My newsletter is named after a traditional Jewish blessing upon encountering the majesty of a large body of water: “Blessed are you, our eternal G-d, Ruler of the Universe, who made the great sea.” BTS is a free, monthly publication which shares Jewish and non-Jewish approaches to mindful, contemplative living. Some come from from spiritual teachings from the past and the present; others from my Zen practice and Jewish faith. Included here are also some of my own news as well. BTS is a conversation, and I enjoy hearing from and responding to the readers.
“Nothing simply happens to us – we manage whatever situation we find ourselves in. Even after my freedom was taken away, there remained a sphere of choice during captivity: how to respond to situations, how to engage with my captors, how to work together with fellow hostages. These are all situations that demand management.“
— Eli Sharabi interviewed in Ha-Mizrahi, Fall 2025
Earlier this month, I attended a deeply moving talk. Speaking to an audience of 600 in Palos Verdes, California, Eli Sharabi, a hostage who endured 491 days in Hamas captivity, recounted his abduction, separation from his wife and daughters, and his subsequent life in Gaza tunnels – chained, starved, and deprived of news from the outside, yet trying to have something to live for every day.
What was there to live for? How does one make it through the day in such an extreme situation?
The biggest takeaway from his captivity, said Sharabi, was a deeper appreciation for non-material things: family and friends, the freedom to see the sunlight, go for a walk, or be able to take a shower, and last, but not the least, the connection to the All-Merciful Source.
“We all looked forward to Friday nights. I would recite Eshet Chayil (“Woman of Valor”) – saying it for my mother, my sisters, my wife – and I would become emotional. We would make kiddush (blessing over wine) over water because what else could we do? We saved a quarter of a pita to make a blessing over bread. . . These moments connected us to our memories and gave us tremendous hope. Sometimes spiritual strength was worth more than a meal.”
(E.S. in Ha-Mizrachi)
Rooted in these practices, Eli Sharabi felt the Divine Providence carrying him through those darkest of times. He faced even harder challenges after his release: he learned that his wife and daughters had not survived. Again, he needed G-d’s help again to go on.
“When we live in His world, there is hope in the face of despair; light in the face of darkness,” commented Rabbi Doron Perez on Eli Sharabi’s experience in the same issue of the magazine. “That somehow, even if we don’t understand, everything is for the best. When we are broken, we are whole, and when we are fractured, we are complete. Even when things are so not okay, they are okay.”
(Left: Beit Guvrin Caves, Israel © Lane Igoudin, 2019)
Relating it to his own experience – Rav Perez’s son Daniel disappeared on October 7 battling Hamas, and for almost 6 months, the Perez family did not know whether he was alive, captured, or dead – he wrote:
“I realized very quickly that if I am unable to be intentional and proactive about my thoughts, they will get the better of me, paralyze and destroy me. . . We have free choice to dig deep within ourselves and . . . choose our attitude, response, and course of action. To try, despite the pain, to choose a path of hope and healing, light and life.”
As this long and trying year is reaching its end, I feel that we are beginning to surge towards the light. Listening to Eli Sharabi, barely five days after the Bondi Beach massacre, I realized is that the light we want to live in is the light we need to project.
As this long and trying year is reaching its end, I feel that we are finally beginning to come out of darkness. By the end of Hanukkah, by the time all candles are lit, we had accumulated a lot of inner light. In the depth of winter, we kept it, and now is the time to share it. There is enough of it to last the whole year.
Suffering can bring on despair or activate inner strength, spark the inner light. The choice is ours. It always is. May your light fill the whole year!
–Lane
Lane Igoudin | Author, Professor, Dad 