![More than 250 people showed up June 22 on Australia's Bondi Beach to show their support and relay their message: "Bring Back Our Boys."](https://w2.chabad.org/media/images/825/MPyu8258495.jpg?_i=_n32DD4A5CE5B405756B86D11830CBE5B1 "More than 250 people showed up June 22 on Australia's Bondi Beach to show their support and relay their message: "Bring Back Our Boys."")
With the search for the three yeshivah students kidnapped in Israel becoming increasingly desperate, people around the world have been intensifying their prayers and acts of kindness. As the third Shabbat approaches—three weeks after the boys were taken—there are renewed calls for women and girls around the world to light Shabbat candles, and for all to pray on the students’ behalf.
This week and last were replete with planned and impromptu programs, rallies, prayer sessions and other campaigns to bring international attention to the dire situation of Gilad Shaar, 16; Naftali Frenkel, 16; and Eyal Yifrach, 19, who were last seen near Hebron on June 12. The Israel Defense Force has scoured the city and its environs as part of “Operation Brother’s Keeper,” and according to news reports, will decide where to shift its focus as the effort continues into its third week as suspects in the kidnapping have been identified.
Rabbi Yossi Lipsker, co-director of Chabad Lubavitch of the North Shore in Swampscott, Mass., went online last Thursday to vehemently send email, post to Facebook and Tweet alongside others to help spread the word about a candlelight vigil taking place that same evening, June 19, at 8 p.m. at the Chabad Community Shul. The focus was on the three missing boys.
The vigil drew about 50 people, somber and steadfast in the task at hand.
“My message was that these children are all of our children as well,” said the rabbi. “Something was taken from all of us; we are all being held hostage.”
The event was just one of numerous efforts taking place around the world to help raise awareness of the situation, and to pull communities together in prayer and mitzvot. The effort has become global in scale, with programs large and small worldwide.
“The coming together fostered a renewed collective hopefulness,” acknowledged Lipsker.
Chabad.org has set up a special web page where readers can “pledge a mitzvah” on their behalf, and individual Chabad centers have been spreading the word on a local level.(Readers can continue to “pledge a mitzvah” on the students’ behalf here).
As Shabbat approaches, women and girls are urged to light candles, and all are asked to recite prayers for the missing boys, keeping in mind their Hebrew names: Yaakov Naftali ben Rachel Devorah, Gilad Michael ben Bat Galim and Eyal ben Iris Teshura.(For Shabbat candle-lighting times in your location, please click here.
People Coming Out of the Woodwork’
The U.S. East Coast has been awash in action, especially in the New York metropolitan area.
Israeli Consul General Ido Aharoni attended a massive rally on June 18 in New York City with supporters that included city officials and legislators, community leaders, Holocaust survivors, survivors of terrorist attacks, and people of all ages and backgrounds. Four days later, teenagers from the New York area gathered in front of the Israeli consulate in an assembly that numbered more than 500 people. North Jersey, Long Island and, of course, Brooklyn have not let up the rallying call to “bring home our boys.”
The other side of the country has not stood still either.
Some 500 people gathered in Los Angeles on June 19, according to NBClosangeles.com, to support the families of the missing students, including Marina Rozhansky, the consulate general of Israel in Los Angeles, and none other than Gilad Shaar’s aunt, Leehay Shaar. Her cry: “These are just three innocent boys!”
Further north, in Berkeley, Calif., Rabbi Yehuda Ferris, co-director of the Chabad Jewish Center Berkeley, sent out an email last week about “certain mitzvahs” that could help. The response has been strong, he said, including hearing from one young man who said he was going to don tefillin until the boys come home.
Ferris used Facebook to encourage Jews to light Shabbat candles on Friday night, and to ask people already lighting them to go the extra step and light them early. The plea spread quickly, he said, and even with the deluge of online demands, people took the time to join in: “People are coming out of the woodwork who wouldn’t usually respond on Facebook.”
Last Shabbat, the Chabad center held a farbrengen dedicated to the boys. “A little light pushes away a lot of darkness,” affirmed the rabbi.
Parents of Teens Call for Action
Meanwhile, on Tuesday, the mothers of the three kidnapped boys traveled to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, where Rachel Frenkel—the mother of Naftali Frenkel, who grew up in Israel but holds U.S. citizenship—implored to those assembled to do something about the situation. Then she, Bat-Galim Shaar and Iris Yifrach—mothers of Gilad Shaar and Eyal Yifrach—joined hundreds of others at the Chabad House in Geneva to pray for the safe return of their children.
According to Israel Hayom, Frenkel said that the kidnapping has united Israel and Jews around the world, and everyone is waiting for the boys to come home safely.
The site also reported that during the service, a shofar was blown, and Chabad Rabbi Menachem Mendel Pevsner of Institutions Habad Genève said: “For a moment, everyone forgot about their own pursuits and prayed from their hearts. We felt like we were not in Geneva, but rather next to the Western Wall in Jerusalem.”
The presence of the three women in Geneva was said to have drawn much-needed attention to the world stage for the plight of these families and their sons.
Increase in Mitzvot
People have also come together in Australia. On June 22, more than 250 members of the Sydney Jewish community gathered at the iconic Bondi Beach. Under the direction of Dana Amir from Hagshama Sydney, the crowd held up a banner with the hashtag #Bringbackourboys, as photographers and the general public took pictures.
It was followed by Rabbi Danny Yaffe from Young Adult Chabad, who encouraged the community to take on mitzvot and good deeds, explaining that the Jewish nation is one body and when one part hurts, the entire body feels it. Many of the men put on tefillin, and women committed to lighting Shabbat candles, not to mention numerous sign-ups of people slated to volunteer with “Our Big Kitchen” in Bondi, a Chabad-run community kitchen to help those in need. The project was the initiative of Hagshama Sydney and was hosted by the Jewish Young Adult Organizations of Sydney.
And in Melbourne, hundreds gathered at a synagogue with less than six hours prior notice of a special service.
Also in Australia, Rabbi Meir Shlomo Kluwgant, president of the Rabbinical Council of Victoria and president of the Organisation of Rabbis of Australasia (ORA), said his group put out a media release “condemning the terrorists who perpetrated this crime, and calling on all communities and shuls to gather in prayer and solidarity for their safe return.”
Groups and schools, including one who heard from a young man who went to yeshivah last year with one of the missing teens, ran their own services as well, he said.
“Let us take these young boys home with us tonight and remember them not only in our prayers, but more importantly, through our actions,” Kluwgant said last week during a keynote address at a prayer service held by the RCV/COSV—the Council of Orthodox Synagogues of Victoria.
“There is no one in this room who has nothing they can’t add in their service of G‑d and to Man. Let us resolve, for the sake of our children, to bring light into a dark world, so that we will imminently hear of the safe return of Yaakov Naftali ben Rochel Devorah, Gilad Michael ben Bat Galim and Eyal ben Iris Teshura to their parents, to their home and to their people.”
Coming full-circle back to Massachusetts, at the Chabad Center of Sudbury, Mass., Rabbi Yisroel Freeman gathered a dozen people for tehillim on Father’s Day—June 15—and then added content to his Tuesday-night class in honor of the kidnapped students. He also encouraged as many people as possible to say extra tehillim (psalms) and to light Shabbat candles in their homes.
The teenagers’ parents have been asking people to increase in mitzvot, said Freeman, citing that one of the young men’s fathers had sent a message via Chabad that everyone should spread the awareness of lighting Shabbat candles and have their children in mind.
There is both a spiritual and a practical side to raising awareness, explained the rabbi. “As Jews, we know prayer and mitzvot. We believe they make a difference, and we want to help tip the scale. And on the practical scale, it’s important that people understand what’s at stake, and are helping to get out the word.”
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