Meeting Keith

Towards the end of October, 2023, I met a friend for dinner. We had been friends for many years, and felt able to talk about most things, so I assumed we could talk, and listen to, and learn from each other regarding the painful events earlier in that month in Israel, and what was unfolding in Gaza too.

But I was wrong. It was a painful conversation. We tried to share the stories we'd read or heard about, but it became clearer and clearer to me that she had gone deep into some dangerous rabbit holes on her social media, and wasn't able to differentiate at all between the hearsay, and dehumanisation of Israelis and Jews.

I remember one moment clearly: I mentioned the hostages.

At that point 240 Israeli and international innocent people; including elderly, women and children were known to have been taken into Gaza by Hamas.

She looked me in the eye, and told me that all the hostages were dead.

That was the moment that ended our friendship.

I've thought about that moment a lot since, and, even now, I can feel my heart racing and the anger and hurt rising up in me afresh.

How dare she dismiss 240 innocent souls so quickly. How dare she tell me that their lives don't matter, that their families don't deserve our support.

***

On October 14th, 2025, I reposted on Facebook a message from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, calling on us all to remember that there were still 24 hostages - all presumed murdered at this point - in Gaza, and that the campaign to return all the hostages home would not end until every single one was returned to their families for burial.

I received a comment, which in turn received three heart emojis:

I felt the same emotion running through me. And this time, more clarity in my thoughts;

'So this is what it feels like to be Jewish right now', I thought.:

These people, the hostages who we have been campaigning for relentlessly for over two years, are family. I may not know them personally, but I know that the theory that we are only six degrees removed from anyone in the general population, is far far smaller in the Jewish world. And in these moments of profound hurt, and pain, and suffering, that bond only feels stronger.

I, respectfully, replied:

And time did tell, as the bodies were gradually returned over the next few weeks. As we did not give up on the justice and respect for the grieving families, as they were finally able to honour their loved ones with a proper burial.

And today, I am revisiting both these episodes in my own life, in light of a third that happened this week, at Limmud:

I met Keith and Aviva Siegel.

A gorgeous, unassuming, still obviously madly in love with each other, couple. In their mid-60s, active grandparents who lived on Kibbutz Kfar Aza.

These regular Jewish Israeli / American / South African people, who, on October 7th 2023 had their world turned upside down as they were taken hostage into Gaza by Hamas.

I won't go into their story as you can read / watch in many other places, but, they were both held hostage, in regular homes in Gaza, and then later in the underground tunnels,; Aviva for 51 days and Keith for 484.

484 days.

484 days of hell.

484 days when so many (dare I say it, people who were not Jewish, who didn't feel that visceral familial connection that I did) had given up.

That's what it is to be Jewish today. and maybe always. - to not give up, to hope, to pray, to work for justice and freedom and love even when others doubt or deny or see it another way.

And last week, I was able to tell Keith that, in the flesh, as I cried in front of him at the overwhelming relief and joy that I felt at personally, right in front of me, I was witness to his, and his wife's return home.