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In the tunnels of Gaza, hostage Eli Sharabi found a way to be a blessing
In synagogue this past Yom Kippur, someone handed me a machzor with a bookplate that read: “Dedicated by [X] in memory of Rabba Sara Hurwitz and Josh Abraham on the birth of Natan.”
Thank God, my husband Josh and I are very much alive. Somehow “in honor of” was replaced by “in memory of.” But my son, Natan, has just turned 9 years old — so what better reminder could there be to pause and examine my life? To ask the big questions that Shmuel in the Gemara (Yoma 87b) insists that we ask in the waning hours of Yom Kippur during Neilah: Mah anu, what are we? Meh chayeinu, what are our lives?
These questions don’t end with Yom Kippur. They echo back to the very beginning of our story as a people, when God calls Avram in Genesis 12:2, to leave his home with the divine promise: “I will make your name great, and you shall be a blessing.” The structure of this verse, which will be read in most synagogues this Shabbat, is striking. God doesn’t say “I will bless you” (that comes in the previous verse). Here, God says something different: “You shall be a blessing.” Avrahram is not a passive recipient but an active agent. His very existence, his life itself, will be a source of blessing to others.
This is God’s answer to Shmuel’s questions: What are we? We are blessings. What are our lives? Our lives are meant to be a source of blessing to the world. How do we live lives that fulfill this divine mandate?
This year, I hold these questions alongside the words of Eli Sharabi, the first hostage to publish his account of captivity. To call his book “Hostage” merely an autobiography misses its essence. It is a sacred text about what it means to live in darkness and fear and still choose life, still choose to be a blessing.
In the tunnels of Gaza, stripped of everything, Eli was forced to answer Shmuel’s questions in the starkest terms imaginable: What am I? What is my life? You would expect the answer to be: I am nothing. My life is nothing. But instead, his answer reverberates with a fierce, almost defiant vitality: “I don’t want to survive just for them [his family]. I don’t want to live just for them. I want to live for myself too. For me, Eli Sharabi. I want to live. I love life. I crave it.”
If Eli, who lived for 491 days in constant hunger, dealing with the brutality of his captors, living in the filth of the tunnels, without knowing if his beloved family were alive or dead — if he can still crave life against all odds, then I too, even when I feel shrouded in darkness and fear will not take what I have for granted, and I will embrace life.
To be a blessing begins with recognizing the gift of simply being alive, of breathing freely, off walking down the street. When we crave life itself, we become capable of blessing others. Eli writes: “I want to breathe life, to walk free, to return to the open skies, to go back home, to work, to purpose…. To return to the roads, to driving, to walking down the street, to my simple regular worry-free day-to-day.”
Sadly, Eli was released to learn that his wife Lianne and daughters Noiya and Yahel were murdered on Oct. 7 and that his brother Yossi, too, had been abducted and then killed in captivity. This week, we watched as Eli and his family buried Yossi in Israel, at long last.
A detail of the cover of “Hostage,” Eli Sharabi’s memoir of his time in Hamas captivity. (Harper Influence)
Still, Eli’s testimony offers something even more profound about what it means to fulfill “and you shall be a blessing.” In absolute darkness, starving, and humiliated, he and his fellow hostages created a daily ritual to think of good things that happened to them each day and express gratitude — from sweet tea to a day without humiliation. In hell, they chose to find gratitude and see the tiny miniscule blessings in their lives. And in doing so, they became blessings to each other.
Hope was the hostages’ spiritual practice. Gratitude became resistance. Searching for good was an act of defiance against fear, and a way of being a blessing to those around them. In the tunnels of Gaza, Eli wasn’t just surviving, he was creating a practice of blessing. This is what God means when telling Avraham “and you shall be a blessing.” You don’t need to wait for perfect conditions. You don’t need to be free, comfortable, or secure.
As we move forward into a new year, Shmuel’s questions travel with me, now illuminated by God’s command to Avraham: Mah anu. What are we? We are called to be blessings. Like Eli, can we search for good even in difficulty? Can we be sources of hope and light for those around us, even when we ourselves are struggling?
Meh chayeinu. What are our lives? God tells Avraham that his life will be a blessing. What about ours? Do we only celebrate the extraordinary moments, or can we embrace the mundane — like walking down the street, breathing, being free to be at home with our loved ones? This is the wisdom of someone who faced death and chose, deliberately, consciously, to love life and to be a blessing, not despite the darkness, but in the darkness.
This year, I will hold Eli’s courage and search for good even when it’s hard to find. I will strive to make hope and gratitude a daily practice. I will try to fulfill “and you shall be a blessing” — to raise up those around me, in big ways and small.
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UK PM Starmer Says There Could Be New Powers to Ban Pro-Palestinian Marches
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer gives a media statement at Downing Street in London, Britain, April 30, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Jack Taylor/File photo
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the government could ban pro-Palestinian marches in some circumstances because of the “cumulative effect” the demonstrations had on the Jewish community after two Jewish men were stabbed in London on Wednesday.
Starmer told the BBC that he would always defend freedom of expression and peaceful protest, but chants like “Globalize the Intifada” during demonstrations were “completely off limits” and those voicing them should be prosecuted.
Pro-Palestinian marches have become a regular feature in London since the October 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel that triggered the Gaza war. Critics say the demonstrations have generated hostility and become a focus for antisemitism.
Protesters have argued they are exercising their democratic right to spotlight ongoing human rights and political issues related to the situation in Gaza.
Starmer said he was not denying there were “very strong legitimate views about the Middle East, about Gaza,” but many people in the Jewish community had told him they were concerned about the repeat nature of the marches.
Asked if the tougher response should focus on chants and banners, or whether the protests should be stopped altogether, Starmer said: “I think certainly the first, and I think there are instances for the latter.”
“I think it’s time to look across the board at protests and the cumulative effect,” he said, adding that the government needed to look at what further powers it could take.
Britain raised its terrorism threat level to “severe” on Thursday amid mounting security concerns that foreign states were helping fuel violence, including against the Jewish community.
“We are seeing an elevated threat to Jewish and Israeli individuals and institutions in the UK,” the head of counter-terrorism policing, Laurence Taylor, said in a statement, adding that police were also working “against an unpredictable global situation that has consequences closer to home, including physical threats by state-linked actors.”
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War Likely to Resume After Trump’s Rejection of Latest Proposal, Says IRGC General
Iranians carry a model of a missile during a celebration following an IRGC attack on Israel, in Tehran, Iran, April 15, 2024. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
i24 News – A senior Iranian military figure said that fighting with the US was “likely” to resume after President Donald Trump stated he was dissatisfied with Tehran’s latest proposal, regime media reported on Saturday.
The comments of General Mohammad Jafar Asadi, one of the top Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders, were relayed by the Fars news agency, considered as a mouthpiece of the the powerful paramilitary body.
“Evidence has shown that the Americans do not not adhere to any commitments,” Asadi was quoted as saying.
He further added that Washington’s decision-making was “primarily media-driven aimed first at preventing a drop in oil prices and second at extricating themselves from the mess they have created.”
Iranian armed forces are ready “for any new adventures or foolishness from the Americans,” he said, going to assert that the Iran war would prove for the US a tragedy comparable with what was for Israel the October 7 massacre.
“Just as our martyred Leader said that the Zionist regime will never be the same as before the Al‑Aqsa Storm operation [the name chosen by Hamas leadership for the October 7, 2023 massacre in southern Israel], the United States will also never return to what it was before its attack on Iran,” he said. “The world has understood the true nature of America, and no matter how much malice it shows now, it is no longer the America that many once feared.”
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Trump Says US Navy Acting ‘Like Pirates’ to Carry Out Naval Blockade of Iranian Ports
A view of Iranian-flagged cargo ship M/V Touska as the US Navy Arleigh Burke-class Aegis guided missile destroyer USS Spruance conducts its interception in a location given as the north Arabian Sea, in this screen capture from a video released April 19, 2026. Photo: CENTCOM/Handout via REUTERS
President Donald Trump said on Friday the US Navy was acting “like pirates” in carrying out Washington’s naval blockade of Iranian ports during the US and Israel’s war against Iran.
Trump made the comments while describing the seizure by US forces of a ship a few days ago.
“We took over the ship, we took over the cargo, we took over the oil. It’s a very profitable business,” Trump said in remarks on Friday evening. “We’re like pirates. We’re sort of like pirates but we are not playing games.”
Some of Tehran’s vessels have been seized by the US after leaving Iranian ports, along with sanctioned container ships and Iranian tankers in Asian waters.
Iran has blocked nearly all ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz apart from its own since the start of the war. Trump has imposed a separate blockade of Iranian ports.
The US and Israel attacked Iran on February 28. Iran responded with its own strikes on Israel and Gulf states that host US bases. US-Israeli strikes on Iran and Israeli attacks in Lebanon have killed thousands and displaced millions.
The war has raised oil prices and led to the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint for about 20 percent of global oil and liquefied natural gas shipments.
Trump, who has offered shifting timelines and goals for the war that remains unpopular in the US, has faced widespread condemnation over his comments on the conflict, including when he threatened to destroy Iran’s entire civilization last month.
Many US experts said last month that American strikes on Iran may amount to war crimes after Trump threatened to target civilian infrastructure.