They Took Everything from Him, and All He Wanted Was to Be "Him"

Shir Siegel on her journey to see her parents Aviva and Keith return home

Shir Siegel is the exact voice I yearn to hear. The daughter of Aviva and Keith Siegel who were kidnapped together to Gaza (and then separated when Aviva was returned home after 51 days, and Keith only 433 days later), Shir is a shining example of someone who has changed, and seeks to fix.

Following October 7th, Shir tells us that a first she she was in shock and didn’t know what to do. Then she began protesting and in her own words “didn’t stop.” She was angry, and called for protesters to “burn the country.”

Until, she says, she began to understand that this wouldn’t help anyway, and it wasn’t the Shir she, or her parents, wanted her to be. So she began talking, and listening. And when she welcomed her aba (dad) home, all he wanted, she says, were “the simplest things that make him him”: a kiddush cup and a kipa on his head.

This clip is long, but well worth hearing in Shir’s own words. She is a beautiful, and powerful, young woman.

From A Moment of Wisdom