‘Keeping Shabbat strengthened us in captivity,’ say former hostages

Shabbat observance became a powerful source of comfort for two Israeli hostages held by Hamas.

By World Israel News Staff

Two former hostages held by Hamas for two years said that observing Shabbat — the Jewish day of rest, when adherents refrain from work from Friday sundown until Saturday night — became a source of strength and stability during their captivity.

Matan Angrest, who was kidnapped from his tank on the Gaza border and was the sole survivor of his crew after three comrades were murdered in the Oct. 7 terror onslaught, grew up in a secular home where his family did not observe Shabbat.

Yet during his ordeal, he said, he unexpectedly found comfort and purpose in basic Jewish practices.

Speaking at an event hosted by the Jewish Connection organization in Jerusalem, Angrest recalled that Hamas terrorists gave him a siddur, a Jewish prayer book. He soon began using it regularly.

One day, he realized that “if he was praying three times a day,” he might as well observe Shabbat too, seeing the two practices as intertwined.

“I said to myself: Well, what’s the point of praying if I’m not also going to keep Shabbat?” Angrest said, according to Ynet. He described saving food on Fridays so he would have something to eat during Havdala, the ceremony marking the end of Shabbat.

Strictly keeping the Sabbath, he said, “really strengthened me. When you keep Shabbat and connect to Judaism, it gives you reassurance that you’re in the right place and doing the right thing.”

Segev Kalfon, who was abducted from the Nova Music Festival, echoed Angrest’s sentiments. “For us, keeping Shabbat was huge,” he said. “We were in an awful place…but we sang. We kept the spirit” of the Sabbath, Ynet reported him as saying.

Kalfon said he and other hostages often reminisced about the Shabbat meals their mothers had prepared each week as they ate the meager rations— such as half a pita with cheese — that their captors provided.

Despite the harsh conditions, he said keeping Shabbat gave the group a sense of purpose and connection to something beyond their suffering.

“I really felt like God was with us,” Kalfon said. “We never forgot where we came from.”