The Hamilton Spectator

Ex-Hostage Chooses Rebirth Over Revenge

- Liat Atzili is a high school teacher in Kiryat Gat, Israel, and an educator at Yad Vashem, Israel’s national Holocaust remembranc­e center. Send comments to intelligen­ce@nytimes.com.

In Israel, the Shoah, or Holocaust, has often been spoken of in recent years alongside tekumah, meaning rebirth, after the survivor generation chose to rebuild a nation rather than lose itself to grief and vengeance. Molded by that spirit, Israel became a refuge for Jews in danger the world over, and has healed its relationsh­ips with Germany and other nations that perpetrate­d or enabled the Holocaust.

I work at Israel’s national Holocaust remembranc­e center, Yad Vashem, where I teach Israeli 12th graders about the Shoah and prepare them for trips to Poland. As the last remaining members of the survivor generation have dwindled, my focus has been on how best to teach students about the Shoah when the eyewitness­es are gone.

While preserving the memory of the horrors and losses the Shoah wrought remains important both for young Israelis and for children around the world, the concept of tekumah is also a central component of Holocaust education. Tekumah provides us with the vital life lesson of how to move on with dignity and purpose after experienci­ng a tragedy, and it is perhaps the most important gift that the survivors gave us.

On October 7, the Jewish people suffered our greatest tragedy since the Holocaust. That tragedy came to my own home in Kibbutz Nir Oz, which was burned down as I was taken to Gaza as a hostage. Terrified, alone and unsure of the fate of my family, I kept myself going for nearly two months, promising myself I wouldn’t miss the graduation ceremony of the class I teach and imagining reuniting with my husband, Aviv, and our three children. I was released after 54 days. My children, thankfully, survived — one after terrifying hours in hiding, one by sheer luck of having been elsewhere that day, one who staved off the attackers by holding the door of a safe room closed. But my home of 30 years was burned beyond recognitio­n, and my husband was among the 1,200 killed. So immense was the destructio­n, terrorists had even killed my dog, Revi.

Now I am living in what is called a “temporary arrangemen­t” apartment in the southern city of Kiryat Gat. My children are of an age when they are leaving the nest, and I am experienci­ng that bitterswee­t rite of passage as a new widow, without a home.

Now is the time for the world to demand and secure the release of the remaining hostages in Gaza. I want to be reunited with my neighbors. Then will come the time for mourning.

Neither of these missions ends our work. Beyond the horizon of our pain, we must recommit ourselves to tekumah with the same determined optimism of the Holocaust survivor generation.

Without tekumah, we will only sink further into the cycle of mutual anger and victimhood that has plagued our relationsh­ip with the Palestinia­ns for too long. That is not the approach that the survivor generation chose, and in their spirit I do not seek revenge for what happened. I am humbled by how my fellow Israelis put their lives at risk to fight my kidnappers, but I do not feel any catharsis in seeing the destructio­n of Gaza. Instead, I want to focus on building a better future for my children — and for the children of Gaza.

After the Holocaust, a new generation rose up in Israel, focused not on the past but instead on making the future bloom. Tekumah for Israel after this war will mean rebuilding our national identity and moving past the divisive politics that marked the year leading up to October 7. Our adversarie­s may be dangerous, but no one has the power to destroy our country more than we do.

But for me tekumah is not only about Jewish lives, it is also about all those lives that shattered, including those of my non-Jewish neighbors, Israeli citizens, who have been caught up in the battles ever since. It also means working toward a rebirth for Gaza. While I cannot influence the Gazans’ choices, I hope those responsibl­e for launching this war are replaced with people who want a better future alongside Israel. Gazan citizens, too, deserve a rebirth, one that imagines a future not of combat but of shared existence.

One more arena in which tekumah is sorely needed is in the diaspora. Antisemiti­sm these days seems to seep into much of the public discourse around Judaism, Jewish people and Israel. I am not blind to my country’s failings, but it is deeply troubling how this conflict, which was started in the most violent way by Hamas, has contribute­d to a rise in violent antisemiti­c acts. Tekumah in the diaspora would allow for the full expression of Jewish life without fear, both in Israel and around the world.

If the young people among the decimated European Jewish population were able to face the future with optimism after the Holocaust, we, too, can find the strength to repair what has been broken.

Jews can learn from Holocaust survivors how to move on.

 ?? HALEY JIANG ??
HALEY JIANG

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