Weekly Chasidic Story#1462 (5786-13) 25 Kislev 5786 (Dec.15, 2025)

"A Jewish Hostage's Chanukah"

"The memories are always with me, though not all of them do I try to recall," said the returned hostage. "Yet, the memory of my Chanukah miracle often comes back to me."

Why This Week? This whole week we celebrate the festival of Chanukah.

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A Jewish Hostage's Chanukah"

Captain Gil Fogel was a Phantom jet pilot who was captured by the Syrians during the 1982 Lebanon War. At age 25, he had flown on a mission after the first ceasefire to attack the Syrian SA-8 missile batteries that had been deployed the previous day in the Bekaa Valley. As he exited the attack maneuver, a Syrian missile hit his plane. He and his navigator, Lieutenant Colonel Aharon Katz, ejected. Katz struggled with his parachute and was killed. Fogel landed safely and was captured.

For two long years, he endured brutal tortures, until he was finally released and returned to Israel, where he later held several positions in the Israeli Air Force headquarters.

"The memories are always with me, though most of them I do not try to recall," said Fogel in an interview with Sichat HaShavua. [1] "Yet, the memory of my Chanuka miracle often comes back to me."

Three weeks after his capture, a Red Cross representative visited him. These meetings occurred every two weeks. During one of them, he received a package from home that contained a Bible. "I read it frequently," Fogel recalls. "For example, before Passover, I searched for references related to the holiday. On Tu B'Shvat, I looked for mentions of plants in the Bible. The Bible gave me the chance to engage with actual Jewish sources."

He was held for a long time in a dank, dark cell. Winter was approaching. Fogel estimated that Hanukkah was near, and began to imagine how his family at home would be preparing for the Festival of Lights. The longing overwhelmed him. He took a tube of toothpaste sent from home and shaped it into a small cup. Every morning, he would receive a meager portion of labneh (yogurt cheese) with olive oil. He collected the oil, drop by drop, until he had gathered what he calculated/hoped would be a sufficient amount in the makeshift cup for eight nights.

He managed to unravel threads from his blanket and twist them into a wick. He placed the wick into the cup of olive oil, creating a small makeshift lamp. But how would he light it? A few days later, a miracle occurred:

"They brought me out of the cell to meet with an Austrian diplomat. I was waiting for him in a nearby room when suddenly I noticed that right under me, on the floor, eight matchsticks were scattered. I rubbed my eyes in disbelief.

"After quickly counting the matchsticks a second time to be sure, I decided this was my personal Chanuka miracle. Seizing a moment when the Syrian interrogators were distracted, I prayed that no one would see me and quickly gathered them up and hid them in my sock."

When Chanuka arrived, Fogel asked each Syrian guard who passed by his corridor to light a cigarette for him. Using the cigarette, he secretly lit one of the matchsticks, ignited the wick, and quietly sang the Chanuka songs he remembered. "That was my small victory over the Syrians," Fogel recalls with pride.

Today [2012], Fogel serves as a pilot for El Al, and he still retains a special fondness for Chanuka. "A few years ago, I hiked with my son in the month of Kislev, up Mount Kilimanjaro (the highest peak in Africa, standing at 5,895 meters). We didn't forget to bring the menorah. We climbed to very challenging heights, where the oxygen is thin and the conditions are difficult, but every evening we lit the Hanukkah candle."
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Source: Freely adapted by Yerachmiel Tilles from a literal AI translation of a back page article in Sichat Shavua (#1321)

Footnote: [1] A popular Chabad weekly Hebrew publication in Israel. (Longer, more detailed articles can be found be searching Gil Foger on Google.)

Yerachmiel Tilles is co-founder and associate director of Ascent-of-Safed, and chief editor of this website (and of KabbalaOnline.org). He has hundreds of published stories to his credit, and many have been translated into other languages. He tells them live at Ascent nearly every Saturday night.

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