For this unprecedented time of war and grief, new prayers for those held captive by Hamas
A woman prays while visiting the Lights of Hope installation in Jerusalem. Photo by Getty Images
Devastated by the massacre in Israel and deeply worried about the hostages currently held by Hamas in Gaza, rabbis and scholars across the Jewish spectrum have been rapidly revising prayers and writing entirely new ones to address this terrible moment.
The tradition of praying to free captives dates back centuries and is reflected in a phrase repeated twice in the morning prayers — “Matir asurim.” That phrase, which means literally “who frees the captives,” likely goes back at least to the third century, said Reuven Kimelman, a professor at Brandeis University and an expert on Jewish liturgy. “It appears in early versions of the Amidah, and is mentioned among the morning blessings in the Talmud,” he said.
In 1982, when eight Israeli soldiers were abducted — an event that sparked the First Lebanon War — modern rabbis wrote an original standalone prayer for captives. It’s hard to isolate one author of that particular prayer for captives as there are so many versions, said Kimelman.
In 2008, then-Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Yona Metzger, wrote a prayer for the return of Gilad Shalit, a soldier who had been in Hamas captivity since 2006.
Now, with more than 200 Israelis — mostly civilians, including babies and the elderly, people who are disabled and women who are pregnant — being held captive in Gaza, rabbis have again taken out their red pens, aiming to create a contemporary prayer that is about ordinary civilians, not soldiers.
The widely said mishebeirach prayer has been updated to highlight “residents of the communities of the south,” specifically mentioning — for the first time — women, young children and the elderly. The prayer also directly refers to their captors as bnei avla or villains, oyvei amcha, or enemies of your people, and mechalelei admatechah, or desecrators of your land.
Revisions in direct response to current events
“These are people who were abducted from their homes. This is a new reality. My thought was that you cannot have a tefillah that does not reflect reality,” said Rabbi Yitzchak Etshalom, author of the Between the Lines of the Bible series, who revised the prayer with Avi Shmidman, a professor at Bar Ilan University.
Much of the specific wording comes from the Tanach and the prayers. The phrase bnei avla comes from Samuel II 3:34, and King David’s lament to Avner, Rabbi Etshalom explained. “It’s used in the Tanach several times to describe really evil people — and it was the phrase that sprung out of my typewriter,” he said.
At this time, as social media shows image after image of people ripping down posters of people kidnapped from their homes and held hostage by Hamas, sometimes claiming it didn’t happen, prayer acknowledges the facts — that people have been murdered, wounded and kidnapped — and asks God for help.
“Our feeling is that we are helpless — we are afraid for their fates, and we are especially thinking about the young women,” said Rabbi Ehud Bandel, the former head of Israel’s Masorti movement, who wrote another one of the new 2023 prayers, this one titled “Prayer for the Welfare and the Return of Israel’s Captured and Missing from Among Our Sisters and Brothers.”
The idea, Rabbi Bandel said, was “to express our helplessness on one side, and on the other side our determination to do everything we can.”
Minor reversals and major miracles
While the standalone prayer for the captives, which begins with the Hebrew word “Mishebeyrach” like the more familiar prayer for the sick, is only said when there is a specific, known hostage situation affecting Israelis or Jews, praise for God’s role in freeing captives is recited every day. The phrase matir asurim originates in Psalm 146, which describes a God who “secures justice for those who are wronged,” “gives food to the hungry,” “sets prisoners free,” “restores sight to the blind” and “makes those who are bent stand straight.”
The blessing refers to a “series of things in which God’s generosity to humanity is expressed,” explained Kimelman. Matir asurim, he said, originally referred to “people who were thrown in prison and languished there.”
In Robert Alter’s recent translation of the Psalms, matir asurim reads as “the Lord looses those in fetters.”
The same phrase also appears in the Amidah, the centerpiece of the morning service, near the most difficult-to-believe blessing, mechayeh meitim — which praises God as the one who revives the dead and who returns the rain.
“They deal with the fallen, the sick, and the imprisoned,” Kimelman writes of the blessings in his forthcoming book The Rhetoric of the Liturgy: A Historical and Literary Commentary to the Jewish Liturgy. “Their own reversals represent miniature, if not preliminary, resurrections. A dead person often was one who had fallen prostrate, overwhelmed by terminal disease, or languished in prison. These occasions of reversal point to God’s capacity to reverse the natural course of events,” Kimelman writes.
Professor Kimelman said the blessings on the return of rain and the freeing of captives “are trying to make the resurrection more credible by associating it with minor reversals.”
Which is more miraculous, Kimelman asked — a birth or a rebirth? The answer is that both are completely miraculous, just as rain is miraculous. Similarly, a captive set free is also miraculous.
Updating the standalone prayer
Isaiah turns out to be extremely relevant to the challenges of this moment. Many Orthodox synagogues have added a snippet from Isaiah (61:1) to the prayer for the captives they have been reciting daily since the Oct. 7 attack “to proclaim release to the captives, liberation to the imprisoned.”
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld of Ohev Sholom Congregation in Washington, D.C., said he sees two differences between the Lebanon War-era prayer for the captives and the 2023 “upgrade” written by Rabbi Yitzhak Etshalom and Avi Shmidman.
“The older prayer assumes that captives are soldiers; the new prayer explicitly acknowledges that civilians are being held captive,” Rabbi Wolkenfeld said.
The second difference is that the 1982 prayer ends with a prophecy from Isaiah “imagining the rejoicing when captives return home” — as happened when Gilad Shalit returned to his home town — while the 2023 edition concludes with a different verse from Isaiah.
“It is now too late for a happy ending,” Wolkenfeld said of the hostages in Gaza.
New Tefillot are being written
Rabbi Bandel, the Masorti leader, decided to write an entirely new prayer rather than just update prior editions. His prayer contains two quotations from the Bible.
It begins by beseeching God: “We pray, we plead that you return these precious and beloved people.” A haunting second paragraph expresses fear for the hostages: “We are terrified contemplating their fate and horrified at the thought of what the missing and the captured are suffering right now — they lie beyond our reach and our capacity to save them.”
It includes a bit from the Book of Jeremiah (30:18) — “Behold, I will restore the captives of Jacob’s tents, and have compassion upon his dwellings” — and concludes with a line from Genesis (28:15): “Here, I am with you, I will watch over you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land. Indeed, I will not leave you until I have done what I have said to you.”
How people are praying
Rabbi Dalia Marx, who teaches liturgy and midrash at the Reform seminary, Hebrew Union College-Institute of Religion in Jerusalem, said that some synagogues are dedicating each service to a particular hostage, and that others are reciting Psalm 121 or 130, both of which are traditionally said in times of trouble.
Psalm 121 begins with the famous line: “I lift my eyes to the mountains: from where will my help come?” as Robert Alter translates it. Psalm 130 is about the depths of despair, and begins “From the depths I called You, Lord.”
Rabbi Etshalom said “there are shuls in Los Angeles that have cards with this tefilla and the names of 10 captives on the back, and people are saying it every day, including Shabbat.”
“We are fervently praying that all these cards will go into the genizah soon, and that everyone will be released,” Rabbi Etzhalom said.
Meanwhile, at Brandeis, Professor Kimelman has written his own moving prayer, combining some of the oldest sources we have — the Psalms and Isaiah — with the “grim news” of the headlines, and acknowledging that men, women and children are all among the abducted.
It also expressly asks for “comfort the families of all those murdered.”
Below is a copy of Reuven Kimelman’s “Prayer for Israel in Time of War.”
Prayer for Israel in Time of War
Eloheinu V’Elohei Avoteinu, Our God and God of our ancestors.
You know that the Jewish people are one nation with one heart,
and today that heart is broken.
With the grim news of so many of our sisters and brothers in Israel killed, wounded, and kidnapped, we turn to You.
Harofeh Lishvurei Lev,
“O healer of broken hearts, binder of their wounds” (Psalm 147:3)
be with our brothers and sisters who have been taken captive
and with the families of the victims.
Watch over the hostages, break their bonds,
and bring them out from darkness to light.
“Proclaim release to the captives; liberation to the imprisoned” (Isaiah 61:1)
Comfort the families of all those murdered
bring them under the shelter of Your wings.
Bring complete healing of body and spirit to all of the wounded,
bind up our wounds and grant us healing.
Tsur Yisrael veGo’alo, Rock and Redeemer of the people Israel,
bless the State of Israel, the initial manifestation of our redemption.
Shield it with Your care; spread over it Your shelter of peace.
Guide its leaders and advisors with Your light and Your truth;
grace them with Your good counsel.
Strengthen the hands of those who defend our holy land;
crown their efforts with victory.
Bless the land with peace; its inhabitants with lasting joy.
Shomer Yisrael, Guardian of Israel,
strengthen and bless the defenders of Israel
who stand guard over our land: on the land, in the air, and on the sea.
Deliver their murderers into their hands.
May we see the promise of the Psalmist:
הָפַכְתָּ מִסְפְּדִי לְמָחוֹל לִי פִּתַּחְתָּ שַׂקִּי וַתְּאַזְּרֵנִי שִׂמְחָה
“You turned my mourning into dancing…
my sackcloth into robes of joy” (30:12)
God, protect, preserve, and restore peace and well-being to Israel — your people.
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