Agam Berger
WSJ, Apr. 10, 2025
“I chose the path of faith and with the path of faith I have returned.”
I was kidnapped by Hamas, taken to Gaza and held hostage for 482 days. Today I am home, healthy and whole in body, soul and spirit. This Passover, I am reflecting on my freedom.
When Hamas overran the Nahal Oz base on Oct. 7, 2023, many of my friends were murdered. In those harrowing moments, as I was being kidnapped, I had the freedom to choose what to say. I recited, continuously, the same verse that Jews on the threshold of death have said for millennia: Shema Yisrael, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.”
Having survived the massacre—when babies, children, women and elderly men were killed simply because they were Jews—I knew I had been chosen by God for something, and that he would protect me. I also knew I wasn’t the first faithful Jew to be imprisoned. The Hasidic master Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi (the Ba’al Hatanya), the mystic Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, the martyr Rabbi Akiva, Joseph of the Book of Genesis, and Abraham, who the Talmud says spent 10 years in prison—each had been in my position. ….SOURCE