In the hours leading up to Eli Sharabi’s appearance at Congregation Beth El, the website promoting the event crashed. Too many people were visiting it to try to find information and tickets.
In the half hour leading up to the event on Monday night, Dec. 1, the parking lot at the Voorhees synagogue filled up. Many attendees had to shuttle over from a nearby shul, Temple Beth Sholom in Cherry Hill.
By the time Sharabi took the stage with television journalist Reena Ninan, the sanctuary was full. Ninan said that 1,500 people were in attendance, more than a High Holiday crowd.
They were there to see Sharabi, a hostage held by Hamas for 491 days starting on Oct. 7, 2023, talk about why he “chose life.”
On Oct. 7, Sharabi was abducted from Kibbutz Be’eri, his home near the Gaza border. On Feb. 8, 2025, the day of his release, he came into the light to be greeted by his mother and sister. They told him that his wife and daughters, who were also abducted, did not make it.
Less than a year on from that day, Sharabi has regained the 60 pounds he lost in captivity. He has also once again chosen life. In his book, “Hostage,” which sat on the table between Sharabi and Ninan during the event, he “recounts the harrowing ordeal,” as a promotional email for the event put it.
On stage with Ninan, Sharabi wore a sport coat with a button-down shirt and no tie. He sat up straight but cast his head slightly down. He spoke decisively in a low monotone.
Audience members were transfixed.
Sharabi opened his remarks by thanking the audience for coming. They clapped loudly.
Deciding to Live
“I want to ask you, at what moment did you decide you wanted to live?” Ninan asked early in their conversation.
The former hostage said it occurred to him the moment the terrorists were pushing him into a car. He woke up on the journey to recall that, just two or three nights earlier, he had been with his daughters.
“For 491 days, it didn’t change,” he said. “I knew I would do anything to survive and come back.”
At that moment, Sharabi said, he decided to separate “my emotions and my feelings from my mission.”
Captivity
The Israeli was chained early in his captivity to another hostage, and he was not unchained for another 485 days. He had to stay in the chain even when he went to the bathroom.
Another hostage, a Thai national and farm laborer in southern Israel, “could not stop crying,” Ninan explained. He just didn’t understand what was going on, she added.
It fell on Sharabi to play the fatherly role of explaining the situation. The hostage got a paper and pen and started to draw “Gaza and Israel,” Sharabi recalled, “and he started to understand.”
On day 40 of his captivity, Sharabi went to the bathroom and heard a television. His captors had left a door open. The hostage heard a news report in Israel featuring a mother and son begging for the hostages to come home and for the war to end.
Sharabi said that was the first time that he understood that women and children were hostages, too.
It was also the first time he cried.
“It was shocking for me,” he said.
“He Who Has a Why Can Bear Almost Any How”
Ninan told the crowd that Sharabi quoted this line, often attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche but also used by Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl in his book, “Man’s Search for Meaning.”
“We said this sentence to each other every day for the next 14 months,” Sharabi said of himself and other hostages.
He also said they’d remind each other of what they were waiting to do when they survived.
Sharabi would count the days and count “one good thing a day.” He even used a humorous example to illustrate the latter point: When a particularly ruthless captor would leave for a few days, that was the good thing.
Now
After he was released and processed the devastating news about his family, Sharabi came to a realization: He couldn’t just “sit in bed and cry,” he said. He had gotten the opportunity to live, so he had to.
His book sold more than 20,000 copies in its first week and later surpassed 100,000. The English edition debuted at No. 4 on The New York Times bestseller list. Sharabi also has sold out events at synagogues and Jewish community centers in California, New York and Florida, among other places.
Near the end of his talk, Ninan mentioned the now-common suggestion that Sharabi run for the Knesset. He said, “Absolutely not.”
But after that, he closed on a unifying note for the Jews in attendance: “I think, despite all our disagreements, we have more in common. We cannot let different interests divide us. We need to stay together and united. This is the only way to defeat our enemies.”
The crowd clapped loudly and stood.