Hostage Deal
Eli Sharabi and Human Freedom
BY RABBI DORON PEREZ
After his 491-day ordeal in Gaza captivity, in the pages of this HaMizrachi edition, Eli Sharabi shares that no matter what happens to us, we always have freedom of choice – to personally decide how to face any and every situation we come across. Eli says:
“Nothing simply happens to us – we manage whatever situation we find ourselves in. Even after my freedom was taken away, there remained a sphere of choice during captivity: how to respond to situations, how to engage with my captors, how to work together with fellow hostages…”
Eli teaches us one of the most profound insights in all of human experience – there is one element of free choice that no one can ever take away from us and that is our ability to choose our thoughts.
As much as we have free choice, others can take away almost every freedom from us. We can be forced into situations where there is nothing we can do. We can be gagged and bound, Heaven forbid, be rendered unable to speak or act. But no human being can ever force us to think something we don’t want to think. We have an absolute free choice to choose our attitude in every given situation.
Viktor Frankl and the final human freedom
This is one of the great insights into the human condition that emerges from Viktor Frankl’s masterpiece, Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl writes that no one can tell him, as a survivor of the concentration camps, that a human being does not have free choice. He says that he witnessed people in their last moments stealing another person’s piece of bread to survive. Yet, incredibly, he witnessed others who literally give away their last piece of bread. This, he maintains, provides unequivocal evidence of a human being’s capacity to choose a course of action even in impossible circumstances. He says that whether we become angels or animals, saints or sinners, it is entirely up to us.1 Indeed, our sages have famously said that “everything is in the hands of Heaven except for the fear of Heaven.”2 This has been interpreted by many of our great ethicists to mean that everything that happens to us can be beyond our choice and control except our “fear of Heaven” – how we choose to react to what happens to us.
So many circumstances, as we know all too well, happen without us having any choice or control – they are forced upon us. But one thing can never be taken away and that is our fear of Heaven. We can always choose our attitude. When we face challenges in life that shake our world, we have to dig very deeply into our reservoirs of faith and perspective. Vulnerability and excruciating pain need not necessarily beget paralysis or anger, blame or harsh criticism – there is nothing automatic about these responses.
As Stephen Covey has said in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, between stimulus and response, there is a gap, and we live in that gap. The things that happen to us – stimuli – need not elicit any automatic, uncontrolled response. We have free choice to dig deep within ourselves and to choose our perspective on what happens to us and then to choose our attitude, response, and course of action. To try, despite the pain, to choose a path of hope and healing, light and life. Faith and beliefs impact perception, which in turn impacts our actions and performance. We indeed see the world not the way it is, but the way we are.
My mental gamble and ‘hostage deal’ with myself
Having gone through the horrific 163 days of our son being a hostage and thought to be alive, we were full of fear and angst, amongst the most harrowing situations in life. This tested us in a way that nothing previously had. Then, the knowledge that Daniel had been murdered, with his lifeless body held somewhere in Gaza. Just to find the strength to live each day by putting one foot in front of the other required all our inner reserves of strength and resilience to somehow face the valley of death with faith, hope, and positivity. There is a need every day to choose how to confront this challenging reality.
I felt this so acutely, particularly during those 163 painful days. How is one to cope with the knowledge that one’s son is being held by Hamas and heaven only knows what they are undergoing? Are they, G-d forbid, being tortured? Is he injured or even alive? When and will we see him again? How is one to handle such impossible thoughts about the fate of one’s beloved child? I realized very quickly that if I am unable to be intentional and proactive about my thoughts, they will get the better of me, paralyze and destroy me. I needed to up my game and do everything I could to think correctly and create the mental paradigm that I wanted to try to live in. I, thankfully, with the grace of G-d, was able to develop the following mind game that I played with myself every day. I said to myself as follows: There is a chance that Daniel did not survive the first day of the tank battle, and that would mean, G-d forbid, that he is no longer alive. If that is the case, that means I have nothing to worry about – he is not being tortured. They cannot harm him. If it is true that, G-d forbid, he is deceased, then I have a lifetime of loss and mourning to contend with. But I need not worry about that at all now, because hopefully he is alive. If, on the other hand, he is alive, then please G-d, we have so much hope and we will, b’ezrat Hashem [with G-d’s help], see him again.
The choice to view reality as the glass half-full is our choice, and our choice alone. It is possible to see the emptiness and pain of both sides of the equation, that he is, G-d forbid, either dead or being tortured. But one can choose to do one’s best to think differently – that if he is alive, we will, please G-d, see him again. And if, G-d forbid, he has died, then he is not in harm’s way and has died al kiddush Hashem [lit. for the sanctification of G-d, as a holy martyr].
This is a choice, an almost impossible one. Hashem gives us seemingly impossible tests to face. Yet, somehow, at the same time, He gives us impossible strength to deal with them.
Simcha as a state of being
Happiness is never truly dependent on external circumstances, however debilitating, but more on the inner precincts of personal thought and choice. It is indeed a mindset, a perception and an attitude, and in essence a state of being.
It is this very state of being, says Rav Shimshon Raphael Hirsch, that we ultimately hope to be blessed with on Sukkot. After all, only this holiday is defined in our prayers as ּּזְמַן שִׂמְחָתֵינוּ, the time of our happiness. Additionally, it is the only holiday where we find the unusual expression of simcha: “וְהָיִיתָ אַךְ שָׂמֵחַ, You should be only happy,” implying a type of complete or ultimate happiness. What is the meaning of this phrase? Rav Hirsch explains that it refers to a state of being, a mindset that we hope to achieve, having been celebrating in G-d’s presence in the Temple precinct for the entire seven days.
The Malbim states3 that this is the very meaning of the word simcha, happiness in Hebrew. There are the two primary words to describe joy and happiness in Tanach: שָׂשׂוֹן and שִׂמְחָה.
שָׂשׂוֹן is an expression of external, celebratory joy, whereas שִׂמְחָה is a more internal and ongoing sense of joy – a state of being.
Happiness can be transformed into a character trait, a permanent quality, and a joie de vivre that accompanies us throughout our lives. It is this state of being that we hope to take with us into the long, rainy winter months. Indeed, it can only be this mindset that will successfully see us through the ‘winter periods’ of life, the difficult and dark times.
In Whose world do we live?
Simchat Torah two years ago came with so much horror that we are still reeling from it today. This Simchat Torah will commemorate once again 1,300 yahrzeits of death, destruction, and hostage-taking, including the death and hostage-taking of our beloved son Daniel. It will be accompanied by much pain and challenge.
We do, though, live in Hashem’s world, not ours. “Even when I walk in the valley of death, I will not fear evil, because You are with me” (Tehillim 23:4). King David, who faced danger and challenge more than most, was convinced that G-d was with him and he would somehow prevail.
When we live in His world, there is hope in the face of despair; light in the face of darkness. That somehow, even if we don’t understand, everything is for the best. When we are broken, we are whole, and when we are fractured, we are complete. Even when things are so not okay, they are okay. The flimsy sukkah is called in the Zohar “the shadow of faith.” It is but a whisper and a shadow, but with faith in Hashem and Jewish destiny, with conviction in the justness of our cause, we can weather any storm and not only survive but thrive.
On Sukkot, Shemini Atzeret, and Simchat Torah, we celebrate that, notwithstanding all our pain and challenges, we can always choose to live with hope and happiness.
We have to choose Whose world we live in.
1 Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl, pp. 65–66.
2 Pirkei Avot 1:8.
3 Rabbi Meir Leibush. He mentions this distinction in a number of places, for example, see Yishayahu 35:1, in his section on the meaning of words.
Rabbi Doron Perez is the Executive Chairman of World Mizrachi.