Freed hostage Bar Kuperstein says he prayed to God regularly in Hamas captivity

Released Israeli hostage Bar Kuperstein says he managed to survive two years in a cramped Hamas tunnel in Gaza with no sunlight, little food and regular beatings by clinging to his belief that he was in God’s hands the entire time.

Kuperstein, 23, was released on October 13 along with the remaining 19 living hostages as part of the Gaza ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that has largely halted two years of devastating war.

Kuperstein was a soldier on leave working as an usher at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, when rockets began raining down and Hamas terrorists came storming in from Gaza, killing 364 partygoers. A trained medic, he was dragged to Gaza as he was trying to rescue revelers, and images of him bound on a floor emerged on social media soon after his abduction.

In his first interview with international media, Kuperstein said that after the first few weeks, he was taken down to Hamas’s tunnels, where he was held with five more hostages confined to a space he said was no bigger than the size of a mattress.

“We were there for each other, we supported each other, as hard as it was and when we took the beatings. I remember, after they beat us, we just sat hugging each other, telling each other that we will not let them defeat us,” he said.

They all learned Arabic during captivity and the guards often tried to convert him to Islam, Kuperstein said, which he and his fellow captives resisted. Every Friday night, he said, they insisted on saying the traditional Shabbat blessings together.

One of the scariest days, Kuperstein said, was when a guard threatened to kill three of the hostages and ordered the captives to choose which ones would die, a threat he ultimately did not carry out.

“I just remember praying to God, begging him, saying ‘save me, I’m in your hands now,'” Kuperstein said. “It was a sentence I often said in captivity.”

He later learned that his mother, Julie, had said the same thing to one of the Hamas guards who had contacted her by telephone while her son was being held and threatened him.

“She told him, ‘My son is not in your hands, he is in the hands of God, and you are also in the hands of God,'” Kuperstein said, holding up a bracelet printed with what has since become a family slogan: “Always in the Hands of God.”

Those same words were printed on a modified Israeli flag that Kuperstein held up with his family during their first meeting on the day of his release.

In an interview with the Kan public broadcaster last month, Kuperstein recounted beatings, starvation and psychological torture inflicted by his Hamas captors over two years held inside underground tunnels.

Kuperstein has publicly expressed his strong faith in the month since he was freed from Gaza. In his first public video message, he expressed thanks to all those who supported here, “and most importantly to the creator, our father in heaven.”

Visiting Hostages Square in Tel Aviv for the first time last month, Kuperstein said his dream throughout his captivity was to wear tefillin, Jewish ritual phylacteries. A few days later, he and his father led a mass prayer service in the square where they donned tefillin, blew the shofar and held a communal prayer.