For hostage’s dad, cooking dinners for other families offers brief respite
Dani Miran, father of captive Omri Miran, hasn’t lived at home since Oct. 7: ‘Most of the time everything feels black, and if I can chop and sauté a little, that’s better’
Jessica Steinberg, The Times of Israel's culture and lifestyles editor, covers the Sabra scene from south to north and back to the center
Dani Miran stood behind a long table, spooning tomato sauce over pizza dough, then sprinkled turmeric-spiced onions on top of the cheese.
“I also put mint in my sauce, along with basil and oregano,” said Miran, “but it’s the turmeric onions that people love.”
It wasn’t the first time that Miran was making dinner at the offices of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum in Tel Aviv, having prepared supper about once a week for the last 14 months since his son Omri Miran, 46, was taken hostage from his home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz during Hamas’s October 7 attack.
Miran was taken in his car to Gaza by terrorists who grabbed him from his home, leaving behind his wife, Lishai, 38, and their two young daughters. He was last seen in a Hamas propaganda video on April 24, a thick beard covering his face.
Dani Miran hasn’t shaved since his son was taken hostage. Miran, who will turn 80 in a few months, left his home in the northern community of Moshav Yesud HaMa’ala last December and moved into a Tel Aviv hotel down the street from the Hostages Forum offices, where he can be found nearly every day.
“That’s my place,” said Miran. “There and the square,” he added, referring to the so-called Hostages Square, the plaza of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. “I go there to talk to groups, to tell them about Omri.”
Once a week he serves dinner, as on this Tuesday night, chatting with fellow parents of hostages, such as Gilad and Nitza Korngold, parents of Tal Shoham; Shelly Shem Tov, whose son Omer Shem Tov was taken from the Nova desert rave; and Michel Illouz, whose son Guy Illouz was taken hostage on October 7, and killed while held captive in Gaza.
“Cooking helps me envelop the others with some love,” said Miran, as he chatted with his friends. “Most of the time everything feels black, and if I can chop and sauté a little, that’s better.”
Miran, like many other family members of hostages, has been calling for a deal to free them since Omri was captured, speaking regularly at Saturday night hostage rallies around the country.
His two other sons are active in the Tikvah Forum group, a smaller organization of hawkish relatives who don’t believe in a negotiated hostage deal at this time, arguing Israel should instead increase military pressure on Hamas and not agree to any deal that does not include the immediate release of all hostages (rather than a staged released).
“We’re a father and sons who love and disagree with one another,” said Miran.
“It’s said that [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu doesn’t do well with differing opinions, but you can stay friends and listen to one another even if you disagree,” he said. “Bibi didn’t do well with [recently fired defense minister Yoav] Gallant. What’s been happening here for years is that if anyone disagrees with Bibi, they lose their job and their position, and that’s it for them. That’s what happened to Gallant.”
“All that’s left are just ‘yes’ men,” he added.
The weeknights spent cooking for families and staff at the Forum have offered a way for Miran to show his love and appreciation and shake off some of the anguish he feels all the time, he said.
He thinks of the other families as an extension of his own — people who understand his plight as it’s their own experience as well.
“I can cook a little better than what’s [usually] here,” said Miran, referring to the regular mix of donated catering and home-cooked meals served in the building’s cafeteria to families and staffers every day. “So I make something to spoil them a little.”
Miran’s home-cooked meals began about a year ago, but had a shaky start. He recalled wanting to make shakshuka for dinner but that it took far too long to sauté the onions on the single burner in the cafeteria kitchen.
“I put the onions on to fry at 8 a.m., and they were maybe ready by 7 p.m.,” Miran joked.
The owner of Dubnov 8, a restaurant directly across the street from the Forum headquarters, generously offered the use of his kitchen, telling his cooks to “give this man whatever he needs,” said Miran.
Since then, Miran and one of the Forum staffers usually spend a day a week shopping for ingredients and then cooking in the cafe’s kitchen.
Miran said he learned to cook when he was widowed 33 years ago, as he wanted to make his sons the meals their mother had cooked for them.
“The boys needed to eat their mother’s food, and I started to cook, and I cook the same things for them all the time, the foods that remind them of their mother,” said Miran.
Eating meals as a family has been fraught in the months since Omri was taken hostage. Lishai and the girls are living in the southern community of Kramim, and he visits them on weekends.
Now when Miran sees his other sons, they eat at a restaurant or at the home of one of his nephews.
“That’s what we have right now,” he said.
His sons grew up in Yesud HaMa’ala, one of Israel’s oldest farming communities, established in 1883 near the Hula Valley, and Omri went to live in Nahal Oz 12 years ago after meeting and marrying Lishai. He worked there as a shiatsu therapist and a gardener of the kibbutz.
Until October 7, the extended family would gather regularly in Dani’s house, their childhood home. Omri and his family would make the long drive north every few weeks.
“That’s where they grew up, eating schnitzel and ptitim, stuffed kubbeh and my turmeric onions,” said Miran, who has four grandchildren. “My partner says, ‘Why do you always cook the same things,’ and I say, ‘That’s what they want to eat, that’s what makes them think of home.”
