Outside a suburban Skokie synagogue, Adrianne Burgher pulled her three sons close and choked back tears as they watched other children cut yellow ribbons off a tree as music in Hebrew pulsed from a speaker.
The ribbons represented the 20 Israeli hostages released by Hamas on Monday as the first step in a delicate U.S.-brokered ceasefire deal. Twenty-eight more ribbons will remain on the tree to represent the hostages who were killed in Hamas captivity. Four of their remains had been returned to Israel as of Monday, the Associated Press reported. The remainder of the bodies are meant to be returned as part of the first phase of the ceasefire deal.
“It’s been a long time,” Burgher said. “Thank God that so many people have come home, but so many have been lost. … I don’t think I processed it until right now, this moment.”
Israel also released about 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and promised a rush of food and aid into Gaza, where humanitarian groups have sounded the alarm over mass starvation as Israel’s blockade squeezed the area’s food and resources.
Matan cuts down a commemorative ribbon tied around a tree outside Skokie Valley Agudath Jacob Synagogue. The ribbons honor the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas. Twenty were removed Monday after the release of captives. Twenty-eight ribbons will remain to honor those killed in captivity.
Candace Dane Chambers/Sun-Times
The news of a ceasefire, however, was cautiously welcomed across the Chicago area, where mass protests have called for an end to Israeli raids that have killed nearly 70,000 Palestinians and razed large swaths of Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023, when the hostages were taken and nearly 1,200 Israelis were killed in the Hamas attack. Several demonstrations calling for the hostages to be released also have taken place over the last two years.
In the aftermath of the news of a ceasefire, the common thread appears to be that demonstrators at pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli gatherings are holding out hope that the peace deal will stick and violence will cease.
“I had a hard time believing it. It had been a hard two years, so many times we got our hopes up,” Rabbi Ari Hart said.
Hart addressed a crowd of a couple dozen people outside Skokie Valley Agudath Jacob Synagogue, thanking President Donald Trump and others involved in pushing for a deal between Israel and Hamas. He read the name of each hostage to the crowd.
“This is not a faraway thing for us,” Hart said. “It feels like it’s been two years of Oct. 7, and maybe finally this will be Oct. 8.”
Burgher and her husband, Scott, who live in Skokie, brought their sons, ages 9, 13 and 15, to the vigil because they felt it was an important part of Jewish history.
“So much healing needs to happen,” she said. “A lot of people there lost trust in the government and their ability to protect them. A lot of people here have lost trust in people to see us as people and not as monsters.”
While the war in Gaza has apparently driven a wedge between supporters of Palestinians and supporters of Israel, Burgher said the two sides may have more in common than they realize.
“I would cry, still, because there’s so much pain,” she said about Palestinians feeling the weight of the Israeli attacks. “There’s pain for everybody, across the board, too much pain.”
Hart echoed the sentiment, lamenting that lives were unnecessarily cut short in both Gaza and Israel.
“It’s a double tragedy; it didn’t have to be this way,” he said. “I think there’s a lot of people who are traumatized, hurt, afraid. … Nobody here wanted this war. We didn’t choose that.”
Leah Polin, the Chicagoan whose grandson was taken hostage by Hamas and later killed in captivity, rejoiced Monday about the newly freed Israeli hostages.
“I’m very, very, very happy for the 20 who came out, ” Polin said in an interview with WBEZ on Monday. “Of course, it is juxtaposed with the fact that my grandson was slaughtered a year ago, and he is not among the 20 who survived. . . It’s very emotionally charged for me, both good and bad.”
Polin’s grandson, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, was one of many taken hostage at an open-air music festival in southern Israel near the Gaza border early on Oct. 7. The 23-year-old was killed last year.
His parents, Rachel Goldberg and Jon Polin, a native Chicagoan, led an extensive campaign called Bring Hersh Home, demanding the release of Goldberg-Polin and the other hostages still held by Hamas. Goldberg was recognized for their activism by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in 2024.
Hopes of a deal to release the Israeli hostages and establish a ceasefire in Gaza had risen and fallen several times over the past few years, and Goldberg-Polin’s death only heightened calls for a peace deal.
“The hope that perhaps a deal was near was so authentic it was crunchy,” Goldberg said at her son’s funeral last year in Jerusalem. “It tasted close, but it was not to be so. Those beautiful six survived together, and those beautiful six died together. And now they will be remembered together forever.”
Polin praised her son and her daughter-in-law for continuing to advocate for the remaining hostages, even after their son was killed.
“They have managed with grace and with elegance and with dignity to fight for the others,” Polin said. “I just admire them. They have not stopped working.”
Though she said Trump has not been one of her “favorite politicians,” she commended him for his part in negotiating the ceasefire and the hostage release.
“He apparently had the smarts or the egomania to push through it. I really think he is the one who has to be given the credit for getting it through,” Polin said.
Evanston residents Judith and Natalie Ranaan also were taken hostage Oct. 7 by Hamas. The mother and daughter were released nearly two weeks after they were captured.