It took me a few seconds to realize who was standing beside me.
Last night, I was in the women’s section on the balcony overlooking the Western Wall plaza, observing the huge crowd that had come for Selichot. Next to me stood Noa Argamani, who was rescued from captivity in Gaza in Operation Arnon, and Ziv Abud, who survived the Nova festival massacre and was married last week to Eliya Cohen, himself a returned hostage.
Both women were deeply absorbed in the Selichot prayers, and I didn’t want to disturb them.
I looked across at the men’s section. There was Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz, Rabbi of the Western Wall, leading the service. Around him stood Eliya Cohen, Omer Shem Tov, Itay Regev and Bar Kupershtein. All of them had been held in Hamas tunnels. And now all of them were here, prayer books in hand, reciting Selichot with great emotion.
“Aneinu.” “Adon HaSelichot.” Every word suddenly carried another layer of meaning.
Then the chazan cried out: “Our God in Heaven, redeem us from the hands of all our enemies!”
And I looked at them—men and women who had actually been redeemed from the hands of our enemies.
That, I thought, was the message of this extraordinary evening: Sometimes you can actually see prayers being answered before your eyes.
I remembered all the mass prayer gatherings held for them, here and around the world. I remembered their names being recited through tears. But the story doesn’t end there.
Suli Eliav, director of the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, happened to pass by us. He opened his prayer book and showed me the words that come a little later: “Our God in Heaven, bring the redemption near! Our God in Heaven, bring the day of salvation near!”
“This is the goal,” he told me. “Redemption. Salvation. I think we all need to dream bigger.
“Look around you. There are 50,000 people here, most of them young. And young people are filling synagogues all over the country. The Jewish people suffered a terrible blow. We are paying a heavy price. But something else is happening too: We are rising to another level. We are finding our way back to ourselves.
“So yes, we are grateful. We are moved. But we can’t stop there. We need to dream big—the biggest dreams of all. We need to believe, to aspire, to pray and to act.
May we merit to see all our prayers come true before our eyes.”
