For some 50 families, the announcement of a possible U.S.-brokered cease-fire between Israel and Hamas marks not only the possible end to a long and brutal war, but also the tantalizing prospect of an end to over 700 days of waiting for their loved ones who were among those kidnapped into Gaza during the assault on Oct. 7, 2023.
Of the more than 250 adults and children who were taken, 148 hostages have come back alive; 57 more were returned only for burial. Some 20 families still await a son or father believed to be living. Nearly 30 more remain in terrible limbo: Their loved one is presumed dead, but they have been unable to carry out religious mourning rituals.
Israel and Hamas have issued hopeful but qualified statements over the past several days promising a stop to the war, which has devastated Gaza, and the return of all hostages, living and dead. Representatives of the United States, Israel and Hamas were expected in Cairo on Sunday for talks.
Amid the cautious optimism these developments inspired, the hostage families are well aware that promises of cease-fires and hostage handovers have proved empty before. Still, they have found ways to sustain themselves.
Some families have campaigned for an end to bloodshed and a return of hostages. Many also nurtured a connection to their missing loved ones through quieter ways, in private daily rituals. Some retained routines — reading books they once enjoyed together, or continuing family activities. Some established new practices, creating memories they hoped to share when their loved ones return. In each case, the family members have focused their energy and attention on one person, desperately continuing to imagine a happier present, a better future.
In recent weeks, Times Opinion reached out to six of the remaining hostage families to learn about these private rituals — and the individuals they evoked. The public protests at which mothers and fathers, brothers and wives, and sisters and cousins appeared, pleading with Israeli and world leaders to free the hostages, often, inadvertently, flattened the experience of one person into the story of a collective.
In the private spaces they left behind at home, each person has always been, to paraphrase the Talmud, a world entire.
Omri Miran, 48, who was kidnapped at Kibbutz Nahal Oz
His wife and children read “Goodnight Moon” and say good night to Daddy.
Each night, Omri’s wife, Lishay, reads “Goodnight Moon,” the book Omri once read to his daughters Roni, now 5, and Alma, 2½. Not long after the attacks, Roni, then 3, asked her mother for the book. Lishay said her daughter asked “to go outside and say to the moon and to the trees and to the flowers: ‘Good night.’”
“After a few days she asked, could she also say good night to Daddy because he is not here? So we started to say to Omri, ‘Good night, Daddy, we miss you and we love you’ — this is something we do every day,” Lishay said. Alma later joined the ritual.
Together, she said, they tell one another that Daddy may not hear you speak, but he can hear you in his heart.
Alon Ohel, 24, who was kidnapped at the Nova music festival
His mother and sister bake challah.
Each Friday, Alon’s mother, Idit, and his sister, Inbar, braid challah for Shabbat. It is a practice they began after they learned from returned hostages that Alon expressed the desire to say the traditional Shabbat blessings over wine and bread when he is freed. Idit, an educator, also started leading local group meditation sessions shortly after her son was taken. Now several hundred people are invited to a daily guided meditation over a video call. They send “unconditional love” and “light” to Alon, Idit said.
She directs the group to bring love into their hearts, and then send love to his captors, to all those who surround him, and to the Middle East. Imagine yourselves, she says, embracing Alon, seeing him back at his piano, back in his life, and theirs, and home.
Yossi Sharabi, who died in captivity
His brother walks along the sea.
Yossi’s brother Eli, who was also taken hostage, was held for 491 days — mostly underground in tunnels under Gaza, his legs in shackles. He now waits to bury his brother, who died after an Israeli airstrike caused the collapse of the building where Yossi was being held.
Eli walks on the beach near his home in Herzliya, in the early mornings, to stay connected to Yossi, a former surfer and scuba diver, and to Alon Ohel, whom Eli met in the tunnels below Gaza. The two men discovered they both had served in the Israeli Navy. “After you lose your freedom, the sea is like a symbol,” Eli said, “a great symbol for freedom and open space.”
Upon his return, Eli learned that his wife and two daughters had been murdered on Oct. 7. They “are with me every day of my life, and every moment, but they are alongside of my life, not instead of my life,” he said.
Elkana Bohbot, 36, who was kidnapped at the Nova music festival
His wife and son sift through a memory box.
At night Elkana’s wife, Rivka, and their son, Re’em, 5, take out what they call a “box of memory, a box of waiting.” In it are photos of Elkana with the family. Most days they add to it: sometimes a piece of art from Re’em, or a project from his school. “It is a box where we keep our hope,” the Colombian-born Rivka said in Spanish. She describes Elkana as “a man with dreams.”
Since Elkana’s abduction, Rivka has stopped working. She now lobbies for her husband’s return and tries to maintain her son’s equilibrium. Re’em has a hard time being apart from her. Each night, a few hours after he goes to sleep, she hears the sound of his feet, running, running, running, for her bed. Recently he began asking for a brother, or sister, unable to fully understand why the family cannot continue to grow without his father.
Muhammad al-Atarash, 39, who was killed on Oct. 7
One of his sons, Ibrahim, rides the horses he loved.
Sgt. Maj. Muhammad al-Atarash was known among fellow horse racers for his talent. A Bedouin and a tracker for the Israeli military, he taught many of his 13 children to love horseback riding from an early age, said his brother, Salem. “Now,” Salem said, “they train alone.”
In 2024 the military gave the family video confirmation that Muhammad had been killed on Oct. 7, his body taken back to Gaza and dragged through the streets.
“When I wake up every day, the first thing I think about — I don’t think about work, or labor, or anything — the first thing I think about is my brother, how are we going to bring him and bury him,” Salem said.
David Cunio, 35, who was kidnapped at Kibbutz Nir Oz
His wife visits their ravaged home.
Sharon Cunio and her twin daughters, Emma and Yuli, now 5, were also captured on Oct. 7. They were released in a November 2023 cease-fire, along with Sharon’s sister, Danielle, and her daughter, Emilia, among 100 others.
Crowds terrify Sharon now. She occasionally speaks at rallies, but she is mostly alone. She feels most connected to David in small daily ways: recreating how he read to the girls each night, how he helped them bathe, playing with bubbles the way they still love.
Sometimes she finds most connection by traveling down to the shell of their ruined house in Nir Oz, which was burned on the day of the Hamas attacks. The last time Sharon was there, she wrote a note to David on the wall.
“I had to come here, to our home. I’m already shattered, desperate and broken,” she wrote. “I will never give up, just as I promised you in Gaza. My heart is yours forever.”
Ofir Berman is a documentary photographer and filmmaker in Tel Aviv. Sarah Wildman is an Opinion editor.
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