Anyone who can survive captivity under extreme conditions is a hero in anyone’s book. Yes, there are variations in the levels of hunger, torture, mental anguish and deprivation; the level of exposure to respiratory and gastrointestinal infections; Not to mention the compounding torment for those injured, beaten, or shot, and for those with underlying medical conditions that go untreated. But what all twenty surviving hostages released from captivity in Gaza on Monday, October 13, have in common is courage, hope and life. That doesn’t mean they don’t suffer or won’t continue to suffer. Yet they can hold on to the belief that they have been chosen by God to survive.
Twin brothers – the 28-year-old Bermans – were seen smiling and hugging as they arrived on Monday at the Sheba Medical Center outside Tel Aviv, one of the top medical centers in the world. But what unimaginable suffering took place beneath those smiles? How long will it take to deal with the flashbacks, nightmares, extreme anxiety and episodes of depersonalization they are sure to experience? What are the long-term effects of prolonged dehumanization while living in absolute terror?
Unfortunately, these questions are not new. President Donald Trump’s words delivered before the Knesset in Israel this week — “Never Again” and “Never Forgotten” — 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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To barely survive under these circumstances, prayer was often accompanied. It’s reminiscent of a scene from my new book “The Miracles Among Us.” Praying directly to God can influence the outcome, but God gives us the miracles He wants to give, not necessarily the miracles 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 tied to a tree and left to freeze. Somehow he barely managed to survive the night. Doctors later placed him in a hospital and watched as his frozen arm became increasingly necrotic. Finally, 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 praying to God again—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 except Isaac. He escaped wearing a Hungarian soldier’s uniform, and in Budapest he was mistaken for a soldier because he spoke fluent Hungarian. When the Allies liberated the city, they almost shot Isaac on the spot, but stopped when they heard him speaking Yiddish.
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Why did God save him? Isaac later told his son Barry that he believed this was to become a great rabbi and kosher butcher (mashgiach) later in life.
Guy Gilboa-Dalal’s family shouted and hugged him tightly after he was released by Hamas on October 13, 2025. (IDF)
Why did God save Dr. Ellay Hogeg Golan, her 18-month-old baby and her husband after Hamas set fire to their kibbutz house on October 7, 2023? Many months later—after the baby survived, thanks to 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 for Ellay to return to her work as an anesthesiologist in the intensive care unit, where she could save others with the same ventilators that once kept her alive.
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I tell this story in my forthcoming book, “The Miracles Among Us,” although 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.
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In October 2023, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quoted Ecclesiastes and said there is “a time for war.” This week, Netanyahu again referred to the Bible book of Ecclesiastes and to the teachings of the wise King Solomon, who said that the path to righteousness and meaning involves fear of God and obedience to His commandments.
That now remains the wisest path for Israel and the world, with the hostages’ example of fortitude and resilience inspiring many of us moving forward.
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