On Oct. 13, Segev Kalfon was among the last 20 hostages to be released by Hamas in the deal brokered by the Trump administration.
On April 26 at 3 p.m., he will speak at Society Hill Synagogue.
For about an hour, the former hostage will discuss his experience in captivity for 738 days, beginning with the Nova music festival on Oct. 7, 2023, according to Sahar Oz, Society Hill’s executive director. After his talk, the synagogue will hold a brief ceremony for Yom HaZikaron, Israel’s memorial day to fallen soldiers and victims of terror. The ceremony will include a candlelighting and a Yizkor prayer.
Temple Beth Zion-Beth Israel and the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia’s Jewish Community Relations Council are co-hosting the event. Proceeds will go toward Kalfon’s recovery.
Oz heard about Kalfon’s speaking tour through Israeli friends in Chester County. They are also family friends of the former hostage’s family. The executive director went through them to get Society Hill Synagogue on the tour, which has also included stops in Miami and New York.
“It’s a really remarkable story of how someone can survive the depths of despair,” Oz said.
Kalfon, 27, was a 25-year-old finance student at the time of his capture. He was working in his family’s bakery in Arad, in the south of Israel, near Dimona, his hometown. An IDF veteran, the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev student was pursuing a career in money management and trading.
He wasn’t initially planning on attending the festival, as he wasn’t feeling well in the days leading up to the event. Kalfon bought his ticket on Friday, just hours before the music started, because his friends convinced him to come.
As the attack began, he raced across the grounds under heavy gunfire, aiming to reach Highway 232. While running, Kalfon heard his friend, Asaf, scream, and he thought Asaf had been killed, but he actually ended up in a roadside ditch. (Asaf, who was not captured, later informed Kalfon’s family that he had been taken by Hamas.) Kalfon also stopped to urge festivalgoers hiding in a dumpster to run; they didn’t listen; all were later confirmed to have been killed.
The Israeli eventually reached a concrete barrier across Highway 232. He hid behind it, but as he did, he was surrounded by white pick-up trucks carrying 70-80 militants. They got out with their RPGs and Kalashnikovs, tackled him, beat him with rifle butts and had him blindfolded and bound.
Kalfon was thrown into a vehicle and driven to the Gaza Strip, stripped down to his underwear and interrogated with a knife to his throat.
In captivity, he was beaten with bicycle chains and large rings; he had his teeth broken; he lived on moldy pita and water; he was pressured to convert to Islam and change his name. But Kalfon held firm, and he got through it by thinking of Joseph, the biblical figure who rose from prison to help Egypt out of a famine and establish new territory for the remaining Israelites. Kalfon also once heard his mother’s voice on a radio provided by his captors.
Upon his release, Kalfon spent a brief period in the Sheba Medical Center before returning home to a cheering crowd. In February, he began his speaking tour, and he has often said that, “I’m proof that this happened. I felt it with my body.”
In a world of misinformation, AI deepfakes and living through a screen, as well as the antisemitism often associated with all three, Oz wants Kalfon to drive this message home to the audience at Society Hill Synagogue.
“I think it’s absolutely essential to say to young people here, ‘This happened. This isn’t a false flag operation. This isn’t a hoax.’ This person was kidnapped from a music festival, held in subhuman conditions and tortured. He’ll speak to what he experienced,” Oz said.
Oz is reaching out to high schools and Jewish groups at colleges and universities like Penn, Drexel and Temple to encourage attendance.
“To actually have an opportunity to meet somebody who survived this, who saw people being kidnapped, murdered, running for their lives, and who experienced 738 days in captivity, I’m hoping people’s minds will be enriched,” he said.