More than a century ago, Friedrich Nietzsche famously declared that “God is dead.” But in the fetid, pitch-dark tunnels beneath Gaza—where air was scarce, food scarce still, and the future nearly absent—God and Nietzsche coexisted.For dozens of Israeli hostages taken during Hamas’s brutal October 7, 2023, attack, survival meant something more than physical endurance. Inside those underground cells, belief returned with unexpected force—sometimes in the form of sacred verses from the Book of Psalms, other times through the secular wisdom of Nietzsche’s existential despair. What united them was the same core truth: the need for meaning, for something to hold onto when everything else—light, freedom, identity—was stripped away.
Omer Shem Tov ’s Psalm 20 and Nietzsche’s “Why”
Omer Shem Tov, 20 at the time of his abduction, had been a secular Israeli, waiting tables and planning a post-army trip to South America. He was seized at the Nova music festival, along with friends, and quickly spirited into the Gaza tunnel network—lowered underground in a plastic tub.Days into his captivity, without access to clocks or sunlight, Shem Tov began to pray. He clung to Psalm 20—“May the Lord answer you on a day of distress”—a passage that, by eerie coincidence, his mother was reciting back home in Herzliya, unaware her son had adopted the same verse as his mantra. For him, faith didn’t emerge as sudden revelation, but as necessity—a response to isolation, uncertainty, and fear. He began blessing his food, making promises to God, and vowed to don tefillin in prayer if he ever returned home.But if God gave him ritual, Nietzsche offered something else: a reason to endure. A saying frequently repeated among hostages was drawn from the German philosopher, popularised by Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl: “He who has a why can bear with any how.” It had reportedly been spoken by Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an Israeli-American hostage, before he was executed by his captors. The phrase reverberated through the tunnels like scripture. One hostage later had it tattooed on his arm.
The Rediscovery of Faith in Captivity
Shem Tov wasn’t alone in finding God in Gaza. Other hostages, like Eli Sharabi—who survived 491 days in captivity only to learn that his wife and two daughters had been killed—described saying the Shema Yisrael prayer each night and attempting to recite the kiddush over water when wine wasn’t available.Ritual became resistance. For many, Jewish observance wasn’t imposed by identity politics or external pressure—it was personal, a lifeline in the most dehumanising conditions imaginable. One hostage described saving a bottle of grape-flavoured drink for the Sabbath prayer. Others placed their hands on their heads in lieu of skullcaps. To the captors, it may have seemed like theatre. To the hostages, it was meaning.
Nietzsche Underground
And yet, alongside God, Nietzsche endured. Stripped of everything familiar, hostages turned to a philosopher who had buried God in the pages of The Gay Science but also taught generations that suffering could be endured if one had a reason. In the absence of hope, they made purpose. In the absence of time, they made ritual.Even Shem Tov’s captors unwittingly played a role. After an Israeli military unit passed above ground, the gunmen handed Shem Tov reading material they had recovered—suspecting hidden codes. Among the texts: religious literature, and a printed card of Psalm 20. No names, no signatures. Just the verse. It mirrored the exact same card that had been handed to his mother months earlier by a hostage support group.
The Fragility of Life, the Tenacity of Faith
At one point, Shem Tov spent 50 days in a dark, suffocating tunnel cell. He was given a biscuit a day, a few drops of brackish water, and suffered asthma attacks that went nearly untreated. In desperation, he begged God to move him—anywhere else. Within minutes, his captors relocated him to a better chamber. Whether miracle or coincidence, he saw it as divine intervention.From there, he survived through quiet cooperation—cleaning, cooking, helping clear debris after tunnel collapses. He maintained the Sabbath. He saved a bottle of drink for a moment of blessing. He kept faith alive in a place designed to crush it.Now home, he prays daily with tefillin, just as he promised. He has toured Jewish communities in the US, speaking not only of suffering but of resilience. His mother, too, now observes the Sabbath. Theirs is not a tale of religious conversion, but of rediscovery—of how stripped of society’s noise, ancient traditions and modern philosophy became tools of survival.