Greater than a century in the past, Friedrich Nietzsche famously declared that “God is lifeless.” However within the fetid, pitch-dark tunnels beneath Gaza—the place air was scarce, meals scarce nonetheless, and the long run practically absent—God and Nietzsche coexisted.For dozens of Israeli hostages taken throughout Hamas’s brutal October 7, 2023, assault, survival meant one thing greater than bodily endurance. Inside these underground cells, perception returned with sudden drive—generally within the type of sacred verses from the E-book of Psalms, different instances by way of the secular knowledge of Nietzsche’s existential despair. What united them was the identical core fact: the necessity for which means, for one thing to carry onto when all the pieces else—gentle, freedom, identification—was stripped away.
Omer Shem Tov ’s Psalm 20 and Nietzsche’s “Why”
Omer Shem Tov, 20 on the time of his abduction, had been a secular Israeli, ready tables and planning a post-army journey to South America. He was seized on the Nova music pageant, together with mates, and rapidly spirited into the Gaza tunnel community—lowered underground in a plastic tub.Days into his captivity, with out entry to clocks or daylight, Shem Tov started to wish. He clung to Psalm 20—“Could the Lord reply you on a day of misery”—a passage that, by eerie coincidence, his mom was reciting again house in Herzliya, unaware her son had adopted the identical verse as his mantra. For him, religion didn’t emerge as sudden revelation, however as necessity—a response to isolation, uncertainty, and concern. He started blessing his meals, making guarantees to God, and vowed to don tefillin in prayer if he ever returned house.But when God gave him ritual, Nietzsche provided one thing else: a purpose to endure. A saying incessantly repeated amongst hostages was drawn from the German thinker, popularised by Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl: “He who has a why can bear with any how.” It had reportedly been spoken by Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an Israeli-American hostage, earlier than he was executed by his captors. The phrase reverberated by way of the tunnels like scripture. One hostage later had it tattooed on his arm.
The Rediscovery of Religion in Captivity
Shem Tov wasn’t alone to find God in Gaza. Different hostages, like Eli Sharabi—who survived 491 days in captivity solely to study that his spouse and two daughters had been killed—described saying the Shema Yisrael prayer every night time and trying to recite the kiddush over water when wine wasn’t accessible.Ritual grew to become resistance. For a lot of, Jewish observance wasn’t imposed by identification politics or exterior stress—it was private, a lifeline in essentially the most dehumanising situations conceivable. One hostage described saving a bottle of grape-flavoured drink for the Sabbath prayer. Others positioned their palms on their heads in lieu of skullcaps. To the captors, it might have appeared like theatre. To the hostages, it was which means.
Nietzsche Underground
And but, alongside God, Nietzsche endured. Stripped of all the pieces acquainted, hostages turned to a thinker who had buried God within the pages of The Homosexual Science but additionally taught generations that struggling may very well be endured if one had a purpose. Within the absence of hope, they made objective. Within the absence of time, they made ritual.Even Shem Tov’s captors unwittingly performed a task. After an Israeli navy unit handed above floor, the gunmen handed Shem Tov studying materials they’d recovered—suspecting hidden codes. Among the many texts: spiritual literature, and a printed card of Psalm 20. No names, no signatures. Simply the verse. It mirrored the very same card that had been handed to his mom months earlier by a hostage help group.
The Fragility of Life, the Tenacity of Religion
At one level, Shem Tov spent 50 days in a darkish, suffocating tunnel cell. He was given a biscuit a day, a couple of drops of brackish water, and suffered bronchial asthma assaults that went practically untreated. In desperation, he begged God to maneuver him—anyplace else. Inside minutes, his captors relocated him to a greater chamber. Whether or not miracle or coincidence, he noticed it as divine intervention.From there, he survived by way of quiet cooperation—cleansing, cooking, serving to clear particles after tunnel collapses. He maintained the Sabbath. He saved a bottle of drink for a second of blessing. He saved religion alive in a spot designed to crush it.Now house, he prays each day with tefillin, simply as he promised. He has toured Jewish communities within the US, talking not solely of struggling however of resilience. His mom, too, now observes the Sabbath. Theirs isn’t a story of spiritual conversion, however of rediscovery—of how stripped of society’s noise, historic traditions and fashionable philosophy grew to become instruments of survival.
