United We Stand: Stern College Welcomes Sapir Cohen
It’s 6:58 p.m. and there’s standing room only in the Koch Auditorium.
The event was meant to start at 7 p.m., but students started flooding in half an hour before that. For a third of these students, it was one of their first days of college classes. By 7:03 p.m., the entire room was full. There were people from Dallas, Queens, South Africa, Miami, Montreal and many more places. The back wall was lined with cameras from news outlets such as NBC, ABC and more. Every spot left open on the wings had a student standing in it. And everyone was there for one reason: to honor Sapir Cohen and her experience.
As Sapir Cohen walked in behind Rabbi Shay Schachter — who had been hosting her for the past few weeks — she looked normal. Dressed in a pale green matching set, with her white purse and Trader Joe's bag, she could have been any one of the students sitting in that room. The din quieted immediately as we watched her make her way to the front.
Her story was deeply inspiring. She was in captivity for 55 days after being captured from Kibbutz Nir Oz. For a month prior to that fateful day, she had been saying Perek 25 of Tehillim, having committed to 30 days of connecting to Hashem through tefillah. She was doing this because she had felt terrible, and wanted to make the feeling go away. Instagram told her that might happen if she said that prayer for 30 days. Oct. 7 was day number 30.
As she was hiding in a house with Sasha Troufanov, her boyfriend, Cohen tells us that she heard hundreds of voices yelling “Allahu akbar,” and heard the sounds of her Israeli brothers and sisters as they were being shot and killed. Cohen was under a bed with Troufanov, “waiting for [their] turn.”
Despite being taken, split up from her boyfriend and beaten, Cohen did not lose her will to survive. She spent a month in a house and another month in a tunnel. During that time, Cohen tried to establish relationships with the terrorists, talking to them for hours about the Quran in hopes that they would give her more food if she befriended them. She cheered up a fellow hostage, only 16 years old, telling her as they were moved to the tunnels, “We are in Gaza, we have to see the number one attraction.”
Even the terrorists saw this spark in Cohen. When faced with a terrorist who drew a memorial candle with her name on it, Cohen was angered. Upon her questioning, the terrorist, as Cohen related, revealed that he hated her but when she was there (in captivity), the place lit up.
It was not only Cohen that made an impact on the terrorists. Upon seeing the hostage square in Tel Aviv, one terrorist, reports Cohen, pulled her over to tell her that when all the Jews are together — the Hiloni next to the Haredi — they are very strong.
Rabbi Schachter, in his opening words, encouraged us to “look inside ourselves and see what power we have.” “We are the leaders of tomorrow,” President Berman told The Commentator. “We have stood with our brothers and sisters. We pray for our brothers and sisters in Israel everyday. Our first day, we showed up to hear Sapir Cohen.”
The message of the evening was this: we the students of YU, from all over the world, have to use our power to impact the world in a positive way. Showing up is only the first step. We must pray, dance, give, stand up and so much more. We must harness within ourselves the same energy as Sapir Cohen: willing to sacrifice ourselves. In President Berman’s words, “We resoundingly say to the world: Bring Them Home.”
Photo Caption: Sapir Cohen addresses students in Koch Auditorium
Photo Credit: Yeshiva University
