Episode 49: Returning from captivity | With Yelena Trupanov, who was released from captivity

00:00 Speaker 1 Wow, I’m trying to record an introduction to the podcast with Yelena so you’ll have some idea of what you’re about to hear, and it’s so hard to put it into a few words. I never imagined I would come away from meeting Yelena with so much strength. Yelena is an incredible, captivating woman who came to Israel with her husband Vitaly as a young couple with a three-year-old child. They moved to a beautiful, pastoral kibbutz. She had no idea that twenty-three years later she would find herself in a tunnel in Gaza, surrounded by terrorists, not knowing what had happened to her son, her husband, or her mother. In the podcast, you’ll hear whom Yelena saved the piece of pita she was given each morning for, whom she met in the tunnel several weeks later, and how she was told she was going to be released from captivity. Yelena shares so many things, but above all, she gives so much strength and hope. She calls on all of us to increase the good we do and to unite, because that is our greatest strength against the enemy. Come listen, draw strength, and find out what I gave Yelena just before we finished recording the episode. And don’t forget to pray for her son, Alexander ben Yelena Leah, that he return soon, healthy and whole, to safe ground and to his family’s embrace. Did you listen? Did it strengthen you? Did it give you strength? Send the episode to friends and family members you love and want to strengthen. To follow the content of Shlichus as a Way of Life, send a message to 050-850-5770. On Instagram, search for Chani Moskowitz. First the intro, and then we’ll begin. How do we turn our lives into lives of shlichus, full of meaning? This is Chani Moskowitz. I was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, and now I continue my shlichus in Karmei Gat, Israel. On this podcast, we’ll meet different women who bring their shlichus into a variety of fields and, through it, help each of us find and refine our own shlichus in the world. Because living the lives we were created for is

02:01 Speaker 1 as good as it gets. Shlichus as a Way of Life. We’re starting right now. Welcome to another very special episode of the “Shlichus as a Way of Life” podcast, with a special woman I’m so excited to meet. Hello, Yelena.

02:19 Speaker 2 Hello.

02:20 Speaker 1 How are you? That’s a question...

02:22 Speaker 2 Yes, that’s a hard question. When people ask me—because everyone asks, right?—I try not to answer. I smile and move on. But if they really insist, then I answer according to how I’m doing that day. There are a few things I might say. I might say, “With Hashem’s help, it will be okay.” I might say, “Let’s skip that question.” And I might also say, “Terrible.” I just can’t say I’m okay.

02:50 Speaker 1 Of course.

02:50 Speaker 2 That’s it, yes.

02:51 Speaker 1 Nothing is okay.

02:52 Speaker 2 Nothing is.

02:54 Speaker 1 Yelena, will you let me take you on a plane to another country, to another time? Back to the Yelena of years ago, who was born in Russia.

03:04 Speaker 2 In Russia, right.

03:05 Speaker 1 In the city of Rostov.

03:06 Speaker 2 Right.

03:07 Speaker 1 Tell us a little about your childhood, because it really was another world. Russia, too, was a different world from what it is today...

03:15 Speaker 2 Yes, we came from Russia in 1999, so I don’t know today’s Russia as well. I understand the country has developed and advanced a great deal since then, and conditions have really improved. In 1999, things were very, very hard. But when I was born in 1973, it was the Soviet Union, not Russia. I was born in Rostov. My mother got divorced when I was very young. I don’t know my father, but we always lived with my grandparents and my mother. My grandfather also had two sisters who lived nearby, so I had lots of grandmothers and one grandfather. That’s it.

04:00 Speaker 1 What was it like to be a Jewish girl? Did you know you were Jewish as a child?

04:03 Speaker 2 Well, yes, first of all because all my documents always said “Jewish,” and we never hid it. It was on my birth certificate too. Both my father and my mother are Jewish, and later everyone’s passport said it. We never changed anything. My grandfather’s last name was Lizirovich, and my grandmother’s was Perlman. So it wasn’t... But no, I never felt there was anything unusual about it. In class, we also had this sort of journal—I don’t know what you call it. It was a book where they entered grades, and it had information—

04:41 Speaker 1 A class register.

04:43 Speaker 2 A class register, yes. It had information about everyone, including where their parents worked, and for some reason it also listed nationality. Next to my name it said “Jewish,” and it never bothered me. That was it. Only once—I still remember it—there was this boy I was arguing with, and he said, “And you’re Jewish anyway.” So I said, “And you’re Russian anyway,” and that ended the argument. That was it; I didn’t pay it any mind.

05:08 Speaker 1 In that case, you got off lightly, as they say.

05:10 Speaker 2 No, that’s just it. I never thought of it as a disadvantage or anything like that, and apart from that one particular incident—

05:18 Speaker 1 Yes.

05:18 Speaker 2 There was never any problem with it.

05:21 Speaker 1 Did you know as a child that your name was... Maybe we should mention that your name is also Leah, right?

05:25 Speaker 2 Right.

05:26 Speaker 1 That’s important for the prayers.

05:28 Speaker 2 Yes. My mother told me that my grandfather’s sisters—they were my grandfather’s sisters, not my grandmother’s—used to go to shul. They were born into a very religious family. My grandfather was born in 1905, before the revolution, so they were a religious family. But after the revolution everything changed, and my grandfather stopped going to shul. His sisters, though, continued. When I was born, my mother said that one of his sisters, Grandma Kona[?], went to shul and registered me there as Leah. That’s how—

06:08 Speaker 1 Wow.

06:09 Speaker 2 That’s how I know my name is Leah. My mother also has the name Rivka, probably given to her the same way.

06:15 Speaker 1 Wow.

06:16 Speaker 2 Through my grandfather’s sister, yes.

06:18 Speaker 1 So that’s been with you since you—

06:20 Speaker 2 Yes, my mother told me—

06:21 Speaker 1 as far back as you can remember.

06:22 Speaker 2 My mother told me, but I didn’t attach any special importance to it either.

06:25 Speaker 1 Yes.

06:25 Speaker 2 I knew I had that name, but... I was very far from religious life, let’s put it that way.

06:32 Speaker 1 Yes. What was it like to come to Israel?

06:35 Speaker 2 It was hard.

06:36 Speaker 1 Why did you decide to come? I’m curious.

06:38 Speaker 2 We were a young family—my husband Vitaly, our son Sasha, who was three years and eight months old, and me—and things were very, very hard in Russia. Vitaly worked two jobs, and there still wasn’t enough money. So we decided to come to Israel and see whether we could find a better life here. That’s how we came. We had no family here, no one. We came through the Jewish Agency’s “First Home in the Homeland” program, and that’s how we ended up on a kibbutz. We went straight to Kibbutz Nir Oz—

07:13 Speaker 1 They brought you to Nir Oz?

07:15 Speaker 2 Yes.

07:15 Speaker 1 Without knowing what it was...

07:17 Speaker 2 We didn’t know what a kibbutz was, where it was, anything. We asked whether it was far from the sea. So the woman at the Agency took a ruler and said, “No, it’s not far. It’s really close.” And yes, that was how it happened.

07:29 Speaker 1 Right. As the crow flies, it’s close, but...

07:31 Speaker 2 Exactly. But it wasn’t a problem for us. We came to Israel and settled on the kibbutz. We really liked the people; they welcomed us so warmly. We were honestly amazed at how warmly they welcomed us on the kibbutz. And that was it. We stayed on the kibbutz.

07:49 Speaker 1 What was it like learning Hebrew? Adjusting to a new country...?

07:52 Speaker 2 I started learning Hebrew in Russia, before we came, through the Agency. My husband didn’t. Sasha didn’t speak any Hebrew either. He started kindergarten and was lucky that there was a Russian-speaking caregiver there for a few months, a young woman who was there for a few months after her army service. That helped him a lot, and the children welcomed him warmly too. And that was it. My husband learned Hebrew—we went to ulpan, and he learned from scratch. He learned it well; he spoke it better than I did.

08:23 Speaker 1 You speak beautifully. Wow.

08:29 Speaker 2 So we’ve been in Nir Oz since 5759. We haven’t moved from there.

08:34 Speaker 1 Twenty and—

08:35 Speaker 2 No, 5759. Sorry, 5759.

08:37 Speaker 1 Yes, yes. Twenty-something years.

08:39 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, yes.

08:40 Speaker 1 What is life there like in general? Kibbutz life...

08:44 Speaker 2 What was life like on the kibbutz? Well, the first thing I asked when I arrived was whether the children slept in a communal children’s house. I said, “If they do, I’m not staying here for even one day.” They told me, “No, no, they don’t anymore.” So I stayed, because I wasn’t prepared to be separated from my son. And apart from that, they welcomed us so warmly. They helped us with everything, did everything for us. They gave us an adoptive family—truly wonderful people. None of them are alive anymore. Penina and Yoram and... They died before October 7. Their son and his wife were murdered on October 7, sadly. They were an incredible family who took us in just like another one of their children, and Sasha like another one of their grandchildren. They always said they had four grandchildren from their son, three from their daughter, and Sasha. Yes, they always counted him as—

09:50 Speaker 1 Wow.

09:50 Speaker 2 Their grandson. Yes, they really welcomed us with open arms, and in general, life was good for us. I started working in 2000 at a factory on the kibbutz, the Nirlat factory, and I still work there.

10:03 Speaker 1 What year did the trickle of attacks, as people call it, actually begin?

10:08 Speaker 2 The trickle of rockets. I remember Sasha was still in kindergarten, I think, when the first Qassam rockets came. The first war was when we didn’t have safe rooms at all yet. There were no safe rooms, nowhere to hide. A Red Alert would sound, and we’d sit and wait for the boom.

10:26 Speaker 1 Wow.

10:27 Speaker 2 They took all the children out of the kibbutz. It was winter, I remember. Late December. I don’t remember exactly which operation it was.

10:34 Speaker 1 Operation Cast Lead, probably.

10:35 Speaker 2 Could be. They took all the children to Kibbutz Revivim, and I refused to be separated from Sasha again. I knew he would stay with us on the kibbutz, and he was the only child in his class who stayed on the kibbutz—

10:49 Speaker 1 Wow.

10:49 Speaker 2 In those days, yes. He was with us. We slept in the wind room, because it had a concrete roof, so it was sort of safer. And that was it. In fact, through all the wars, my husband and I always stayed on the kibbutz, because we had a dog and lots of cats. Whenever people evacuated during the operations, they would leave their dogs and cats with Vitaly to look after. So yes, we took care of all the animals.

11:20 Speaker 1 And he would look after all the—

11:20 Speaker 2 We never—yes, we never left because of the animals.

11:24 Speaker 1 Wow, that’s moving. You know, there’s the mitzvah of preventing suffering to animals, of caring for them, and here you can really see it—

11:34 Speaker 2 Yes.

11:34 Speaker 1 Not even leaving them alone—

11:36 Speaker 2 No, no, we didn’t leave them. We didn’t. So now all the cats are my responsibility, both the kibbutz cats and the factory cats, because Vitaly looked after the cats on the kibbutz and I looked after the ones at the factory. That’s how it is. I drive to Nir Oz twice a week now to feed them.

11:54 Speaker 1 Wow.

11:54 Speaker 2 And there are a lot of good people who help me.

11:57 Speaker 1 Wow, that’s wonderful. And with the security situation going on all the time, did it just become a constant? Did it feel like, well, we live near Gaza, and this is the situation, this is how it is?

12:07 Speaker 2 Yes.

12:07 Speaker 1 You didn’t think of leaving.

12:08 Speaker 2 No, nothing like that. We never thought about it. We didn’t get too worked up, either. I don’t know. We always trusted our army. We always trusted that they knew how to protect us, and we didn’t get worked up. We weren’t shaken by Qassam rockets, missiles, any of it. And after they built us safe rooms, we felt completely safe.

12:30 Speaker 1 Wow. And then October 7 came. Before that, was there any feeling that something was about to happen?

12:37 Speaker 2 Not at all. Not at all. As I said, we trusted the country and the army. No, I didn’t feel that anything like that could happen. I don’t think anyone thought something like that could happen. So, yes, October 7.

12:53 Speaker 1 Simchas Torah arrived.

12:55 Speaker 2 Right. And my mother had moved to Israel just two years before it happened.

13:00 Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

13:02 Speaker 2 And—

13:02 Speaker 1 I wanted to ask you when your mother joined you.

13:05 Speaker 2 She moved to Israel about two years before October 7, two and a half years or so. She also rented a house on the kibbutz and lived there near me, because I’m her only daughter. And by then Sasha was living in Ramat Gan. He’d finished his studies and started working, and he came with his partner to visit us. So my whole family happened to be on the kibbutz on October 7, because we’re a very, very small family. Then October 7 came. Sasha was with Sapir, his partner, in a room right opposite our windows, very close by, and they didn’t have a safe room. There’s no safe room there. When the shelling and nonstop Red Alerts started, they didn’t even have half a minute to run to our safe room. So they stayed in their room and hid under the bed, as Sapir told me afterward. And after the shelling, we got a message that terrorists were on the kibbutz. We could hear the crowd moving around the kibbutz and the gunfire, and we were sure they were simply going from house to house, killing everyone. That’s what it sounded like they were doing, because they really didn’t skip a single house on our kibbutz. We’re a small kibbutz, and they had hours and hours and hours, and there were so many people. So yes, they had plenty of time to move around the kibbutz. At some point I got a message from my son saying they were breaking down his door. My husband Vitaly, may his memory be a blessing, and I came out of the safe room, and through the window we saw about ten men, maybe more, with guns breaking down the door and going inside. I was sure they had killed them, and I stopped looking. Then my mother called. I told her, “Mom, they’ve killed Sasha.” She told me, “They’re breaking down my door.” So I said, “Bye,” and she said, “Bye,” and I hung up. That was it. I mean, what could I do?

15:17 Speaker 2 After a little while, a few minutes, they came to us too. They saw the car keys and told Vitaly they wanted his car. Some of them went out with him through the door toward where the car was parked, and I never saw him again. I don’t know what happened to him. And they took me to Gaza. We left the house, left the kibbutz, sat down by the fence outside the kibbutz, and started waiting for a ride. Cars went by, and a tractor with a trailer, and all kinds of motorcycles, and everything was packed with people, all kinds of equipment, televisions, suitcases, all of that. There was simply no room for me. Eventually, after everyone had passed, the two young men with me realized they hadn’t managed to get a ride and there were no more coming, so we walked.

16:11 Speaker 1 Just, uh, a walk.

16:14 Speaker 2 Yes.

16:14 Speaker 1 And at that point, you had no idea what had happened to your mother, to Sapir, to Sasha?

16:19 Speaker 2 Or to Vitaly. Nothing. I knew nothing.

16:22 Speaker 1 And you were alone, just you and them.

16:24 Speaker 2 Me and two Hamas terrorists, yes. That’s how we got to Gaza, on foot.

16:28 Speaker 1 What was going through your mind? Or at a moment like that, is it impossible to—

16:31 Speaker 2 First of all, the moment they went into Sasha’s room and I thought that was the end of it, I stopped feeling anything at all. What was going through my mind? I thought I’d probably die there, and that would be it. There was a moment... A helicopter was above us the whole time, and at one point they lay down under the wheels of a caravan out in the fields. By the way, it’s still there. We went back there recently for filming, and the caravan is still there, and so is what’s left of the car, which I’m about to tell you about. So we lay down under that caravan, and suddenly we heard a car engine behind us. One of the men with me tried to stop the car so they would take us, and suddenly a missile came from the helicopter and the car exploded. All the shrapnel went over us. So both the caravan and the remains of the car are still there in the fields. And we thought... But no, nothing happened to us. G-d really protected me. And that’s how we reached Gaza.

17:43 Speaker 1 You simply entered Gaza and realized that...

17:47 Speaker 2 Yes.

17:47 Speaker 1 Did you understand the situation—that you were a captive?

17:50 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, yes, of course. I also saw several other people being taken to Gaza, and I understood I wasn’t the only one. A tractor with a trailer went by carrying people from the kibbutz. Yes, I understood I wasn’t the only one.

18:04 Speaker 1 Wow. And when you got there—

18:06 Speaker 2 So they took me to... first of all, a tunnel. And in the tunnel, after taking me around here and there a bit, they brought me to a room. There I saw some of the people from Nir Oz they had taken. Not all of them, but some. Then they gave us about a quarter of a pita each, I don’t know. I had no appetite. And after that they took us to another tunnel. We were there for two days with some of the longtime residents of Nir Oz. Some of them were only recently confirmed to be no longer alive—a few weeks ago, two or three weeks ago. That’s where I met Danielle Aloni and her daughter Emilia, who was five and a half. After those two days, they took me, Danielle, another Thai woman and a seventeen-year-old boy to an apartment. We were in that apartment for about two weeks. Danielle and I really connected; we became friends. From then on, they moved us—me, Danielle and Emilia—as a unit through various groups, but we were always together. That was our good fortune.

19:16 Speaker 1 That must have been very... something to hold on to, a little.

19:18 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. So we were in that apartment for two weeks, and then, when the heavy bombing started, they took us down into the tunnels. At exactly the same time, they also brought down the group Sapir was with—she’s my son’s girlfriend. I saw her there for one night, and I was so glad to see she was alive. She told me the last thing she’d seen was Sasha running away. They’d taken her on a motorcycle, and out of the corner of her eye she saw Sasha running away. She heard shots fired in his direction, and we didn’t know what had happened to him. We now know he was wounded in both legs, but we didn’t know that then. So after that night, they took her back toward her group, to one place, and took us somewhere else. In the final week before my release, they moved me into her group again, so Sapir and I were together for that last week. That’s it.

20:25 Speaker 1 Being in a tunnel is just... You’re telling the story, but do you feel it’s real? Can you take in that it happened, that you were there?

20:34 Speaker 2 It was strange, because we’d heard about tunnels and tunnels, and suddenly I was in one. But this whole story is so strange and surreal that I’d already—

20:40 Speaker 1 Yes.

20:41 Speaker 2 Stopped reacting to it. First of all, again, ever since they came in and got Sasha, I’d stopped feeling anything at all. So I wasn’t shaken by it or anything. And yes, it was safer, because the bombing was really, really close.

20:57 Speaker 1 You could hear the whole war, basically.

20:59 Speaker 2 The ground forces hadn’t entered Khan Younis yet, where we were. They’d entered the north, they told us. But there were airstrikes, really, really close, so it was safer in the tunnels. We actually preferred to be in a tunnel. But in a tunnel, everything is damp and moldy, and there were also many days without electricity. So we sat there with these very, very small emergency lights, in semi-darkness, with a five-and-a-half-year-old girl.

21:33 Speaker 1 A sweet little girl.

21:34 Speaker 2 Yes, she’s really, really sweet. She’s a ray of sunshine, truly.

21:37 Speaker 1 What did she do?

21:38 Speaker 2 Let’s say—

21:38 Speaker 1 What do you do there at all, all day? Talk?

21:41 Speaker 2 Talk. First of all, we talked a great deal, because most of the time it was me, Danielle, Emilia and the three Thai people. The Thai people spoke Thai among themselves. They barely spoke English, and certainly not Hebrew. So they were their own group, and we were our own group. And Emilia, yes, she was sweet. She learned a little Thai, a little Arabic. She talked to them and talked to us, played with us and drew. They gave her a ball, so she played with the ball. We kept her busy a lot.

22:15 Speaker 1 I think when there’s a child there, it helps the adults a little to be around her. It...

22:23 Speaker 2 Yes, on the one hand it gives you something to do. On the other hand, it was a tremendous worry for her mother, because often there wasn’t enough food, and she’s a child who likes to eat. Now, she’s five and a half. Even when there was food, we’d tell her, “Eat, eat,” and at that moment she wouldn’t want to. The food didn’t look good to her, she didn’t like it, she didn’t feel like eating. Then suddenly, half an hour later: “I’m hungry.” And there was no food left. She’d cry, “Mommy, I’m starving.” Those were her words: “I’m starving.” For a mother to hear that is devastating. So Danielle and I always tried to put some food aside. The Thai woman did too. We preferred to eat less, or not eat at all, and save it for Emilia so there would be something if she woke up hungry. But she didn’t always want what we’d saved either. By then it was cold and didn’t taste good, and this and that... She was a child, you know.

23:19 Speaker 1 Yes.

23:20 Speaker 2 What can you do?

23:20 Speaker 1 A child is a child. It doesn’t matter that she’s been taken into a tunnel; she still needs her—

23:24 Speaker 2 Of course, of course. She couldn’t really grasp the situation. We’d say to her, “Listen, we don’t have...” Her mother would tell her, “I can’t make you whatever you want like I do at home.”

23:33 Speaker 1 How did you explain what was happening to her when you yourselves didn’t really understand?

23:38 Speaker 2 She understood what was happening. She’s a very smart child, very, very, very smart. She understood exactly what was happening. So yes, she managed—barely; it was hard—but she managed there, and she ate what there was. Sometimes it was a plain pita, then another pita, then another pita, but...

24:00 Speaker 1 You probably can’t stand the sight of pita today.

24:03 Speaker 2 Yes.

24:04 Speaker 1 Tell me, during that whole time, did you hear anything about what was happening in Israel, about the situation?

24:12 Speaker 2 At first, they were listening to Arabic radio all the time, and we didn’t understand a thing. We asked them what was going on, and every so often they told us. We had no idea whether it was true. But looking back, most of what they said turned out to be true. They told us there were 250 hostages, that many people had been killed, and that ground forces had entered the north. They told us a lot of nonsense too.

24:39 Speaker 1 W-what language did they speak with you?

24:41 Speaker 2 They spoke Arabic. Our guards spoke only Arabic, but we picked up a word here and there, and used a lot of body language, so we more or less understood one another. And when I was with Sapir in that last week, after the releases had begun, they would sometimes let us watch television. It was in Arabic too, Al Jazeera, but we saw the rallies in the square, and we saw the exchanges. They let us watch the exchanges. That’s it.

25:17 Speaker 1 So you actually saw other people being released?

25:20 Speaker 2 Yes. Yes, absolutely. We saw Danielle being released. At some point they brought David Cunio to us, a few days before his family was released. He was desperately waiting to see it happen, and he asked them to call him over when the exchanges were on. He was very worried and wanted to see that they were all right.

25:38 Speaker 1 And he saw them come out?

25:40 Speaker 2 He saw them come out, and that calmed him a little, because he’d been terribly anxious. Yes. So we saw that.

25:47 Speaker 1 And did that give you some kind of hope, or...?

25:50 Speaker 2 Look, what does “hope” mean? They told us that these people were being released now, then the older men would start coming out—the elderly were supposed to come out—and then the rest of the men by age, with the young ones last. So Sapir, supposedly, was meant to be released at the end. She was a young woman. And I always said I wanted to be released together with her. I didn’t want to be released alone, because I didn’t know what was waiting for me here. So I really wasn’t in a hurry to be released, let’s put it that way. I would have preferred to stay there and not know. I kept saying I wanted to be released with Sapir. Then one day they told me I was being released. But that morning they came and told Sahar Kalderon and Erez—it was the day they were released—“You and you, yes. You, in another day or two, three at most.” Honestly, I felt relieved. I thought, good, I’m not being released after all.

26:56 Speaker 1 Wow.

26:57 Speaker 2 Yes. But about two days later they came and told me I was being released, and I really was. The next day Sapir was released, completely unexpectedly. They came to her ten minutes beforehand and said, “You’re going home.” She couldn’t believe it either, but she was released. And I’m so fortunate that she’s here with me and supports me. I truly don’t know what I would have done without her.

27:24 Speaker 1 At what point do you see your mother?

27:27 Speaker 2 I met my mother in the car on the way to the Red Cross. When I came out, they put me in a car and drove toward Rafah. Then, at some point, the car stopped and they brought my mother in, and that’s how I saw her. A few days earlier, they had brought David Cunio to us, and he told me he had been with my mother and she was okay. So I knew she was a hostage and that she was okay, but my mother knew nothing about me. When they put her in the car, that was the first time she saw me, and that’s how she found out I was alive and everything.

28:04 Speaker 1 Wow.

28:04 Speaker 2 She was very emotional. Yes, and when we got to Israel, I started asking about Vitaly and Sasha. At some point they told me Sasha was being held hostage in Gaza and Vitaly had been murdered. That’s it.

28:19 Speaker 1 What is it like to suddenly come out of there? It’s like, as you said, part of you would have preferred to stay there.

28:25 Speaker 2 Yes, that’s right.

28:26 Speaker 1 Did you feel that after you were released, too? That maybe it would have been better if you’d stayed there, or...

28:32 Speaker 2 Sometimes, yes. There are days when I feel that way. Especially on days when I’m here, but there’s nothing I can do to free Sasha. I try to do everything I can, but I’m not succeeding. So I say to myself, what exactly am I here for? Maybe it would have been better to be there. There, you’re a captive and you really can’t do anything. Here, you’re not a captive, but you still can’t do anything. So what’s the point?

29:01 Speaker 1 Even though it looks like you’re doing everything, everything you can.

29:04 Speaker 2 When you look at the results, you see it isn’t helping. So apparently it’s not everything. What matters is the result.

29:13 Speaker 1 What keeps you going?

29:15 Speaker 2 First of all, Sapir’s support. There are days that are very, very hard for me, and she supports me and tries to stay optimistic, and that helps me a lot. Also, the support of other people, and my faith in Hakadosh Boruch Hu. I’ve grown much closer to Him since my release. Sapir and I decided to keep Shabbos, and we keep kosher. And we pray and believe—yes, we believe with all our hearts—that it helps.

29:47 Speaker 1 How did that happen, דווקא after... after everything?

29:51 Speaker 2 Well, Sapir has her story with her Tehillim, which a lot of people know. After everything that happened with her Tehillim, her faith grew stronger. And I also saw all kinds of things that are very hard to explain as coincidences. So when we came back, we decided to keep Shabbos, and... that’s it. It helps very, very much.

30:22 Speaker 1 That isn’t simple. To suddenly start... I think—I don’t know, because I’ve done it for as long as I can remember.

30:30 Speaker 2 Yes, listen, no, it’s really—

30:32 Speaker 1 To suddenly turn off your phone for twenty-four hours.

30:34 Speaker 2 That’s really nothing, it’s—

30:36 Speaker 1 Everything’s easy for you, listen.

30:38 Speaker 2 No, I don’t know. Everyone tells me it’s hard, but none of it is hard at all. But, yes.

30:44 Speaker 1 It strengthens you? You feel that it...

30:46 Speaker 2 I do feel that, and I feel that it helps. So do the prayers of all the people praying for Sasha. I believe very, very strongly that it helps, and that he feels it there, just as Sapir felt it when her parents prayed and held challah-separating gatherings in her merit. They did so much, and she felt it there, and it gave her strength. My mother prayed too. In Rostov, she started going—when she reached an age of understanding, she started going to synagogue after we immigrated to Israel. She really connected with the community there. And yes, she keeps Shabbos, she keeps kosher, everything. So my mother prayed too, and I believe that’s what helped me, and Sasha as well. So we keep praying and really, really hope that...

31:44 Speaker 1 That we’ll finally see his salvation.

31:46 Speaker 2 With Hashem’s help, with Hashem’s help.

31:47 Speaker 1 We believe and are certain that it helps, but we want to see it already. We want to see it.

31:51 Speaker 2 Absolutely. Yes, absolutely.

31:53 Speaker 1 What would you like to say, Yelena, to everyone listening? Yesterday I asked what they would like to ask Yelena. A lot of women said, “Give her a hug from us,” and a lot said, “Tell her we’re praying and saying Tehillim,” and many other very special things. And a lot of women asked, “What can we do? What does she want us to do? We want to help, we want to support her, we want to be part of it.” After all, the entire Jewish people are one soul and one body. Is there something you’d like to tell them? Yes. First of all, keep praying. My son’s name is Alexander Sasha ben Elena Leah. Or, more simply, Alexander ben Leah. Right. That works too. Yes. And his chapter of Tehillim is chapter 29, because he’s twenty-eight. It’s important to keep praying. And maybe each person could take on one small thing to do in Sasha’s merit and in the merit of all the hostages. To improve in some way—perhaps give some tzedakah, perhaps do a good deed. I believe that will help too. And that’s it. It’s also worth remembering not to get upset over the little troubles, the everyday troubles, and to be thankful for what we have. Oh, so much. Yes, yes. And... perspective. Exactly. Exactly. Don’t get upset over the little things, and always thank Hashem for everything we have. That’s it. Wow. I want to add that sometimes people think, “What can I do?” And they think and think and think, and end up doing nothing, because they think it only counts if they start an organization or volunteer for half the week. But it really is what you said: every little thing. Right. Chassidus even teaches that when I push myself to overcome something—even in a small way—when it’s hard for me to pray,

34:02 Speaker 1 I pray. When it’s hard for me to treat my children kindly right now, I’ll be a good mother for the next half hour. Those little things—Hakadosh Boruch Hu sees them. We want Hakadosh Boruch Hu to give us something beyond the ordinary, so we have to go beyond the ordinary too. I also want to say that after we came back, we saw the beautiful side of our people. People actually stop us in the street and hug us and say, “Our hearts are with you.” Everyone is praying and trying to help. Really, everyone. It doesn’t matter whether they’re religious or secular, right-wing or left-wing—it really doesn’t matter. The fact that our government and the media are trying to divide us—that’s on their conscience. But the people want unity, and I see it. You feel it. I feel it. Everyone hugs us, everyone is on our side, and unity is very, very important. It’s much more important than dismantling Hamas and everything else, because dismantling Hamas won’t help here. If there’s no Hamas, there’ll be something worse. If there’s no Sinwar, someone else will rise up. What will protect us from all our enemies, from the north and the south, on every front, is unity. When we’re united, no one will attack us. When we’re divided, it won’t matter what we do, how we fight or for how many years. It won’t help. Wow. It won’t help. So true, and chilling. Yelena, one more little thing. My father heard I was coming to see you, and he said, “I want to give you something to give Yelena.” He has some coins he received from the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Oh, thank you. And he doesn’t part with them easily, you should know. But he said, “I have to give her one.” So this is for you. Wow. There’s a coin here from the Rebbe’s hand. Wow, thank you, thank you. And I already know you have a— How moving. A dollar, so

35:56 Speaker 1 That already adds to your... Wow, wow, wow, that’s moving, so moving. Thank you. With Hashem’s help, my Sasha will come back, and I’ll pass this on to him. Amen, amen. He’ll come out and he won’t believe it—all that you did, all that you accomplished, going here and going there, praying and asking. And with Hashem’s help, may he too grow closer to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. I believe he will, and I’ll try—I’m trying with all my strength to bring him closer. And I also believe that being there is bringing him closer, bringing him closer, and that he doesn’t feel alone—that Hakadosh Boruch Hu is with him and accompanies him. Yes, yes. And that’s it. And may I be blessed with grandsons and granddaughters, with Hashem’s help. Amen, amen, amen. You’ll be—I think you’ll be the grandmother with the most stories to tell her grandchildren. You’re all set. Yes. There’s nothing more than that. Not just a grandmother, yes. Wow. We’re four generations in captivity, no less. Really, really, really. Because my great-grandmother too—my grandmother’s mother, my mother’s mother—was held captive by the Nazis during the war. Wow. So yes, that’s a story in itself. That’s it. May it s—stop with this generation, so it won’t... That’s it. Enough, enough, enough. Yelena, I want to thank you and send you so much strength. I need another hug in a moment, too. And... I want to say the name again: Alexander ben Leah. There, we’ve made it easy. Alexander ben Leah. Just remember it, you know? Remember it. We often do good deeds along the way, because, boruch Hashem, we’re Jews and that’s part of our day. So say the name, remember the name, say another verse, another chapter of Tehillim. Let it be in our hearts, in our hearts all the time. And with Hashem’s help, even before we finish speaking, may we hear good news. Amen, amen, amen. And a complete Geulah for all the hostages, for all the soldiers, and for all

37:40 Speaker 1 the Jewish people, because that’s it—it’s time. Thank you so, so much, Yelena. Thank you.