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Jews let go of hostage rituals with gratitude and grief
(JTA) — Like most synagogues, Congregation Beth El in South Orange, New Jersey added new rituals after the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks that killed 1,200 in Israel, saw another 251 taken hostage and launched a grinding war between Israel and Hamas.
The Conservative congregation hung a “bring them home now” sign out front on behalf of the hostages. Rabbi Jesse Olitzky added the “Acheinu” prayer for redeeming captives to the weekly Shabbat service, and each week read the biography of a hostage. As the war raged on, the congregation sang songs of peace.
There and elsewhere, congregants wore yellow hostage ribbons and pins on their lapels, and dog tags with the names of the missing. Some families lit extra candles on Shabbat. Rachel Goldberg-Polin, whose son Hersh would eventually be listed among the dead in Gaza, popularized the wearing of a piece of masking tape on which she wrote the number of days since the hostages were taken.
This week, as the last 20 living hostages were returned to Israel as part of a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas, many Jews are relieved to be ending these rituals — even as they question whether it is right to do so and wonder how to channel their prayers and practices toward whatever comes next. Twenty-four deceased hostages are believed to be in Gaza, and even as soldiers return home and Gazans reclaim what’s left of their former lives, an enduring peace seems far away.
At Beth El, the Acheinu and lawn sign will stay in place until the bodies are returned. In the meantime, Tuesday night’s celebration of Simchat Torah will be a chance to experience a sense of relief members haven’t felt in two years.
“Like so many we haven’t been able as a people to move forward and get to Oct. 8 until the hostages came home,” Olitzky said Monday, hours after Hamas released the living hostages. “And now there is a sense of being able to exhale and breathe and, God willing, to move forward, to rebuild, and for all Israeli citizens and for Palestinians to have opportunities to build peace.”
This week, rabbis and Jews in the pews are asking if it is time to move forward.
Rabbi Yael Ridberg, the recently retired spiritual leader of Congregation Dor Hadash in San Diego, said she would remove the ribbon and dog tag she wears when the bodies of the deceased hostages are returned.
“I look forward to tucking them away, but not disposing of them,” she wrote in response to a journalist’s query. “I will stop wearing them when all the deceased hostages are returned. These are keepsakes of a time worth remembering, as hard as it has been for the last two years.”
Ronit Wolff Hanan, the former music director at Congregation Beth Sholom in Teaneck, New Jersey, said she is not sure what to do with the ribbon pin and dog tags she’s worn for most of the past two years. She’s torn between “this unbelievable release and relief and joy,” and sadness that there are still 24 bodies yet to be returned.
“My whole thing is, well, what do we do know?” said Wolff Hanan, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen whose son served over 300 days in the Israeli reserves during the war. “I keep thinking about the long, difficult road all of these hostages and families have ahead of them, and it’s just unimaginable. But also I’m thinking about, when it is really over? We don’t know if this is the dawn of a new era or if we are going to go back to the same old, same old.”
Her partner, Rabbi Eli Havivi, offered his own solution to a similar dilemma: In synagogue on Monday morning, he wore his hostage dog tags, but covered with blue painter’s tape, in order to suggest that “it’s over, but it is not over.”
On a Facebook page for Jewish women, a number of members spoke of their reluctance to stop lighting extra candles. Some felt that if they did, it would break a kind of spiritual commitment, or might suggest that they’ve given up on the freed hostages who will continue to have mental and physical challenges. Some referred to a passage from Talmud (Shabbat 21b) that extends the metaphor of the Hanukkah candles to suggest that someone should always add light, not subtract.
By contrast, the comic Periel Aschenbrand wrote that she was eager to take off the button that she’d been wearing in solidarity with Omri Miran, a hostage abducted in front of his wife and two children on Oct. 7. “I can’t wait to be able to take it off tomorrow, and for Omri to be reunited with his daughters and family,” she wrote Sunday on Instagram.
Alyssa Goldwater, an Orthodox influencer, wrote that she too is “really looking forward” to taking off the yellow ribbon pin she’s worn over the past two years, but that removing doesn’t mean forgetting.
“When you remove a pin, the tiny holes never fully go away,” she wrote on Instagram. “They will remain and serve as a reminder that we will never forget what has happened to us over the last two years. We will never forget who stood by us and who stood soundly or against us. The holes will be tiny because we pray that the hostages will be able to eventually heal and live their regular lives again, where the unimaginable travesties they’ve been through won’t even be noticeable in the human eye, but the holes will remain, because this is a part of us now.”
Long before Oct. 7 led to a torrent of new practices, Jews altered their prayers and rituals in tune with current events, with some changes handed down from rabbis and others bubbling up from the “folk.”
Some changes stick — like the Av HaRachamim memorial prayer, composed in the Middle Ages for those who perished in the Crusades — and others fall away. In the 1970s and ’80s boys and girls celebrating their b’nai mitzvah “twinned” with Soviet Jews unable to emigrate. Adults wore silver bracelets with the name of these refuseniks, and put them away when the emigration restrictions fell.
The additions and changes that persist usually speak to other events, the way Av HaRachamim has become a weekly reminder of various Jewish tragedies. In general, however, a prayer or ritual that responds to current events “should have a theoretical timestamp for when it exits stage left, even if we cannot always know when that time will come,” Rabbi Ethan Tucker, president and rosh yeshiva of Hadar, explained in a Facebook post discussing the transition away from Oct. 7 practices. “Without that foresight and planning, the addition either straggles on, eventually becoming a kind of exhibit in the gallery of prayer, or it simply fades away when monotony and detachment have gotten the better of it.”
How did you, your synagogue ior Jewish institution mark the release of the hostages? Drop us a line at newsdesk@jta.org.
The Jewish calendar itself seemed to conspire in the spiritual turbulence of many Jews: The hostage release came on the eve of Israelis’ celebration of Simchat Torah — and the second anniversary, on the Hebrew calendar, of the Hamas attacks.
The holiday is meant to be a day of unbridled joy. A centerpiece of Simchat Torah is the hakafah, when congregants dance with and around the Torah scrolls
Last year, congregations struggled with how to match the happy themes of the holiday with the one-year anniversary of the worst attack in Israel’s history. Olitzky said his congregation began last year’s Simchat Torah festivities with a “solemn” hakafah, where congregants sang Israel’s national anthem and a somber Hebrew song while standing still. Olitzky said he took solace at the time in the words of Goldberg-Polin, who said, “’There is a time to sob and a time to dance’ and we have to do both right now.”
And while the release of the hostages is also tinged with sadness — for the lost years, the captives who didn’t make it, the suffering still to come — many will use the holiday as a celebration of deliverance and gratitude.
The release of the hostages, Olitzky said, will “allow Simchat Torah to be that — the holiday when we are supposed to have so much joy. Last year it was difficult to find that joy on Simchat Torah. I truly believe that we will have a greater opportunity in the days ahead to sing and dance.”
Adat Shalom, a Reconstructionist synagogue in Bethesda, Maryland, will use Simchat Torah to celebrate the hostages’ return by ending another common practice since Oct. 7: a chair left empty on the synagogue’s bima, featuring the image of a missing hostage.
During the dancing on Simchat Torah, marked on Tuesday night outside of Israel, the congregation will bring the chair and use it to lift up members wedding-style. “We have a lot of people in the community who are really close with the Hostages and Missing Families Forum in Washington,” said Rabbi Scott Perlo. “We’re going to take that very chair, and take it from its depths and lift it up, and make it the centerpiece of our joy.”
Adat Shalom rotated in a number of special prayers and readings over the past two years, acknowledging, Perlo said ruefully, that “there’s so much to pray for,” including “the hostages, the safety of our family in Israel, the safety of people in Gaza,” and the state of American democracy.
He understands that some congregants may be wary of letting go of the new rites and prayers — perhaps afraid that if they don’t keep up the tradition, the horrors that prompted their prayers will only return.
“So what I would say to them is some version of, ‘Yes, don’t let it go completely, but let it transform into something new,’” said Perlo.
Rabbi Felipe Goodman of Temple Beth Sholom in Las Vegas, Nevada also plans to incorporate a ritual of release and transformation during Simchat Torah celebrations on Tuesday night. He’s asking congregants to bring their yellow pins and dog tags and place them on an heirloom Torah cover. “This cover will be dedicated as a memorial and displayed at the entrance of our Temple, so that every time we walk through through Our Temple’s doors, we will remember what happened on Oct. 7, 2023,” he wrote in a message to members.
On Sunday, Hanna Yerushalmi, a rabbi based in Annapolis, Maryland, shared a poem on Instagram, called “Yellow Chairs” that imagined a near future in which hope will transform the fraught symbols of Oct. 7 grief and remembrance. It reads in part:
Empty chairs will be
saved for friends arriving late,
and tape will be
tape again,
and hostage necklaces
will be put away, forgotten in drawers.
and Saturday night will be date night once again.
The post Jews let go of hostage rituals with gratitude and grief appeared first on The Forward.
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Syrian State Forces Deploy in Kurdish-Run City Under Ceasefire Deal
Syrian Interior Ministry security forces vehicles travel to enter the city of Hasakah in northeastern Syria, following an agreement between Damascus and the Syrian Democratic Forces reached on Jan. 30, in Al-hasakah, Syria, Feb. 2, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi
Syrian government security forces deployed in a Kurdish-controlled city in the northeast on Monday, a first step toward implementing a US-backed ceasefire deal that foresees the Kurdish–run regions being merged with Damascus.
The deal, declared on Friday, staved off the prospect of further confrontation between President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s government and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, which lost swathes of eastern and northern Syria to government troops in January.
Reuters journalists saw a convoy of more than 30 interior ministry vehicles begin moving towards the ethnically-mixed city of Hasakah from its outskirts in the early afternoon. Sources in the city said they entered shortly afterwards.
Members of the Kurdish Asayish security force observed as the convoy entered the city.
Government forces are expected to be stationed in Syrian state buildings in Hasakah’s so-called “security zone,” a Syrian official and a Kurdish security source told Reuters ahead of the deployment.
The accord declared on Friday foresees a phased integration of Kurdish fighters with government forces. The United States has hailed the agreement as a historic milestone towards unity and reconciliation after 14 years of civil war.
The SDF was once Washington’s main Syrian ally, playing a vital part in the fight against Islamic State terrorists.
But its status weakened as President Donald Trump built ties with Sharaa, a former al Qaeda commander who has now brought almost all of Syria back under the authority of Damascus.
The deal announced on Friday includes the formation of a military division that will include three SDF brigades, in addition to a brigade for forces in the SDF-held town of Kobani, also known as Ain al-Arab, which will be affiliated to the state-controlled governorate of Aleppo.
A convoy of 20 aid trucks entered Ain al-Arab, state–run Ekhbariya TV reported.
The deal also provides for governing bodies in SDF-held areas to be merged with state institutions.
The Syrian state news agency SANA reported that interior ministry forces had begun deploying in rural areas near Ain al-Arab on Monday.
Since rebels toppled President Bashar al-Assad 14 months ago, Sharaa’s efforts to bring the fractured nation under central rule have been complicated by deadly violence last year against Alawites and Druze, fuelling suspicion of his rule among minority communities despite his promises to protect them.
ANALYST SEES GAPS OVER INTEGRATION
SDF commander Mazloum Abdi, in comments to Kurdish broadcaster Ronahi published on Saturday, said there was an agreement on a limited number of government security forces entering the security zones of both Hasakah and Qamishli, another SDF-held city on the Turkish border.
Their mission would be only administrative, to follow up on the process of the integration of the Asayish, he said.
Abdi said government forces would not enter Kurdish villages and cities, adding that their administration would remain in the hands of their residents and local forces.
Nawar Rahawi, director of the government-affiliated Hasakah media center, told Reuters that some 125 to 150 members of the security forces had entered Hasakah on Monday, and another 15 to 20 vehicles would enter on Tuesday if the entry goes smoothly.
“If things go smoothly, as all Syrians hope, the process of integrating the Syrian Democratic Forces with the Syrian government forces will begin,” he said.
But Noah Bonsey, a senior adviser with the International Crisis Group think-tank, said statements from both sides since Friday indicated gaps over how the integration of the SDF and Kurdish–run governing bodies in the northeast will pan out.
“What the practical details of integration look like will determine what continuing role SDF elements play on the ground, how much autonomy they retain, and how significant and extensive government command and control is,” he said.
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Iran, US to Hold Nuclear Talks on Friday, Some Regional Countries to Participate
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi attends a press conference after meeting with his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan, in Istanbul, Turkey, Jan. 30, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Dilara Senkaya
Iran and the United States will resume nuclear talks on Friday in Turkey, Iranian and US officials told Reuters on Monday, while a regional diplomat said representatives from countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt would participate.
US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi will meet in Istanbul in an effort to revive diplomacy over a long-running dispute about Iran‘s nuclear program and dispel fears of a new regional war.
Turkey and other regional allies have sought de-escalation.
“Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Egypt, as well as some other countries, will attend the Istanbul meeting. There will be bilateral, trilateral, and other meetings,” the diplomat said.
US NAVAL BUILDUP NEAR IRAN
Tensions are running high amid a US naval buildup near Iran, following a violent crackdown against anti-government demonstrations last month, the deadliest domestic unrest in Iran since its 1979 revolution.
US President Donald Trump, who stopped short of carrying out threats to intervene during the crackdown, has since demanded Tehran make nuclear concessions and sent a flotilla to its coast. He said last week Iran was “seriously talking,” while Tehran’s top security official Ali Larijani said arrangements for negotiations were under way.
Iranian sources told Reuters last week that Trump had demanded three conditions for resumption of talks: zero enrichment of uranium in Iran, limits on Tehran’s ballistic missile program, and ending its support for regional proxies.
Iran has long rejected all three demands as unacceptable infringements of its sovereignty, but two Iranian officials told Reuters its clerical rulers saw the ballistic missile program, rather than uranium enrichment, as the bigger obstacle.
PREPARATIONS FOR POTENTIAL US–IRAN TALKS
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said Tehran was considering “the various dimensions and aspects of the talks,” adding that “time is of the essence for Iran as it wants the lifting of unjust sanctions sooner.”
A Turkish ruling party official told Reuters that Tehran and Washington had agreed to re-focus on diplomacy and possible talks this week, in a potential reprieve for potential US strikes.
Witkoff was expected to visit Israel to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel’s military chief, two senior Israeli officials said separately on Monday.
‘BALL IN TRUMP’S COURT’
The Iranian official said “diplomacy is ongoing. For talks to resume, Iran says there should not be preconditions and that it is ready to show flexibility on uranium enrichment, including handing over 400 kg of highly enriched uranium, accepting zero enrichment under a consortium arrangement as a solution.”
However, he added, for the start of talks, Tehran wanted US military assets moved away from Iran.
“Now the ball is in Trump’s court,” he said.
SATELLITE IMAGERY SHOWS SOME REPAIR WORK AT IRANIAN SITES
Tehran’s regional sway has been weakened by Israel’s attacks on its proxies – from Hamas in Gaza to Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and militias in Iraq – as well as by the ousting of Iran‘s close ally, former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
In June last year the United States struck Iranian nuclear targets, joining in at the close of a 12-day Israeli bombing campaign. Since then, Tehran has said its uranium enrichment work has stopped.
Recent satellite imagery of two of the targeted sites, Isfahan and Natanz, appears to show some repair work since December, with new roofing over two previously destroyed buildings. No other rebuilding was visible, according to the imagery provided by Planet Labs and reviewed by Reuters.
Washington-based think tank ISIS said satellite images from late January showed construction work on tunnel entrances at Isfahan that could “indicate a preparation for additional military strikes” as was seen ahead of last year’s US strikes.
It could also signal the movement of assets from other facilities, it added.
NUCLEAR TALKS STANDOFF
After five rounds of talks that have stalled since May 2023, several hard-to-bridge issues remained between Tehran and Washington, including Iran‘s insistence on maintaining uranium enrichment on its soil and refusal to ship abroad its entire existing stockpile of highly enriched uranium.
The UN nuclear watchdog has called on Iran repeatedly to say what happened to the highly enriched uranium stock since the June attacks.
Western countries fear Iran‘s uranium enrichment could yield material for a warhead. Iran says its nuclear program is only for electricity generation and other civilian uses.
The Iranian sources said Tehran could ship its highly enriched uranium abroad and pause enrichment in a deal that should also include the lifting of economic sanctions.
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Iran Fears US Strike May Reignite Protests, Imperil Rule, Sources Say
People walk on a street in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 31, 2026. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
Iran’s leadership is increasingly worried a US strike could break its grip on power by driving an already enraged public back onto the streets, following a bloody crackdown on anti-government protests, according to six current and former officials.
In high-level meetings, officials told Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that public anger over last month’s crackdown — the bloodiest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution — has reached a point where fear is no longer a deterrent, four current officials briefed on the discussions said.
The officials said Khamenei was told that many Iranians were prepared to confront security forces again and that external pressure such as a limited US strike could embolden them and inflict irreparable damage to the political establishment.
One of the officials told Reuters that Iran‘s enemies were seeking more protests so as to bring the Islamic Republic to an end, and “unfortunately” there would be more violence if an uprising took place.
“An attack combined with demonstrations by angry people could lead to a collapse [of the ruling system]. That is the main concern among the top officials and that is what our enemies want,” said the official, who like the other officials contacted for this story declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.
The reported remarks are significant because they suggest private misgivings inside the leadership at odds with Tehran’s defiant public stance toward the protesters and the US.
The sources declined to say how Khamenei responded. Iran‘s Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on this account of the meetings.
Multiple sources told Reuters last week that US President Donald Trump is weighing options against Iran that include targeted strikes on security forces and leaders to inspire protesters, even as Israeli and Arab officials said air power alone would not topple the clerical rulers.
PEOPLE ARE EXTREMELY ANGRY, SAYS FORMER OFFICIAL
Any such uprising in the wake of a US strike would stand in contrast to Iranians’ response to Israeli and US bombing attacks on Iran‘s nuclear program back in June, which was not followed by anti-government demonstrations.
But a former senior moderate official said the situation had changed since the crackdown in early January.
“People are extremely angry,” he said, adding a US attack could lead Iranians to rise up again. “The wall of fear has collapsed. There is no fear left.”
Tensions between Tehran and Washington are running high. The arrival of a US aircraft carrier and supporting warships in the Middle East has expanded Trump’s ability to take military action if he so wishes, after repeatedly threatening intervention over Iran‘s bloody crackdown.
‘THE GAME IS OVER,’ SAYS FORMER PRIME MINISTER
Several opposition figures, who were part of the establishment before falling out with it, have warned the leadership that “boiling public anger” could result in a collapse of the Islamic system.
“The river of warm blood that was spilled on the cold month of January will not stop boiling until it changes the course of history,” former prime minister Mirhossein Mousavi, who has been under house arrest without trial since 2011, said in a statement published by the pro-reform Kalameh website.
“In what language should people say they do not want this system and do not believe your lies? Enough is enough. The game is over,’” Mousavi added in the statement.
During the early January protests, witnesses and rights groups said, security forces crushed demonstrations with lethal force, leaving thousands killed and many wounded. Tehran blamed the violence on “armed terrorists” linked to Israel and the US.
Trump stopped short of carrying out threats to intervene, but he has since demanded Iran make nuclear concessions. Both Tehran and Washington have signaled readiness to revive diplomacy over a long-running nuclear dispute.
SIMMERING ANGER, ‘DANGER OF BLOODSHED’
Analysts and insiders say that while the streets are quiet for now, deep-seated grievances have not gone away.
Public frustration has been simmering over economic decline, political repression, a widening gulf between rich and poor, and entrenched corruption that leaves many Iranians feeling trapped in a system offering neither relief nor a path forward.
“This may not be the end, but it is no longer just the beginning,” said Hossein Rassam, a London-based analyst.
If protests resume during mounting foreign pressure and security forces respond with force, the six current and former officials said they fear demonstrators would be bolder than in previous unrest, emboldened by experience and driven by a sense that they have little left to lose.
One of the officials told Reuters that while people were angrier than before, the establishment would use harsher methods against protesters if it was under US attack. He said the result would be a bloodbath.
Ordinary Iranians contacted by Reuters said they expected Iran‘s rulers to crack down hard on any further protests.
A Tehran resident whose 15-year-old son was killed in the protests on Jan. 9 said the demonstrators had merely sought a normal life, and had been answered “with bullets.”
“If America attacks, I will go back to the streets to take revenge for my son and the children this regime killed.”