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Israelis gathered once more on Thursday night within the Tel Aviv sq. the place for 2 months protesters have known as for the discharge of hostages in Gaza, however this time they got here to mark the beginning of Hanukkah.
Holding indicators that bore the faces of the 138 individuals still held hostage and sporting T-shirts, necklaces and yellow bracelets that demanded “convey them house now,” the attendees mentioned this 12 months’s Hanukkah was not a vacation to remain house, however one to collect and help each other.
“Maybe there’s one thing within the energy of getting collectively,” Julia Ferment mentioned. “Maybe a few of this vitality, this power, will get to them.”
Family of hostages, teams of buddies and troopers huddled quietly near an extended desk with 138 candles, one for every lacking beloved one. Relations and buddies have been invited to mild the yellow candles. Afterward they have been embraced as they moved to the entrance of the group.
The Hanukkah blessings, which in Jewish custom are repeated on eight nights, held a brand new that means for the a whole lot that sang alongside, some with tears of their eyes, some with their eyes sealed shut, fingers on coronary heart.
Just a few miles south in Ramla, one other group of Israelis gathered to mark the start of the vacation at a military base. The reservists, many with graying hair and households again house, delighted to search out conventional Hanukkah pastries — jelly doughnuts known as sufganiyot — ready for them once they walked into the warehouse for dinner. One other reservist had simply proudly sprinkled powder sugar on high of the pastries.
Rabbi Arie Levin, a father of 11 who normally works in Tel Aviv, gathered the group across the desk holding the doughnuts and a menorah. There’s lots of darkness, he mentioned, then pointed on the menorah, and right here’s a bit mild. He lit a candle.
It was the third time he had lit a menorah that evening. He had already performed candles with one other group of troopers on the opposite aspect of the bottom and with a gaggle of people that have been dwelling in a Tel Aviv lodge, displaced from their houses within the north and the south of Israel. Quickly, he would go away the military base to journey again house and be part of the households of hostages for one more candle lighting at a synagogue.
When the menorah was lit in Ramla, the troopers danced to a conventional Hanukkah tune. In Tel Aviv, the air was nonetheless when the candles have been aflame. Nearly instantly, a voice at the back of the group began the mantra that has echoed on this sq. for greater than 60 days.
“Now, now, now, now,” the individuals mentioned.
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