Looking Back, 843 Days Later

My sister’s call came while I was enjoying the Monday night jazz program at a neighborhood tavern. An Israeli relative had messaged her son that members of the family were unaccounted for after the Hamas-led terror attacks two days earlier, on Oct. 7, 2023.

I already had filed an article for the AJT about how Jewish Atlanta was reacting to the horrific news coming from Israel and the next night I was going to cover a community rally in Sandy Springs.

The death toll in the kibbutzim, towns, and an outdoor music festival in a section of Israel known as the “Gaza envelope” would reach 1,225 men, women, and children, while 251 more were kidnapped (among them the bodies of people killed Oct. 7).

At Kibbutz Be’eri, three people on the Israeli side of the family were murdered and seven kidnapped.

Six of the seven — women and children — were freed after 50 days in an exchange for jailed Palestinians. The seventh, a husband and father, remained a hostage for 505 days, until Feb. 22, 2025.

The last hostage came home on Jan. 26, 2026 — on day 843 — as Israel Defense Forces troops in Gaza recovered the body of police officer Ran Gvili.

Before Oct. 7, I knew that a few hundred Israelis were descended from my great-grandfather’s twin brother, who emigrated from Romania in 1882 to what then was part of the Ottoman Empire and was among the founders of Zichron Yaakov, a town south of Haifa.

I did not know the names, the faces, or anything about the lives of those murdered or kidnapped.

I saw the names of other family members interviewed by Israeli media and searched for them online, eventually making contact with about a dozen cousins.

The first thing I looked for in the news every morning was an update on the hostages, along with social media posts or messages from the cousins.

As closely as I tracked Israel’s retaliation against Hamas — the Palestinian death toll rising to tens of thousands and most of the Gaza strip reduced to rubble — the hostages remained my primary concern, at least until the last of the family was freed.

I remember that Oct. 10, 2023, rally at the Sandy Springs Performing Arts Center, with some 1,100 people inside and a few thousand on the lawn outside.

Judging from what I saw and heard that night, vengeance was on the minds of many in attendance.

The victims in the kibbutzim included advocates of co-existence with their Palestinian neighbors.

I remember the words of an Israeli cousin who came to Atlanta on Oct. 30, 2023, as part of a delegation of hostage families.

Speaking to a nearly full sanctuary at the Ahavath Achim Synagogue, this young woman relayed a request from two other cousins, young men whose parents were two of the three family members murdered at Be’eri.

“Her sons asked us not to revenge on behalf of their name. In the darkest times, the darkest parts of our personalities sometimes get out,” Dafna said. “Our family sent a message of peace. I feel like I need to ask you on behalf of [the slain parents], don’t seek revenge.”

The quiet that followed suggested that many in attendance were inclined to disagree.

The family connection prompted many of my “From Where I Sit” columns. Some I wrote because I sensed a weariness in the Jewish community as the war ground on, with the plight of the hostages receiving less attention.

The day that Ran Gvili’s body returned, Adi Shoham, one of the kidnapped from the Israeli side of my family tree, wrote on Facebook: “There are no more hostages in Gaza. The sentence we’ve been dreaming of for so long. Done and dusted. The word ‘relief’ is weak compared to the feeling, and the tears are flowing by themselves. Relief for the Gvili family, who were last standing in this nightmare, and it’s finally over. Relief for all of us, that now one chapter has really ended and a new one is starting.”

The families of the hostages brought home for burial — those killed on Oct. 7, whose bodies were taken, and those who died as captives — cope with empty chairs at meals, one side of the bed cold, a parent or grandparent not there to guide the next generation.

The hostages who returned alive are charting their futures on a timeline different than before Oct. 7.

So is Israel, its people, and its government. The latter remains due for a reckoning over the intelligence, military, and political failures that led to the deadliest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust and a hostage nightmare that lasted for 843 days.

So are Jewish Americans, many of whom have found reasons to think about what it means to be Jewish; to assess their place in American society, as a cloud of toxic antisemitism has spread, and to consider their relationship with Israel, its people, as distinct from its government.

After the 843 days of the hostage crisis, I am left with admiration for the steadfastness of the extended family in Israel and gratitude for the contacts made with Israeli cousins. The only silver lining I found in this dark affair was being able to add their names in my contacts and to the family tree in my computer.