What was it like to celebrate Passover in Hamas captivity?

One of the hostages prepared a beautifully illustrated Haggadah in Hamas captivity. Hamas did not let her bring it back to Israel. 

By Rachel Avraham

As Jewish people around the world celebrate Passover, many are probably wondering how the 59 remaining hostages, of whom 24 are believed to be alive, in Gaza are celebrating Passover. Ahead of the Passover holiday, a number of media outlets in Israel started to interview recently released hostages in order to get a glimpse into how it was like to celebrate Passover in Hamas captivity. 

In an exclusive interview with the Kfar Chabad magazine’s Derech Emuna supplement, former hostage Agam Berger said, “Liri, who I was with for most of my time in captivity, decided to surprise me, and she prepared a sort of Haggadah with illustrations. She took pages from a notebook that was in the apartment we were held in in Gaza, and drew pictures of Pesach, mostly. She hid it from me so that it would be a surprise, and on the Seder night she gave it to me. I remember when I saw the Haggadah that she made, I really cried.”

Agam said throughout her time in Hamas captivity, she kept the Haggadah that was prepared, but she was not permitted to bring it home with her. According to Arutz Sheva, “We had a notebook. And from that, we prepared a Haggadah. In general, we would draw in the notebook and the terrorists would check every so often to see what we were drawing. They were afraid that we would write down all sorts of details of information that we knew, and so on. Liri [Albag] would draw more. There came a point when they would take interest in the drawings themselves.”

About the holiday itself, she said, “We tried to make the holiday as festive as possible. Liri took a bit of aluminum foil that there was in the house, and placed it on the table. We put napkins. We tried to make sure there was a bit more food than usual. In our house we eat kitniyot (legumes) on Passover, so we ate the rice.”

“After the meal, we went over the booklet that Liri prepared. We hardly had anything to make a blessing on,” she recounted. “I think we had just a bit of charoset, which we had managed to prepare from dates. I remember that we placed a chair for Elijah the Prophet at the side of the room. In general, it was a month in which there were a few more vegetables, so we made a salad, potatoes. Whatever we could.”

Agam added that her faith is what kept her strong in captivity: “I felt that G-d was watching over me. Think about a day like October 7. They were firing in my direction and I remained alive. Even before that, I believed, I would speak with G-d before that, but on a day like the day of the attack, it was so much more. I don’t know if you know, but when I was in the bomb shelter, the only thing I said was ‘Shema Yisrael.'”

“Later, in Gaza, I felt again that G-d is watching over me,” she related. “In the beginning, I thought that within a few days everything would be over and I would return home. I did not think then that it would last over a year. During that period, there were times when, naturally, our spirits fell. But that did not harm our faith that G-d is watching over us.”

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