Freed hostage Agam Berger recounted her experiences observing the Passover holiday last year while being held hostage by Hamas terrorists in Gaza and how keeping her faith helped her endure the hardships of captivity in an op-ed published Friday in the Wall Street Journal.
Berger, 20, was taken captive by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023, from the IDF surveillance unit at the Nahal Oz military base. She was released from captivity on January 30, 2025, as part of a ceasefire and hostage release deal.
“Having survived the massacre — when babies, children, women and elderly men were killed simply because they were Jews — I knew I had been chosen by God for something, and that he would protect me,” Berger wrote in the op-ed, naming several Jewish sages and leaders throughout history who had been imprisoned for various reasons.
“Each had been in my position,” she wrote. “I learned, as my forebears did, that imprisonment can’t overwhelm the inner spiritual life.”
She said that even as Hamas had tried to “coerce me into converting to Islam — at times, forcing a Hijab on my head — they couldn’t take away my soul.”
The 20-year-old violinist said that throughout her 482 days in captivity, she chose to observe every Jewish fast that she could, refusing certain foods that were not kosher, and “chose not to light a fire on Shabbat to cook for my captors.”
“They stopped letting me cook altogether once they realized it was something I enjoyed,” she added.
Freed hostage Agam Berger (right) reunites with her parents Shlomi and Merav at an IDF facility next to the Gaza border on January 30, 2025. (IDF)
Berger, whose religious observance during captivity was first reported by hostages released during the November 2023 ceasefire, recalled marking Passover in captivity last year with fellow hostage Liri Albag, who has also been freed.
“Held in a small room with no natural light, we did what we could to set the holiday mood,” Agam wrote, describing how the pair made decorations from “scraps of paper,” and how Albag had surprised her with a makeshift Hagaddah, the story of the ancient Israelites’ Exodus from Egypt and their journey to freedom.
“On Passover, we heard that people had set us a table in Hostage Square in Tel Aviv. Liri listened to her mother’s voice on the airwaves. We cried, then sat down to eat our own ‘bread of affliction,’ the Haggadah’s description of the matzah our fathers ate in Egypt.”
“Our corn flour pitas united us with them,” she said.
(L-R) Captivity survivors Naama Levy, Karina Ariev, Agam Berger, Liri Albag and Daniella Gilboa watch a concert in their honor at Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva, February 4, 2025. (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)
Turning to the present, Berger noted that although she will once again be able to celebrate the upcoming Passover holiday with her family, she “won’t yet be full,” as 59 hostages, 24 of whom are believed to be alive, remain in the clutches of Gaza’s terror groups.
“This is their second Passover in chains of iron. We can’t allow a third.”
In total, Hamas released 30 hostages, including 20 Israeli civilians, five soldiers, and five Thai nationals, and the bodies of eight slain Israeli captives during the recent ceasefire, which lasted from January to March.
Hamas had previously freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that in the early weeks of the war, sparked by Hamas’s murderous assault on southern Israel on October 7, in which some 1,200 people were killed, and 251 were taken hostage.
Upon her release from captivity on January 30, days after Albag and three other captive surveillance soldiers were released, Berger said she wrote down the phrase she had carried with her throughout her 482-day ordeal.
“‘I chose the path of faith, and with the path of faith I have returned,’” she said. “Even as a hostage, I believed I would return home the same person I was when I was taken against my will.”
“We are commanded to remember the Exodus every day,” Berger concluded. “That demands that we continue our efforts to bring home our captive brothers and to fight to ensure the atrocities of that autumn Sabbath never occur again.”
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