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‘It never goes away’: A former hostage describes the paradox of freedom for Israelis who returned home from Gaza
Barry Rosen knows what it means to wait for freedom.
He spent 444 days as a hostage, one of 52 Americans held prisoner at the U.S. embassy in Iran from 1979 to 1981. He described when he was reunited with his family as “one of the greatest moments” of his life.
But Rosen also knows from experience that the psychological scars of captivity endure long after that celebratory moment.
So when he heard that the remaining living hostages held by Hamas in Gaza were being released this week, he felt “overwhelmingly relieved.” But his joy was also tempered by worries of what comes next, and the memory of the difficulties he faced re-entering society after being stripped of freedom for so long.
“It never goes away,” said Rosen, now 81. “Being a hostage is part of my DNA.”
444 days of darkness
Rosen, who is Jewish and grew up in Brooklyn, fell in love with Iranian culture during his time as a Peace Corps officer there. A decade later, he returned to work as a press attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.
On November 4, 1979, he was sitting in the embassy office when men with clubs stormed in and accused him of spying for the U.S. government.
Over the next nearly year and a half, he endured brutal conditions: Rosen was kept in a cell with no windows, subjected to mock executions, starved, and beaten, he said. He often feared he would never be released, telling his prison guards he expected them to grow old together.
Small reminders of the outside world helped him. The singular time his captors allowed him outside for 15 minutes, he slipped a blade of grass into his pocket — and would think of the baseball games he attended with his father as a young boy whenever he took it out.
Meanwhile, Rosen’s wife, Barbara, became a national figure, speaking to the media and meeting with politicians to advocate for his release.
President Jimmy Carter ultimately brokered a deal. After 444 days in captivity, Rosen was blindfolded and driven to the airport in Tehran. Soon after, he was in his family’s arms.
They popped champagne, he said, and “drank as much as they possibly could.”
The road to recovery
After the initial elation of being freed, Rosen said it took several months before he was able to resume a semblance of normal life.
Following his release, he went on a speaking tour and co-wrote a book with his wife, The Destined Hour: The Hostage Crisis and One Family’s Ordeal. Writing about his experience, he said, helped him process what had occurred.
Rosen also channeled the trauma into advocacy for other hostages. He co-founded Hostage Aid Worldwide, which researches unlawful detention and maintains a database of hostages around the world. In 2022, he went on a hunger strike to raise awareness of the plight of foreign nationals held by Iran. Most recently, he turned his attention to the hostages in Gaza, helping to schedule meetings between hostage families and officials at the United Nations.
Rosen said he feels a “certain camaraderie” with the hostages returning to Israel from Gaza, many of whom were confined to underground tunnels in darkness.
“The human condition is similar when you’re held under a gun or tied up, not knowing whether you will live or die,” he said.
He emphasized that some returning hostages may not be ready to speak about their experiences and stressed the importance of respecting how different people may process trauma.
Even small choices, like deciding what to eat, can bring up emotions for returning hostages.
“You’re being held for so long without any power over anything,” Rosen said. “If you’re now given a choice to do this or do that, it could be very difficult.”
On his speaking tours, Rosen said it was often challenging to translate the experience of being a hostage to an audience. When asked, “How does it feel to be a hostage?” he would reply that the experience was too complex to describe.
“I don’t particularly think that most people want to hear the pain,” Rosen said. “It’s something that cannot really be conveyed to another person, even if you’re the most articulate person in the world.”
The post ‘It never goes away’: A former hostage describes the paradox of freedom for Israelis who returned home from Gaza appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump announces deal with Iran is ‘now complete’
(JTA) — President Donald Trump announced Sunday that a deal to end the war with Iran and reopen the Strait of Hormuz is “now complete.”
“Congratulations to all! I hereby fully authorize the toll free opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and, simultaneously herewith, authorize the immediate removal of the United States Naval blockade,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “Ships of the World, start your engines. Let the oil flow!”
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who has played a key mediating role in talks between the U.S. and Iran, also announced that a deal had been reached minutes before Trump made his post, adding that an official signing ceremony would take place Friday in Switzerland.
“Both sides have declared the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon,” Sharif wrote in a post on X.
The announcement comes more than three months since Israel and the U.S. launched its joint strikes on Iran in February. While the deal’s details have not yet been publicly announced, it is expected to extend a ceasefire between Iran and the U.S. for 60 days, during which the countries will negotiate a broader agreement addressing Iran’s nuclear program.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu did not immediately put out a statement following the announcement, but earlier Sunday he had posted a message on X celebrating Trump’s birthday.
Also earlier Sunday, Israel launched strikes on Hezbollah targets in Beirut, prompting Iran to vow retaliation and drawing a sharp rebuke from Trump, who said the strikes had “delayed the signing by a few hours.”
“Why did Bibi have to do a f–cking attack? I was so pissed off. I let him know. He has no fucking judgement. I let him know that,” Trump told Axios Sunday.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Jane Yolen, children’s book author whose ‘The Devil’s Arithmetic’ became a Holocaust classic, dies at 87
(JTA) — Jane Yolen was already an award-winning author and illustrator of more than 100 titles for young readers when her editor suggested she write a Jewish children’s book.
At first, she resisted the idea. Sure, she was Jewish. But she didn’t grow up in a religiously observant family, and she insisted she didn’t know enough about Judaism to take on the project.
Finally, she relented. Drawing on a spark of an idea about a Holocaust time-travel fantasy, Yolen turned in the first draft of what would become “The Devil’s Arithmetic,” her 1988 young adult novel. “I thought, ‘OK, I’m going to try this,’” Yolen recalled to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency years later.
The book won immediate acclaim and garnered multiple awards. Today, it’s seen as a classic of the genre — and one that remains caught up in banned-book lists.
For Yolen, who died Thursday at 87 in her home in Western Massachusetts, “The Devil’s Arithmetic” became her signature title. Still in print, the book was also made into an Emmy Award-winning Showtime feature starring Kirsten Dunst. It was the cornerstone of a titanic legacy in children’s literature, her family said in a statement.
“It is with profound sadness that I, along with my brothers, Adam Stemple, and Jason Stemple, share the news of our mother, Jane Yolen’s passing,” her daughter Heidi Stemple wrote on Facebook, adding that Yolen had “passed gently with no pain or stress” and her family by her side, reading one of her books to her.
Yolen was born on Feb. 11, 1939, in New York City. Her father was a journalist and her mother was a psychiatric social worker until Yolen was born.
An alumna of Smith College, where she won poetry and journalism awards, she worked first as an editor in New York City, writing at her breaks and time off. Her first published book, “Pirates in Petticoats,” a nonfiction work about women on the high seas, was published when she was 22.
She soon pivoted to children’s literature, becoming one of the most prolific authors in the genre. She went on to publish 450 children’s books, including more Jewish titles, and was known as “the Hans Christian Andersen of America.” She won the prestigious Caldecott Medal for her 1987 picture book, “Owl Moon,” and her “How Do Dinosaurs …” series is a staple in many preschool classrooms. (It includes one Jewish title: “How Do Dinosaurs Say Happy Chanukah?” Her 450th title was published just this year, her children said.
But it was “The Devil’s Arithmetic,” scholars have said, that cemented her legacy as a leading author for young Jews. The novel was a trailblazer for its blending of time-travel with historical veracity, according to the late Norman H. Finkelstein, a National Jewish Book award winner who was a children’s librarian himself.
“It was a different Holocaust book,” Finkelstein told JTA in 2018, on the occasion of the title’s 30th anniversary. “It was not strictly factual, it was not a memoir. Jane did a superb job in taking the story of the Holocaust down to a level that ordinary American kids could understand. The characters were realistic, not paper cutouts.”
Other titles of hers included “Meet Me at the Well: The Girls and Women of the Bible,” with Barbara Diamond Goldin, and “Jewish Fairy Tale Feasts,” with her daughter Heidi, who developed and illustrated the hands-on recipes.
Yolen relished the collaborations with her daughter. They lived next door to each other, along with Stemple’s family, with two grandchildren who were taste-testers of Stemple’s recipes.
“Jane was a treasure, and it is difficult to think of the world of books — indeed the world itself – without her,” Richard Michelson, an award-winning author of Jewish children’s books and Yolen’s friend and neighbor, wrote on Facebook. Describing her as a cherished mentor of younger writers, he added, “Jane created classics as if it were as easy as breathing.”
While often assigned in schools as part of lessons on the Holocaust, Yolen’s titles are not without controversy. In 2025 a Texas school district, using artificial intelligence, flagged “The Devil’s Arithmetic” for removal as a title containing “DEI,” or diversity, equity and inclusion content. The book became one of several well known Holocaust titles to be pulled from schools in the last few years.
Though she had initially resisted the idea of being a Holocaust author, Yolen would go on to publish a trilogy of unconventional young-adult novels about the subject. She incorporated elements of “Sleeping Beauty” into 1992’s “Briar Rose.” “Mapping the Bones” followed in 2018 as a riff on “Hansel and Gretel.”
“Whenever we think of the Holocaust, we think of remembering,” Yolen told JTA in that same 2018 interview. “We think of never forgetting. Soon all we will have are the stories.”
In addition to her children, Yolen is survived by six grandchildren. Her husband, David Stemple, to whom she was married for 44 years, died in 2006.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Jane Yolen, children’s book author whose ‘The Devil’s Arithmetic’ became a Holocaust classic, dies at 87 appeared first on The Forward.
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Hebrew Union College claims Ohio’s charity-law suit violates its First Amendment rights
(JTA) — The Reform movement’s central rabbinical seminary filed a motion to dismiss the state of Ohio’s lawsuit against the school Friday, claiming the suit violates “foundational Jewish religious doctrine.”
It was the latest escalation in a pitched battle between Hebrew Union College and the state attorney general’s office, which has accused HUC of violating nonprofit law by shuttering degree-granting programs on its historic Cincinnati campus.
The suit, HUC argues, “violates the First Amendment by entangling government and religion.”
The suit was originally filed in April by then-Ohio AG Dave Yost — his second against the college related to its controversial plan to wind down its Cincinnati operations in favor of its New York and Los Angeles campuses. Yost claimed HUC’s actions in Cincinnati misled its donors by leaving a city where they were actively fundraising to support operations, and also violated its charter, which states that the school would “permanently maintain” a residence there.
The state seeks to seize HUC’s assets in Ohio and redirect them to a new, yet-to-be-decided nonprofit with a similar mission; an upstart rabbinical school founded by HUC alums says it wants them.
Such a move “is an unconstitutional and illegal governmental assault upon religion,” HUC’s strongly worded motion reads.
It continues, “The Attorney General has no role in dictating the religious affairs of institutions like HUC. The Court should reject his overreach into religious matters and should dismiss the Complaint because it is unconstitutional and unlawful.”
HUC also argues its vote to shutter the Cincinnati campus was done in full compliance with the law, adding that it intends to maintain the campus’s other assets, including the Klau Library, the American Jewish Archives and the Skirball Museum. In addition, citing a passage in the Torah that states “God will come to his people wherever they welcome him,” the school argues that considering “Jewish demographic realities” is part of its religious mission.
“These decisions were made thoughtfully and responsibly to ensure the long-term success of the institution and our ability to continue graduating strong Jewish leaders,” HUC president Andrew Rehfeld said in a statement accompanying the motion. The lawsuit, he added, “improperly seeks to interfere in the decisions of a religious organization, and this cannot be allowed to go unchallenged.”
Yost himself resigned as AG this week to join the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal group that, in 2022, represented a Tennessee adoption agency that refused to foster a child to a Jewish couple. The suit against HUC continues under the state AG’s office.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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