Friday, Oct. 6, 2023 was Shelly Shem Tov’s 51st birthday. It was a perfect day.
“We woke up in the morning and went to Jerusalem. We ate and drank and laughed, and I was very grateful. On the way home, I looked at the sky and said, ‘Thank you, G-d. I have everything I need.”
That “everything” meant Mikey, her husband of 30 years; daughter Danna, 27; and sons Amit, 24, and Omer, almost 21. They live together in the upscale city of Herzliya on Israel’s Mediterranean coast.
At 11 p.m. that Oct. 6 night, after the family’s Simchat Torah dinner, Shem Tov’s youngest son Omer gave her another Happy Birthday hug and left for the Nova Festival, and “we went to sleep.”
Shem Tov shared what came next — for the next 505 days — with a rapt audience at “The Strength to Stand,” presented by JNF-USA Mountain States, March 25, at Temple Sinai.
“We woke up on Oct. 7 at 6:29 in the morning to rockets and missiles, and our first call was to Omer. We didn’t know where the festival was. He’s a grown man and I don’t ask him where he goes, but he said he was OK, although there were also missiles there.
“In our crazy country — missiles and alarms — we are used to it, so I thought it was the regular situation and went back to sleep.”
A half-hour later, Mikey woke Shelly up and said, “Listen, this is not the regular situation. Something is happening.”
Shelly and Mikey were able to reach Omer, who said he was running and people were shooting and there were bodies everywhere. Omer sent his parents his live GPS location.
“All the family, the four of us, are looking at the phone screen and see his point of location. The point is moving for about four minutes, then stops. Then it started moving toward the border with Gaza, then we see Omer is getting into Gaza.”
At first, the family thought maybe the GPS was wrong, or that somebody stole Omer’s phone.
Mikey got in the car to drive to Re’im, where the Nova Festival was held, but he was stopped by police in Beersheba. He spent the rest of the day at the hospital, hoping to find out where Omer was.
At 8 p.m., Saturday, Shelly received a call from Omer’s friend.
“He was shaking on the phone and he’s telling me, ‘Shelly, I’m sorry. I need to send you a video Hamas posted, and I think that Omer is in the video.’
“I immediately tell him, ‘No, no, no, no, no! I don’t want to see it because all day long I am seeing horrible videos and I’m afraid of what I’m about to see.”
Shelly handed the phone to her brother who was near her and he confirmed that the man in the video was indeed Omer.
“I took the phone and I saw Omer, handcuffed on the floor of a pickup truck. I heard Allah Akbar and I saw a Hamas logo. I fell apart and started to shout, ‘Oh my G-d, Omer is in the hands of the devil,’ as my brother tried to calm me.”
She sent Mikey the video, and he came home. They knew Omer was kidnapped, but alive.
“We don’t know what to do. Nobody’s answering — not the police, not the army, not the government. But there was one thing that we knew — we were together, and that we will have the power to bring Omer home.”
The[dropcap]/ first step Shem Tov took toward gaining that power was to post on Instagram and Facebook.
“I put Omer’s picture and I wrote that my Omer is kidnapped, and if there are more families in the same situation, they should call or text me.
“You can image what a night we had in front of the TV, still seeing horrible videos, thinking about my Omer, what was happening to him, what they were doing to him right then and how he was feeling.”
The next morning, the Shem Tov’s family and friends came to their home to be with them, and at the same time, the phone kept ringing with people calling who were in the same situation as they were.
Shelly had her family and friends compile a list of all the families missing their loved ones, along with their phone numbers, and by 5 p.m. that day, the list grown to 400 people.
At a certain point during that second day, with her house full of people, Shelly became overwhelmed and needed a quiet moment of solitude.
“I went to Omer’s room and I locked his door, and I started to speak with G-d. I said, ‘I don’t have control over Omer’s situation, but please let me understand what is in my control.’
“I sat on Omer’s bed. I shut my eyes. I started to breathe, and I’m said to myself, ‘Everything will be OK.’ I’m asking what is in my control. Suddenly, it was clear to me: positive thinking. Create a positive reality.
“I open my eyes and I see Omer’s room, and it is messy as usual. I said to myself, ‘I will not clean up his room. He will come home and will clean it himself.”
Shem Tov went back into the living room and told everyone, “Listen, nobody is touching Omer’s room. He is coming back home and he will arrange his room himself.”
She returned to Omer’s room and turned the light on, and wrote on masking tape, “Do not turn the light off.”
For 505 days the light stayed on and the room stayed messy.
[dropcap]During those 505 days, Shelly Shem Tov did everything she could to unite the families of Hamas’ hostages, “because only when we are united, nobody can touch us.”
“All the time, everywhere I went, I asked people to raise our light, their light, to be good to each other and to care. I think only when we are together, we have the power that nobody can destroy us. We are right in the history of our nation. I spoke about it everywhere — that we need to be connected.
“To be a family of a hostage is horrible. Nobody can understand. There are no words to describe the feeling. But there is one thing can people maybe can understand: the moment when your child gets lost and the five minutes you are in total panic. You want to find your child. Your heart is pounding. You can’t breathe. And it’s only five minutes.
“My Omer was lost for 505 days in the hands of the devil. Every second, he could live or die. We didn’t sleep for 505 days. We didn’t want to be at home. In the morning, I was afraid to open my eyes because I didn’t know what the day would bring.”
Shelly went into Omer’s room every day, and spoke to him: “Omer, I know that you are strong. I know that you have faith. We are doing everything to bring you home.”
“I was sending him my love and power,” she said. “And I was speaking with G-d that He will protect Omer.”
Over the course of those 505 days, Shelly feels she received many signs from G-d and from Omer. One that sticks out in her mind took place three weeks after Omer was abducted.
“I got a card with chapter 20 in Tehillim (Psalms) and a picture of Omer, and every day I was in Omer’s room reading this chapter.”
In the meantime, Omer, having been with two other hostages, was placed by himself in a cage deep down in the tunnels of Gaza. He couldn’t stand. He couldn’t spread his arms. After 50 days in total darkness, the terrorists moved him to another slightly larger tunnel where he could stand up and move a bit.
He was there with nine terrorists for 27 days, and the IDF was above them. The tunnel shook from the tanks.
At night, he could hear the IDF soldiers talking through the ventilation, all the while a terrorist had his gun pointed at Omer, threatening to shoot him in the head if anyone came to rescue him.
After 27 days, the IDF left the area. Omer’s terrorist captors went above ground and brought back a lot of the things the soldiers had left behind, one of which was a card with Tehillim chapter 20.
Omer read that Psalm every day in the tunnel while Shelly read it every day in his room:
May Hashem answer you on the day of distress; may the Name of Jacob’s G-d make you impregnable.
May He dispatch your help from the Sanctuary, and support you from Zion.
May He remember all your offerings, and consider all your offerings, and consider your burnt offerings generous, Selah.
May He grant you your hearts’ [desire], and fulfill your every plan.
May we sing for joy at your salvation, and raise our banner in the Name of our G-d; may Hashem fulfill all your requests.
“I believe that was no coincidence,” Shelly said. “G-d sent me and him this chapter to help us deal with this situation.”
Occurrences like this kept Shelly Shem Tov going through the 505-day ordeal, but she was also buoyed by the human support she received.
“The love of the people in Israel and the outside of Israel was amazing. It gave us strength to understand that we were not alone.”
Finally, on Feb. 22, 2025, Omer was released, along with Tal Shoham, Eliya Cohen and Omer Wenkert as part of a ceasefire agreement with Hamas.
Following his release, Omer picked up the mantle from his mother and traveled internationally to advocate for the release of remaining hostages, appearing at public events, and meeting with political leaders.
But immediately after Omer was released from captivity and cleared to leave the hospital, Shelly and Mike Shem Tov had a huge party at home. After everyone left, Shelly took Omer to his room, and told him he needed to pick up his clothes from the floor and put them in the laundry.
He took down the masking tape and turned off the light.
His mother sighs: “That moment was pure happiness.”
© IJN 2026