Home From Captivity: Musings on the Return of Gilad Shalit
By Avraham Berkowitz
Oct 18, 2011
From my home in Brooklyn throughout the morning, I closely followed the minute by minute accounts of the return of Gilad Shalit. At 4:30 a.m., the Egyptian television image of the gaunt 25-year-old Israeli soldier, who just moments before had been released by his Hamas captors and crossed the Gazan border a free man, flashed on my computer screen. What an extraordinary feeling of joy to see this young, frail and innocent man alive and well!
After five years of imprisonment in a cellar of hell guarded by terrorists, refused even a humanitarian visit from the Red Cross, Gilad is now home with Noam and Aviva Shalit, the father and mother who for years, camped out in front of the Prime Minister’s Office to draw attention to their son’s plea.
Since the Shalits erected their tent off of, interestingly enough, Gaza Street, I visited them during a few trips to Jerusalem. They were the most dedicated parents one could ever meet; after looking at the pain in their eyes, it was impossible to forget young Gilad during daily prayers.
Thousands of us, joined by those who never knew the family, have dedicated good deeds in Gilad’s merit, yearning for the day that he would one day know freedom.
My nine-year-old daughter Moussie, who was moved by her own visit with the Shalits, decided to write a letter to Gilad a few days before Rosh Hashanah this year. A school project had students extend High Holiday greetings to people they cared about, and she couldn’t think of anyone more appropriate than this man she never met.
‘My wish for the New Year is for you to finally get back to your parents and family who love you and miss you so dearly,’ she wrote, signing her letter ‘A Caring Girl’ and fully aware that Gilad might never see it. ‘All of Israel, all the Jewish people in the world, and, I am sure, all good and kindhearted people on earth join me in this wish.’
Last week, during a family trip to my brother’s Chabad House in Alabama, we learned that Gilad would soon be home.
Words cannot describe our elation upon seeing the headlines.