After risking his life to save others at the Nova festival, Bar Kuperstein endured 738 days of Hamas captivity, sustained by Jewish faith and his family’s extraordinary determination.

By Hezy Laing

As Hamas terrorists attacked the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, Bar Kuperstein stayed behind to help the wounded. His determination to save others would lead to 738 days of captivity in Gaza.

Kuperstein was just 21 years old when he was abducted. But his willingness to shoulder responsibility for others had begun years before the attack.

A Young Man Who Put Others First

At 16, Kuperstein had taken on extraordinary family responsibilities after his father, Tal, suffered a devastating accident.

Tal, a volunteer emergency responder, was seriously injured in a traffic accident while on his way to help save a four-year-old girl. After several operations and a stroke, he lost his ability to walk and speak.

Bar stepped forward to help support the family, taking responsibility for the falafel business his father had recently opened. Five years later, that same instinct to help others would define his actions during one of Israel’s darkest days.

On October 7, Kuperstein was working as deputy security officer at the Nova music festival near Kibbutz Re’im.

When Hamas terrorists launched their attack, he helped organize the evacuation of festivalgoers. As vehicles crowded the exit, he urged police officers to clear the traffic jam so people could escape.

He also began treating wounded partygoers. In one emergency, he improvised a tourniquet using police tape to stop a victim’s bleeding.

As gunfire spread, Kuperstein continued helping the injured rather than concentrating solely on his own escape. Eventually, Hamas terrorists captured him and took him into Gaza.

Photographs and video of Kuperstein bound on the ground circulated after his abduction. His family faced the terrifying uncertainty of whether he was alive.

738 Days of Fear and Suffering

Kuperstein spent more than two years in Hamas captivity, much of it underground, enduring severe deprivation, repeated beatings and psychological torture.

He described being confined with five other hostages in a cramped space barely larger than a mattress. They had little food, no sunlight and almost no control over their lives.

Sometimes, he recalled, the terrorists had food while their prisoners went hungry. The physical suffering was accompanied by constant threats intended to break the captives psychologically.

In one particularly terrifying episode, a Hamas guard threatened to execute three hostages and ordered the prisoners to choose who would die.

The hostages believed their lives were in immediate danger, and Kuperstein later described turning to God in desperate prayer. The threat was not carried out, but the experience revealed the psychological cruelty the captives endured.

Despite their suffering, the hostages tried to protect one another emotionally. After beatings, they hugged and encouraged each other, determined not to allow their captors to destroy their spirit.

For Kuperstein, prayer became an essential part of that struggle.

Always in God’s Hands

While Bar was imprisoned, his mother, Julie, received a telephone call from one of his Hamas captors.

The terrorist attempted to assert his control over her son’s fate. Julie answered with a declaration of faith that would become central to the family’s story.

“My son is not in your hands, he is in the hands of God, and you are also in the hands of God,” she told him.

According to the family’s account, the guard was momentarily speechless. Her words became the family motto: “Always in the Hands of God.”

The phrase appeared on bracelets and other items associated with the campaign for Bar’s release. After returning home, Kuperstein displayed a bracelet bearing those words, connecting his mother’s faith during captivity with his own experiences underground.

Julie also maintained a public campaign for her son’s freedom, joining the families who worked tirelessly to keep the hostages in Israel’s national consciousness.

In another remarkable connection between mother and son, Bar later revealed that he had heard Julie speaking on the radio during captivity, on his birthday. Her voice and her faith gave him strength at a time when he desperately needed reassurance that his family had not forgotten him.

Keeping Shabbat in the Darkness

Kuperstein’s connection to Judaism grew stronger during his imprisonment.

Before October 7, he considered himself traditional but did not fully observe Shabbat. Captivity brought a deeper commitment to Jewish prayer and religious practice.

Even underground, the hostages searched for ways to preserve their traditions. According to Julie, they welcomed Shabbat by reciting Kiddush over water instead of wine and singing Shalom Aleichem, the traditional Friday evening hymn.

For Havdalah, the ceremony marking the end of Shabbat, they improvised with whatever materials were available. A flashlight replaced the customary candle, while mint-scented medicine served in place of fragrant spices.

These small acts of religious observance took on enormous significance. Their captors controlled their food, movements and surroundings, but the hostages still found ways to maintain a connection with Jewish life.

At times, Kuperstein was forbidden to speak Hebrew or pray aloud. He responded by praying silently.

He later recalled hearing his captors praying and deciding that he would answer their prayers for violence with prayers for life.

The guards also reportedly pressured the hostages to convert to Islam. Kuperstein and his companions resisted, preserving their Jewish identity despite the threats surrounding them.

A Father’s Fight to Welcome His Son Home

While Bar struggled to survive underground, his father was undertaking his own extraordinary battle.

Tal had been left severely disabled after his accident, relying on a wheelchair and struggling to communicate. During his son’s captivity, he worked with a speech therapist to recover his ability to speak.

His goal was not simply personal rehabilitation. He wanted to advocate publicly for Bar’s release and be able to welcome him home.

After a year of determined effort, Tal addressed a gathering supporting the hostages, speaking publicly about his son and the responsibilities Bar had assumed as a teenager.

His recovery efforts became another expression of the family’s determination.

On October 13, 2025, after 738 days in captivity, Bar was finally released. The family that had spent more than two years fighting for his return could embrace him again.

But freedom did not immediately erase the effects of captivity. Julie described how her son struggled with sleep and had to carefully rebuild his strength after prolonged deprivation.

A Dream Fulfilled at Hostages Square

One of Kuperstein’s deepest wishes during captivity had been to put on tefillin again.

Tefillin are small leather boxes containing passages from the Torah, traditionally worn during weekday morning prayers.

On October 31, 2025, he fulfilled that dream at Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square, the place where Israelis had gathered for two years to demand the hostages’ return.

Standing alongside his father, Tal, Kuperstein wrapped the leather straps around his arm and recited the traditional blessings. The gathering brought together former captives, family members and supporters who had prayed for his freedom.

Kuperstein also used the occasion to call for the return of the deceased hostages whose bodies remained in Gaza.

At an earlier gathering, he had thanked the Israeli public for its support and invited people to join him in fulfilling his dream.

“I don’t have words to describe the love, what you did for me and the others,” he told the crowd.

Then, at the tefillin gathering, Kuperstein led those assembled in Shema Yisrael, Judaism’s declaration of faith in one God.

For much of his captivity, he had been forced to pray silently, sometimes unable even to speak his own language. Now he stood in the open air, beside the father who had fought to regain his voice, leading fellow Israelis in prayer.

The young man who had risked his life to save strangers at Nova was finally home, publicly expressing the faith he had held onto in Gaza’s tunnels.