In the days following the horrific attack on Israel in the early hours of Oct. 7, when 1,200 people were brutally murdered by Hamas and more than 230 individuals were taken hostage from their homes and from the Nova Music Festival, we felt helpless. Posters were hung with the names and faces of those who were stolen, only to be torn down. A ground invasion of Gaza was getting underway and protests began. There was so much noise, which made the silence about the hostages deafening.
A few weeks after Oct. 7, I walked into our weekly staff meeting with an idea inspired by the long Shabbat table set just outside of the Tel Aviv Art Museum, a stark reminder that our own tables were not complete. That brisk afternoon, our staff placed 248 chairs at the corner of Vernon and Greenwood, outside Am Shalom synagogue, to keep the hostages front and center. We set the chairs up in rows and affixed a hostage poster to each one. In the process, we created a temporary outdoor sanctuary nearly the same size as the one inside the synagogue.
The white chairs have become our community. A family drove by the very first day and offered to put a stuffed animal on each chair, like the stuffed animals that filled the fountain area on Dizengoff Square in Tel Aviv in the early days of the war. People from the community gathered. It became a sacred spot.
For a few days last November, with relief and joy, we tied blue and white ribbons around almost 100 chairs and moved them to the front, representing the released hostages. Too many others, those confirmed dead or murdered while in captivity, were brought to the flagpole. The remaining 133 chairs continue on as a community, filled with our prayers and our hopes.
‘They are not forgotten’
Fall turned to winter and now spring and the chairs are still there, day in and day out. Grass grows wildly underneath the legs. The bitter cold and the rain have warped the wood and made the cushions soggy. Still, we continue to witness some truly amazing moments. Nearly every day, neighborhood children and families stop by to pick up the stuffed animals that fell off the chairs overnight. They watch over the area, making sure it remains clean. Strangers stop by to take pictures and to walk among the chairs to read the names. I’ve met Israelis who stood there in tears, taking photos to text back to their family members. Local pastors come to offer prayers. Government officials take pictures.
Last week, I met a new mom who was walking through to pick out a Hebrew name for her new baby, wanting to name her after one of the hostages. Early in the morning after the video of hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin was released, I found a Chicago Bulls hat on Hersh’s chair that simply said ‘SURVIVE WE LOVE YOU.’
On all three of our congregational missions to Israel since Oct. 7, we have been able to show individual hostage families, who think that the world has forgotten about their loved ones, that we in Chicago are still praying, and hoping and working for their release. They are not forgotten. These are not just chairs with pictures and posters. They are Shani’s cousin Yagev Buchshtav; Itzik’s two sons, Aitan and Iair Horn; Liora’s daughter Noa Argamani; Aviva Siegel, who was a hostage herself, and her husband Keith Siegel; and so many more real people with real stories.
They are not political pawns. They are human beings who must be reunited with their families.
We know that we can never use these chairs again. They don’t belong to us anymore. They belong to the community. These chairs, and this area where they sit, belong to the hostages. Through the chaos of the last 209 days it can be easy to forget that their lives hang in the balance and their families are living in a perpetual state of anguish.
Time is running out for all of them. Our 248 chairs will stay up as long as they have to. It is our way to say to the world: We haven’t forgotten you. We never will.
Rabbi Steven Stark Lowenstein is the Senior Rabbi of Am Shalom Congregation in Glencoe.
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