Former Israeli hostage Omer Shem Tov stood before a crowd of 450 people at a Chabad of Paradise Valley-led event on Tuesday, Dec. 16, and introduced himself with words that carried the weight of 505 days in captivity.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am Omer Shem Tov,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I am a free man.\u201d<\/p>\n
The event, held on the third night of Chanukah, blended faith and resilience as community members gathered to hear Shem Tov recount his experience being taken hostage during the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023, and held in Gaza for more than a year and a half.<\/p>\n
Rabbi Shlomy Levertov, director of Chabad of Paradise Valley, opened the evening by acknowledging the mass shooting at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, which occurred on the first night of Chanukah.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Rabbi Shlomy Levertov welcomes a room filled with people eager to hear from the former hostage.<\/p>\n
Courtesy of Aaron Soto<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re devastated,\u201d Levertov said. \u201cWe\u2019re mourning, and we are shaken. Moments like this remind us that being Jewish has never been simple. Chanukah is the story of a small light that refused to be extinguished, of Jews who refused to hide.\u201d<\/p>\n
His message to the crowd was resolute: \u201cWe will continue to bring light, warmth and Jewish pride into the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before Shem Tov took the stage, Levertov invited the speaker\u2019s father to light the menorah. Holding the shamash, he first lit several of the candles that had been left for audience members on their chairs. In just over two minutes, the flame was passed throughout the crowd, illuminating hundreds of small candles.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Malki Shem Tov lit the Chanukah menorah before his son spoke.<\/p>\n
Courtesy of Aaron Soto<\/p>\n
Levertov said the moment symbolized how quickly small acts could bring light back into a world that feels overwhelmingly dark.<\/p>\n
After Jewish community member and violinist Moshe Bukshpan led the crowd in singing \u201cJerusalem of Gold\u201d and \u201cOseh Shalom,\u201d Shem Tov mounted the dais to talk. The room was silent with people hanging on his every word.<\/p>\n
Shem Tov told the audience that his story truly begins on Oct. 6, 2023, one day before everything went awry, but a day he remembers vividly because it was his mother\u2019s birthday. After celebrating with his family, and kissing his mother goodbye, he headed to the Supernova music festival, where he met up with friends.<\/p>\n
When the attack began the following morning, there was little immediate panic. Missile sirens were a familiar sound.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just walked calmly to the parking lot. We didn\u2019t panic. We didn\u2019t run,\u201d Shem Tov recalled.<\/p>\n
That sense of normalcy was shattered when his father called, urging him to come home immediately and warning him that an invasion was underway. Soon after, Shem Tov and those around him began hearing gunfire and seeing armed men approaching.<\/p>\n
He described the terror of those moments. At first, he was certain he would be killed, before realizing instead that he was being taken hostage and carried into Gaza.<\/p>\n
The early days of captivity were marked by total uncertainty. He did not know how long he would be held, or whether he would ever return home.<\/p>\n
As Shem Tov recounted his experience, the audience responded audibly, with gasps and groans filling the room. At times, though, there was unexpected laughter. Shem Tov spoke with dry humor about cleaning the apartment where he was first held simply to occupy his time. Later, when the building came under bombardment, his first thought was about how much effort he had put into tidying it.<\/p>\n
He described being moved through tunnels and spending most of his captivity alone, with only brief interactions with other hostages at the beginning and end of his ordeal.<\/p>\n
One moment stood out as particularly meaningful. Shem Tov said his captors brought him Hebrew books that had apparently been left behind by Israeli soldiers. He begged to keep one and chose a weekly Torah study published by Chabad.<\/p>\n
The portion he read focused on the book of Genesis, in which Joseph is stripped of his colorful coat and cast into an empty pit in the wilderness.<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw it as a sign from God that I\u2019m going to come out of the pit,\u201d Shem Tov said, before adding with a grin that, like Joseph, he would then become the viceroy of Egypt.<\/p>\n
After long months of not knowing his fate, Shem Tov was finally released last February. He said he knew he was free the moment he saw Israeli soldiers and realized he was in a secure area back in Israel.<\/p>\n
Although the day was gray and rainy, \u201cfor me,\u201d he said, \u201cit was the sunniest day of the year.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the flight home, a soldier handed him a whiteboard so he could write a message for news cameras. He thanked the soldiers and drew a smiley face. Then, just as the board was being taken away, he asked for it back and added another message: \u201cI want a burger.\u201d<\/p>\n
When he arrived home, hundreds of burgers had been sent to him from across Israel.<\/p>\n
The most meaningful moment, he said, was being reunited with his family. He spent a week in the hospital, and his relatives insisted on staying together in the same room so they would not lose sight of him after so long fighting to bring him home.<\/p>\n
Shem Tov closed by thanking everyone who came to hear his story and those who had prayed for his release, and for the return of the remaining hostages.<\/p>\n
He ended where he began.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am Omer Shem Tov,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I am a free man.\u201d JN<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Israeli hostage Omer Shem Tov stood before a crowd of 450 people at a Chabad of Paradise…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":468368,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5131],"tags":[5229,5643,1587,718,99,1589,67,586,132,5230,68,212947,2969,157098],"class_list":{"0":"post-468367","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-phoenix","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-arizona","10":"tag-az","11":"tag-community","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-phoenix","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-united-states-of-america","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-us_worldnews","20":"tag-usa","21":"tag-valley_view"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115773215526547904","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/468368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}