We made a Passover seder in captivity, gained respect of Muslim guards, says former hostage

IDF observer Liri Albag surprised her fellow abductee Agam Berger with a home-made Haggadah, bringing her to tears.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The IDF observers kidnapped by Hamas in the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7, 2023, celebrated an emotional seder in captivity, former hostage Agam Berger told a Hasidic publication Wednesday.

“Before Passover, we were disappointed because we thought that maybe by the holiday we would be back home,” Agam Berger told the Kfar Chabad paper. “When we realized that we wouldn’t be back for the holiday, Liri Albag and I tried to make the holiday as festive as possible.”

Albag, also a former hostage, astounded her friend with a special holiday gift, Berger said. “Liri, with whom I was with most of the captivity, decided to surprise me and prepared a kind of Haggadah with drawings. She took pages from a notebook that was in the apartment where we were held in Gaza and drew mainly Passover drawings.”

“She hid it from me so that it would be a surprise, and on Seder night, she brought it to me. I remember that when I saw the Haggadah she prepared, I actually cried,” she added.

They tried to set their table festively for the seder, during which the Haggadah’s story of the Jewish Exodus from Egypt is told, putting out napkins and some tin foil to brighten the table, Albag explained. Of course, the traditional symbolic foods were mostly missing, and they made do with having just a few dates in place of the charoset, a mixture made to resemble the bricks the Jewish slaves used in building cities for Pharaoh.

“Then we went through the booklet that Liri prepared,” she said.

Regarding the festive meal that is eaten toward the end of the seder, they had a little bit of rice. “We made a salad, potatoes – whatever was possible.”

“I also remember that we put a chair on the side for the Prophet Elijah,” she added, referring to the belief that Elijah momentarily visits every Jewish seder.

Berger has previously shared that she observed as many Torah commandments as possible under the circumstances, which, she believes, had gained her the respect of her fanatical Muslim captors.

When asked how they knew it was Passover, she answered, “We asked them to tell us” whenever there were Jewish holidays.

During the first Chanukah of their captivity, when they were being kept underground, she recalled, “They brought us a round candle, and we lit it. It lasted a long time; maybe because of the oxygen in the tunnel, it lasted longer than it usually does.”

The following year, “They brought us an electric candle one day, and we used that.”

When asked why she thought the terrorists were willing to help them celebrate to some extent, she replied, “We begged. We told them that it was an important holiday, one of miracles.”

“They also wanted to finish with guarding us; they themselves didn’t think that [the captivity] would last for such a long time,” she said.

Berger and her fellow observers were freed after almost 500 days in a ceasefire deal earlier this year that saw 33 Israeli hostages exchanged for nearly 2,000 Palestinian security prisoners and thousands of tons of humanitarian aid.

In general, while in Gaza, Berger told her interviewer, she and the others felt that God was protecting them.

“During this period, there were a couple of times when, naturally, our spirits fell. But this did not undermine our faith, that God is caring for us,” she said.