The streets of Tenafly, New Jersey, were filled with cheers and tears this past Monday. People lined the sidewalks, some wearing yarmulkas, others bareheaded. Some were draped in Israeli flags, others waved them with emotion. Large screens lit up the town square. There was singing. There was dancing. There were tears of relief and joy.
Edan Alexander, a native son of Tenafly and now a Staff Sergeant in the IDF, had been released from barbaric captivity in Gaza and reunited with his parents in Eretz Yisroel. The entire town gathered to witness his return. The scene was moving. The emotion was raw and real.
And for me, no matter his level of observance, it struck a deep chord. A Jewish child had been returned—to his home, to his parents, to his people. My heart ached for all that he had endured. And my heart was soothed at the sight of his return.
But then I thought of another kind of homecoming.
It’s a story we all know, one that’s been retold in school plays, sung in songs, and etched into the collective memory of our people. During the harrowing years of the Holocaust, desperate Jewish parents handed their beloved children to Christian families, convents, and orphanages. They hoped, they davened, that if they themselves didn’t survive, someone from the Jewish people would one day come back and reclaim their children.
After the war, a handful of parents and rabbonim made their way to these institutions. The war had ended, but a new battle had begun—the fight to recover lost neshamos.
In one such episode, Rav Eliezer Silver, the legendary askan and savior of so many during those years, along with Dayan Grunfeld of England, traveled to Europe in 1945. They were told that a monastery in Alsace-Lorraine housed many Jewish children. When they arrived, the priest in charge denied it. “These names? Miller? Markovich? They could be German, Russian, Polish. You have no proof they are Jews.”
Documentation? There was none. It had gone up in the flames of war.
But Rav Leizer didn’t give up.
He made a simple request: “Let us come back at bedtime.”
That night, as rows of children lay in their small beds, the rabbonim walked through the dormitory and called out: “Shema Yisroel, Hashem Elokeinu…”
And then it happened.
One by one, children sat up and began to cry. Some whispered, “Mama.” Others sobbed, “Mamushka,” or, “Maman.” Some remembered to say, “Hashem Echad.” Those sacred words—the lullaby of generations of Jewish mothers—had remained etched into their neshomalech. Years of indoctrination, years of being taught foreign prayers and beliefs, could not erase the Shema from their hearts. Because even when buried under darkness, the pintele Yid burns on.
These children may not have been kept in physical cages. They may have been clothed and fed. But they were in spiritual captivity. And when they were reclaimed—when their lost neshamos were recovered—there were no crowds. No flags. No speeches. No music. No dancing. No embrace.
They came home to silence.
And I thought of today’s lost souls, those who may never have known Torah, or those who were led astray by a world that preaches freedom but delivers spiritual ruin.
I remembered how Rav Noach Weinberg would often cry out, comparing physical destruction to spiritual destruction, asking how we could sit quietly while Jewish neshamos were being taken, not by tanks or terrorists, but by ideologies, temptations, and cultures that erase their connection to Torah.
We spare no expense—financially, emotionally, logistically—to free one of our own from physical captivity. Rightfully so. But do we bring that same fire, that same urgency, to rescuing those trapped in the spiritual Hamas of our time?
And maybe it doesn’t even take that level of effort.
Are we still calling out “Shema Yisroel” in the dormitories of our generation? Maybe it’s not an orphanage or a monastery. Maybe it’s a secular college campus. Maybe it’s a social media feed. Maybe it’s a café in Tel Aviv. And maybe we’re not shouting Shema, but handing out cholent, or inviting for a Shabbos meal, or just showing warmth and sincerity that whispers to their soul: “You belong.”
But we must be there—at the gates of the spiritual captivity, wherever it is—waiting. Reaching. Crying out with love, with conviction, with hope.
Of course, there are so many lost souls and there is no one moment of return, but in our hearts, I ask: Where are the crowds waiting for the returnees of today?
Where are the people dancing for that one baal teshuvah who was released from his spiritual or even emotional captivity? We cannot remain passive.
Every parent, every teacher, every kiruv rabbi or seminary mechaneches, every friend who reaches out with a warm memory or inspiration to someone slipping through the cracks, they are modern-day Rav Silvers, whispering Shema Yisroel and waiting for a flicker of return.
Yes, we must rejoice when our captives are freed from physical bondage. But let us never forget the spiritual captives, those who appear whole on the outside but are crying out from within, longing for the warmth of their people, their Torah, their Hashem.
Let us be the ones waiting at the gates. Flags in hand. Arms open. Hearts full.
Welcome home, Yiddishe kind. We’ve been waiting.
Just saying.
