It was December of 2023.

The footage, recovered by the Israeli army in the Gaza tunnels and released by the Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum, shows six men and women lighting makeshift Hanukkah candles and singing songs of the festival.

The six have names, because each name is a person and a person is a world.

Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Ori Danino, Alex Lobanov, Carmel Gat, and Almog Sarusi.

The six were murdered by Hamas terrorists at point-blank range in a tunnel, once dug by children, in the Tel Sultan neighborhood of Rafah, in southern Gaza, on August 10, 2024, shortly before Israeli forces reached their location.

Two days later, the bodies were recovered, and the six returned home to enter the earth. The central symbolism of Hanukkah is the victory of light over darkness. We celebrate the miracle of the oil that burned for eight days in a desecrated and darkened Temple.

This metaphor has taken on a literal and poignant dimension. The Hamas tunnels represent the opposite of the Temple of Jerusalem: places of captivity, fear, and darkness.

By lighting candles, the hostages recreated the Maccabeans' original act of purification and resistance. The candle was not merely a ritual object; it was an act of existential defiance. They brought light, the six of them, to a space designed to be a hell, reaffirming their humanity and their identity under the threat of cannibalistic captors.