What a Hostage’s Mother Taught Me About Staying Human |
There is a precise, suffocating fog that settles over a home when waiting becomes a full-time job. It isn’t just the terror of what might happen. It’s the quiet, daily erosion of the mind living inside an eternal “maybe.” In Israel, and across the Jewish world, we have become experts in this fog. We read the news, check our phones, scan the skies, and attempt to run households on adrenaline and fragmented sleep.
Recently, at an American Friends of NATAL gathering hosted in the Hamptons by Ran Eliasaf and Isabelle Bichler-Eliasaf, I spent time with Meirav Berger. As can often happen, our conversation was particularly meaningful during the four-hour car ride from New Jersey to our venue on Long Island.
Meirav is the mother of Agam Berger, the IDF lookout soldier who was kidnapped from the Nachal Oz base and held hostage for 482 days. At the event, Meirav sat next to Agam who was holding her violin, an instrument that became her voice of resilience.
We often put the families of hostages on pedestals. We call them heroes, icons of strength, symbols of national endurance. But sitting there, listening to Meirav speak, I saw much more than a symbol. I saw a mother. A mother who was exhausted, who was deeply faithful, who shared dark humor with her daughter, and who was navigating the incredibly strange, profound, and messy work of being a parent in the wake of catastrophic trauma.
When the Unthinkable Becomes Mundane
When Agam first came home, Meirav made her a promise: Whenever you’re hungry, no matter what time it is, tell me. I will make you whatever you want.
It was the ultimate maternal reaction. The instinct to feed, to nurture, to undo months of starvation with warm home cooking. A few nights later, Agam woke Meirav up.
“I’m hungry,” she said.
Meirav, bleary-eyed and bone-tired from months of running a global campaign to save her daughter’s life while carrying the........