Posted on February 2, 2026
The Return of the Final Hostage
When I was growing up in the British Jewish community of the late 1980s, Ron Arad was a name that we were all familiar with. He was the Israeli helicopter pilot who had been shot down over Lebanon and who had been captured by terrorists. After initial reports that he had survived and some plans for a potential rescue or an exchange the trail went cold. His fate was unknown and his family – his wife Tami and daughter Yuval – were left with no news of their loved one, stuck in a place of uncertainty, with no closure and no end. Forty years later his fate is still unknown.
Then, during my gap year in Israel, I spent a month in 1998 volunteering for the International Coalition for Missing Israeli Soldiers. It was there that I learned the names of Zachary Baumel, Tzvi Feldman, and Yehuda Katz. Their tank had come under fire during the Lebanon war of 1982 and they were taken prisoner, with no clear information on who was holding them and whether they had survived. Over the next few years I remained involved with the campaign and got to know more about the families’ stories and the pain that they carried waiting for their loved ones. The remains of Zachary Baumel were recovered in 2019 and of Tzvi Feldman in 2025 – Yehuda Katz is still missing, his fate is still unknown.
With an awareness of these families and their stories, I found it hard to believe that Israel would be able to return all 251 hostages taken captive on October 7th. Prisoner exchanges are difficult, negotiating with terrorists is awful, and locating and retrieving the bodies of those who had been murdered is a virtually impossible task. 251 hostages was an almost inconceivable number to imagine – How would they be returned home? How would they survive amidst the war in Gaza? How would the murdered be found? How would this story ever end?
I remember those initial days after October 7th, each morning checking the news with the hope that hostages would have been found and rescued or that perhaps there would have been a negotiated resolution to bring them home. We celebrated the return of each and every living hostage – those who were rescued in daring IDF operations and those who came home through negotiated ceasefires. And there was a complicated emotional response when the bodies of the murdered hostages were brought back to Israel – relief that these families could finally bury their loved ones alongside a deep sense of sadness as another murder had been confirmed.
I remember in November 2023 when 105 hostages were released as part of the ceasefire. Each day we waited for the exchange to take place, praying that the terms of the agreement would be fulfilled. There was finally at least some light amidst the darkness of the shadow cast by October 7th. I remember in August 2024 waking up to the news that the bodies of six hostages had been recovered, that they had been alive only a few days earlier, but that they had been brutally murdered by the terrorists who held them. That was a painful day – Hersh, Ori, Eden, Almog, Alexander, and Carmel – we knew their faces, we knew their stories, we had come to know their families – and after almost a year in captivity they were murdered. I remember in January and February 2025 the hope that came with the second ceasefire deal as hostages returned home, but there was also the immense sadness as we learned that Shiri, Ariel and Kfir Bibas had been murdered in Gaza as their bodies were returned.
And I remember October 13, 2025 when we celebrated the return of the 20 remaining living hostages. I had heard some of their stories from their friends and family when visiting Israel, and I had visited the Kibbutzim from where some of them had been taken. It was definitely a day for celebration and I felt a sense of relief that there were no more living hostages being held in Gaza. But the story was not yet finished. Some people took off their dog tags, some people stopped wearing the yellow ribbon – but while Hamas returned 4 bodies on that day, there were still 24 bodies that needed to come home. 24 people who had been murdered and were still being held captive. 24 families who were unable to bury their loved ones.
When I visited hostage square in Tel Aviv, I remember seeing a sign next to the recreation of a Gaza tunnel, it said: lo od Ron Arad – not another Ron Arad. Knowing the history of Israeli hostages, it felt premature to celebrate until not just the living, but also the dead were returned home.
There was a moral and ethical obligation to continue working to ensure the return of every body held in Gaza, but there was also a Jewish obligation. The great scholar Maimonides wrote: “The redemption of captives receives priority over sustaining the poor and providing them with clothing. Indeed, there is no greater mitzvah than the redemption of captives.”[1] He goes on to prove this point by referencing the various Biblical commandments that are broken or upheld through rescuing captives.
But the Jewish obligation goes beyond Biblical commandments or injunctions from Medieval scholars. We are members of a global Jewish family, and we recognize the idea kol Yisrael aravim zeh bazeh – all Israel are responsible one for another.[2] And so when there are members of our family whose bodies are being held captive, whose loved ones have been denied a funeral, we have an obligation to continue working for their return and the closure that everyone deserves.
After the October 13 ceasefire went into effect a few months ago, we waited for the remaining 24 dead hostages to be returned. By the end of the month there had been thirteen more funerals, in November nine were returned, and on December 3rd Sudthisak Rinthalak’s body was returned so that there was only one hostage left in Gaza. Ran Gvili had yet to return home.
On the morning of October 7, 2023 Master Sgt Ran Gvili, a member of the Yasam police counter-terror unit, was at home on medical leave awaiting surgery on a broken shoulder. But hearing of the terrorist attack he put on his uniform and headed to the front line. When his dad asked him what he was doing, he replied: “What do you think? Do you think that my friends will fight alone? I’m going to help them.”[3] On his way to Kibbutz Alumim he rescued partygoers who were fleeing from the Nova music festival. Ran could have remained on medical leave, Ran could have watched events unfolding from the safety of his home, but Ran went to the frontline to serve with his friends, to protect the country he loved, and to help others.
And finally, on Monday Ran Gvili returned home, his body was found in a Gaza cemetery where the IDF checked 250 bodies to identify Ran and bring him back to Israel. In Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square the clock, which had been counting time since October 7, finally stopped – 843 days, 12 hours, 5 minutes, and 59 seconds. The ordeal had finally come to an end – for the first time in over a decade there were no Israeli hostages being held in Gaza.
At Ran’s funeral on Wednesday, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said: “An entire nation looks upon you today…and knows: through your path, and through Ran’s path, we must rise from this terrible pain … The nation must now rise to the next chapter of our existence as a people. Rise strong, confident in our way; rise hand in hand, believing in our State of Israel — Jewish and democratic — and guarding it with utmost devotion, as Ran guarded it.”[4]
Now is the time for healing to begin. The hostages are home and while this chapter of the story is now ended, we know that the book is far from over. Israeli society and the Jewish world remains scarred from the experiences of October 7th and its aftermath. There are so many families who have lost loved ones and have to find ways to emerge from the pain of loss and the heartbreak which now accompanies them. And there are the hostages who have returned home, needing to rebuild their lives as they carry the scars – emotional, mental, and physical – of the ordeal that they endured. We might feel lighter now that Ran has returned home, but we still carry the weight of what we have all experienced over these last two plus years.
But this is a moment that needs to be marked, the final hostage has returned from Gaza.
And so, we can remove the yellow pin and I share these words from my friend and colleague Rabbi Lea Muhlstein:
There are small holes
in our shirts and jackets,
in our hearts and prayers.
Once, each stood for a face,
a promise whispered in enamel:
Bring them home.
Now the pins are gone,
but the holes remain —
tiny witnesses to a covenant that endures.
We carry their names
in the folds of our prayer,
between Shema and silence.
Blessed are those who will not let go,
who stitch hope into fabric and heart alike.
May the One who redeems captives
teach us to mend gently,
weaving memory into the fabric of peace.
For even the holes,
like the spaces between the letters of Torah,
are holy.
And we can finally stop wearing the dog tags that had inscribed upon them: halev shelanu shvui b’aza – Our heart is captive in Gaza, Bring them home now.
I offer this prayer:
Adonai, Rofe sh’vorei halev – O God, healer of the broken hearted
We have worn these tags for over two years,
a reminder of the brokenness in our midst,
a community enduring pain and loss.
We have felt the chain around our necks,
binding us to the hostages and their families,
a community yearning to be reunited.
We have heard the sound of the metal,
an alarm call to remember the people we were missing,
a community that remained incomplete.
And now we can remove the chain and break the tags.
As the metal fractures, we carry the brokenness
Some are home, but the scars remain,
Others have been buried, but the pain endures.
We pray for the power to turn these broken tags into an altar of healing,
a tabernacle of recovery and wholeness,
a temple of peace and tranquility.
Adonai, Rofe sh’vorei halev – O God, healer of the broken hearted,
give us the power to bring comfort to the families who mourn,
to bring healing to those who were captive,
to bring wholeness and peace into our broken world.
Amen.
Since October 7th we have been singing Omri Shklar’s Oseh Shalom, composed in the aftermath of that tragic day. And so today, as we mark the end of this chapter, with the return of Ran Gvili, the final hostage, we sing his words again, because we have finally reached one of the days that we have been waiting for.
We conclude by offering the words of Shecheynu, praising God for allowing us to see this time with all of the hostages back home.
Baruch Atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech HaOlam, shehecheyanu vekiyemanu vehigiyanu lazman hazeh.
Blessed are You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of all, who has kept us alive, sustained us, and brought us to this time.
Amen
[1] Mishneh Torah, Gifts to the Poor 8:10.
[2] Babylonian Talmud Shevuot 39a.
[3] https://www.timesofisrael.com/missing-police-officer-ran-gvili-left-hospital-to-go-fight/
[4] https://www.timesofisrael.com/all-the-laughter-is-gone-hundreds-at-funeral-of-ran-gvili-israels-final-hostage/
