The interminable, excruciating wait is over. After more than 500 days of not knowing, prayers, and unbearable suffering, the bodies of Shiri Bibas and her two young children, Ariel and Kfir, will at last be brought back to Israel. But this is no relief, no closure — just the searing stillness of a nightmare that never really ends.
For nearly a year and a half, the faces of Shiri, Ariel, and baby Kfir — the youngest hostage taken on October 7 — haunted all of us. We saw that heart-tearing photo: Shiri hugging her two redheaded boys, her eyes wide with fear as armed men closed in around them. We imagined their anguish, their fear, their innocence shattered by brutality.
We posed impossible questions: Was baby Kfir learning to walk? Did he begin to speak? Did he comprehend Hebrew or just the tongue of his kidnappers? Could Ariel play with toys, or was childhood taken from him entirely?Now we know they were killed. The precise details are still unclear, but does it make a difference? Their brief lives were extinguished in Gaza — victims of a massacre, of hate, of a war that has broken so many hearts and homes. The world mourns. The color orange, which was selected to represent the bright red hair of the Bibas children, has turned into an international symbol of shared sorrow. Israel and the world will wear orange in their memory, not only as a mark of bereavement but as a summons to humanity.
Collective pain
During these harrowing months, the Bibas family represented collective sorrow. Their plight had resonance abroad, and attempts at raising awareness transcended continents. Protesters numbering hundreds gathered in Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square on Kfir’s first birthday in January 2024. “We wanted to mark the birthday he couldn’t with us,” a family member explained. “He should have been here, smashing cake with his little hands, learning to walk.”.
So we let orange balloons up into the air, hoping he would sense our love. In August 2024, the Redhead Days Festival in Holland — a festival for people with red hair — paid tribute to the Bibas children. Orange ribbons and signs reading, “Where are Ariel and Kfir Bibas?” were held up by thousands of red-haired festival-goers. A representative of the family said at the festival, “We don’t have language or country in common, but we have humanity in common. And humanity requires that these innocent children be brought back.” Ariel and Kfir’s lovely red hair served as a metaphor for their innocence and the world’s hope for their safe return. Red hair has been associated with intense emotions, passion, and, most of all, intensity in Jewish tradition for centuries.Redhead biblical heroes
Esau is described in the Torah as having been born with red hair:
“The first came out red, all his body like a hairy cloak; and they called his name Esau.” (Genesis 25:25)Red hair here is most commonly observed to indicate a passionate, fiery, and occasionally tumultuous disposition. The tale of Esau prompts us to consider that external attributes can reflect internal strength — strength we envisioned in young Ariel and Kfir as they responded to captivity.
Yet red hair is not solely a sign of strife. Israel’s most famous warrior and poet, King David, was also said to have a ruddy, reddish appearance:
“He was ruddy-cheeked, having beautiful eyes and good-looking in appearance.” (I Samuel 16:12)
David’s red hair attested to a passionate heart, a passionate thirst for justice, and an uncompromising dedication to his people. One cannot help but wonder if the same consuming fire, the same divine flame, burned in these two boys. My guess is that it did.
The Zohar (Bereshit 27a) provides another layer of interpretation, that red is the color of gevurah — strength, discipline, and severity. It is the color of the courageous, of those who remain steadfast while the world around them descends into darkness. Shiri Bibas, clinging to her children as she was pulled into Gaza, was this gevurah. She was their fortress and their shield, a mother whose love blazed fiercely in the midst of the horror that overtook her.
Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir were taken hostage, and Yarden Bibas was placed in solitary confinement in Gaza. He later described how his captors played on his despair. His family had fled and were safe in Tel Aviv, they told him at first, before making another hostage inform him that they were dead. Hamas filmed his breakdown and released the footage coldly for propaganda.
No one should ever be forced to hear about the death of their family members from their kidnappers,” said one of the freed hostages who had met Yarden during captivity. “They broke him again and again, and they recorded it like it was a game.”.
The world was orange
From Tel Aviv to London, Buenos Aires to Amsterdam, orange was not only a color; it was also a cry for justice. Israeli President Isaac Herzog, in a speech at the World Economic Forum in January 2024, placed a photo of baby Kfir on the podium beside him. “This innocent baby has been held longer in captivity than in freedom,” Herzog said, his voice trembling. “We cannot look away.”
In December 2023, Israeli diplomatic offices worldwide were illuminated with orange lights to mark Hanukkah and the Bibas family’s ordeal. At Hostages Square, the “Bring Them Home” catchphrase became synonymous with the image of Shiri’s fear-stricken face cradling her boys.
The trauma of the Bibas family was not a solo event. It was a national trauma, a representation of the violence of October 7 and the terror that followed. “I kept wondering for months about their lives in hiding,” wrote Yael, a mother of two from Tel Aviv. “Did they bring them toys? Was Ariel allowed to go out? Did Kfir ever have a chance to hear laughter?”
Their fate moved families across the globe. On social media, thousands posted photos of redheaded kids with the message: “We remember Ariel and Kfir.” In Times Square, a giant billboard carried their photos, with the words: “Kidnapped. Innocent. Bring Them Home.”
And so now, they are back — not to freedom, not to life, but to rest for all eternity in their native soil. And they take with them part of the heart of Israel.
“A quarter of our heart returned, but the house is still not ready,” the family tweeted when Yarden was freed about a fortnight ago. With the return of Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir, the heart is whole — but broken.
In the Talmud (Nedarim 20b), we read:
Hair color indicates temperament; red-haired individuals tend to be passionate in their endeavors.
Maybe Ariel and Kfir, like King David himself before them, had within them that spark of passion — that energy, that questioning, that unfettered childlike passion for life. We will never know.
We have a saying in Israel, Am Yisrael Chai — the People of Israel live. But never have those words been heavier than they are today.
To be alive today is to bear the memory of Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir together with memories of the other 120 hostages in Gaza, and of the over 1,200 Israelis murdered on October 7. It is to stand in solidarity with Yarden, with the extended family of the Bibas clan, with the residents of Nir Oz, and with a whole nation that took the Bibas children into its heart.
To the world that turned a blind eye, that doubted the atrocities of that day, that questioned the tales of our terror: Look again. Behold the Bibas family. Remember their names. Realize that October 7 was not some abstract occurrence or geopolitical headline; it was this — a mother covering her babies, a father’s plea to his sister in a desperate text, a family obliterated by terror.
The Midrash Tanchuma (Toldot 4) reminds us: “Although David was ruddy and was full of fear of Heaven, so too can those who are ruddy become vessels for great sanctity.” The red hair of the Bibas children, once so full of life and light in photographs, came to symbolize purity and innocence. They were our country’s youngest victims — yet also its children.
May the memories of Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas be a blessing. And may we, as a nation and as humanity, never stop demanding justice, never stop praying for peace, and never forget the orange-haired angels who were taken from us far too soon.
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