone,” she said.

She had been careful to send her family only videos of the piyyutim sung on Sunday night, believing that there was no way they could be considered offensive. “I was wrong. I got backlash,” she said.

“Just seeing the yellow chairs is an affront to them,” she continued, referring to the color used to symbolize the plight of the hostages. “How can you be triggered by such a pure, spiritual, religious, emotional event like this? I will never understand it.”

For her part, Sharbat is adamant that unity remains a central element of all the events she hosts at Hostages Square.

“It’s very important to me that this square is a place for people from both the right and the left to gather,” she said. “It can accommodate everyone. There isn’t one person who isn’t praying for the return of the hostages.”