Around 50 members of the Jewish community, Jewish professionals, and others gathered at the Mayerson JCC on Thursday, the day after it was announced that Israel and Hamas reached a hostage and ceasefire deal, to share their reaction with local media.
The phrase “cautiously optimistic” summed up the afternoon, and how the Jewish world feels right now.
“We’ve been in similar places before, so we won’t feel hopeful and happy and joyful until at least, we receive some hostages and this deal is signed, but [we won’t feel real relief] until all 98 hostages are returned home,” said Danielle Minson, CEO of the Jewish Federation.
It has been over 400 days since the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023, that took 250 hostages to Gaza and sparked the Israel-Hamas war. Since then, members of the Jewish community worldwide have felt the stress of the conflict and the plight of the hostages – but few more acutely than Israelis living abroad.
“We’ve been waiting for a long time to hear news about our hostages,” said Idit Moss. “We’ve been waiting for a long time for them, for their release. It feels like I can’t breathe until everybody’s at home.”
Moss is part of the Israeli expat community living in Cincinnati. She said she could not have made it through the past year without the support of her Israeli friends in the city.
“I got a lot of support from the Israeli community here in town, as well as friends and family in Israel,” she said. “We all felt connected in despair, and the Jewish community here in Cincinnati was just great…having different events for us to all come together and talk about it. I gained a lot of strength from our Jewish community.”
She has been keeping track of happenings in Israel by watching Israeli channels at home.
“It’s excitement mixed with anxiety. So I’m not letting myself totally be happy yet…there’s a little bit of Tikvah (hope) that something’s actually going to happen,” Moss said.
The news is also mixed with sadness at the knowledge of all of those who have died since Oct. 7. That was even more clear for Ilan Goldman.
“I lost my nephew, Yuval, in Gaza,” he said. “He was a soldier in tanks, and he was in Gaza pretty much all of that time.”
“He was good friends with Hersh Goldberg-Polin,” an American-Israeli hostage taken by Hamas, Goldman said. Yuval “screamed (Goldberg-Polin’s) name in Gaza almost every day and every night, trying to find him.”
Despite the sadness that hovered over the event, one could hear the whispers of hope around the crowd. The ceasefire and hostage deal is set to begin on Sunday when the first three hostages are expected to be released.
“The most prominent emotion I feel is a sense of renewal, in a way – a sense of, we need to overcome, we need to rebuild,” said Goldman.