On Nov. 6, the Young Israel of Scarsdale, in cooperation with UJA Westchester, hosted Mia Schem and her mother, Keren Scharf Schem. They spoke partly in English and partly in Hebrew, with a translator. Mia was kidnapped from the Nova Music Festival on October 7, 2023 and became a face of the hostages after Hamas released a video of her in captivity—the first video of an Israeli captive.
The large sanctuary was packed with residents of Scarsdale as well as people from neighboring towns.
Rabbi Jonathan Morgenstern addressed Mia. “To host you here brings kavod—honor—and kedusha—holiness—to our congregation and to the entire Westechester community. We know that the greatest mitzvah is that of pidyon shvuyim—redeeming captives. Someone who was, thank God, released, is literally kadosh. In the world of our grandparents and great-grandparents, the kedoshim—the holiest people—were the Holocaust survivors. And the sacred task of these kedoshim is to tell their stories—sipur yetziat Mitzrayim.”
Keren then described the morning of October 7, as she watched the news and realized that the Nova Festival, where Mia had gone, had been attacked by Hamas terrorists. After calling Mia many times and getting no answer, she realized that something had happened to her. “I stopped breathing,” she said. “More reports started coming in the next hour, and the word ‘kidnapped’ was suddenly in the air. I fell to the floor and I said to myself: ‘They kidnapped my daughter.’”
Keren then gave some background: She explained that she is 52 years old, a single mother of four, and a writer. Mia then introduced herself, saying that she is a 22 year-old who grew up in a home with a mother who was always busy trying to make ends meet. She had finished her army service a year before she was kidnapped and immediately started working to secure her own financial future.
Mia said that she went to the Nova Festival with her friend Elia Toledano. Once the rockets started, they got into Elia’s car and started back towards Tel Aviv. They found themselves being shot at by terrorists. The car stopped working, so they got out. Mia suddenly realized that her arm had been shot and was badly wounded. “From the adrenaline, I didn’t even feel any pain,” she said. “I just held onto my arm so that it wouldn’t fall off. I thought it was entirely disconnected from my body.”
They stayed by the car for two hours while they heard shooting and screaming all around them. Elia was taken by a terrorist after two hours. (His body was discovered by the IDF in an operation in December.) The terrorists were walking around, spraying everyone on the ground with bullets to ensure they were dead. Mia felt a strong will to survive, but understood she had nowhere to go. At one point she saw a man walking between the cars and called out to him for help. He answered her in Arabic to come with him. She did so, feeling it was her only chance of survival. A pickup truck soon arrived with five terrorists inside, and they pulled her by her hair into the truck. She closed her eyes as they drove. Eventually one terrorist said, “Welcome to Gaza.” They pulled her out of the truck by her hair and shoved her into a room.
Keren shared that on October 7, she started listening to her inner voice. As soon as she realized Mia was kidnapped, many people tried to give her advice, but she listened only to that inner voice.
“I knew she was alive. I felt it,” said Keren. “You have to understand: 252 people were kidnapped. Nothing like this had ever happened before. So there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’ The big question was: Should I put pictures and videos of Mia all over the world, or should I keep quiet and hide? … I decided to do it. We put signs with Mia’s picture all over Israel; we opened a ‘Bring Mia Home’ Instagram account, and added videos and pictures all the time.”
On October 16, 2023, Hamas released their first video of a captive—and it was of Mia. The video showed Mia resting in a bed with floral sheets, wearing a gauze bandage on her arm, and saying that she was kidnapped but being given good medical treatment and care. It was clear she was repeating what the terrorists were telling her to say. The video was taken the day after her captors “operated” on her arm. (She received no painkillers or fresh bandages.)
Keren recalled that after she saw the video she felt a roller coaster of emotions. “On the one hand, it gave me great hope because I saw my daughter alive. On the other hand, I had a huge fear: What’s happening to her, what are they doing to her?
“Because Mia has French citizenship as well, I realized that if there is someone who can help get her out, it would be the French. They have a good relationship with the Middle East and they were a part of the negotiations. I believed the French would do everything to get the French hostages out of Gaza.”
Keren succeeded in obtaining two meetings with French President Emmanuel Macron—one via Zoom and one face-to-face in Israel. “I felt his commitment wasn’t strong enough. I felt I needed the former French President Sarkozy, who works with businessmen in Qatar. I knew I needed to meet with him.” And she did. “I said, ‘I came to see you because I know you have connections in Qatar. Please help me get my daughter out of Gaza.” Sarkozy was encouraging. An hour after their meeting he called Keren and told her he had made some calls to Qatar on her behalf. “I felt a sense of relief because I felt like Qatar now had pressure to release Mia Schem.”
Mia shared that in one of the apartments in which she was held, a terrorist said to her, “Come and see your mom on TV. This is the last time you will ever see your mom.”
She said: “I saw her for one minute in an interview, sitting with my brothers, and I heard her say one sentence. She said she trusts the IDF and we have to stay optimistic. I thought to myself: ‘Who am I to break now when my mother is being so strong?’ It gave me a lot of hope to know they were doing everything in their power to bring me back home.
“I wasn’t afraid to die,” continued Mia, “but I was afraid of the unknown: Will I see my family again? If so, when? I had nothing to do except think and imagine. I imagined seeing my mother again, and pictured us hugging. I also imagined how I would speak to people after I was freed. Everything I imagined happened.”
Keren added, “And I also kept imagining how I would hug Mia when I would see her again. I imagined how she would feel in my arms, how she would smell. I didn’t give up for a moment and Mia didn’t give up either. We felt each other during this time. It was a kind of communication between us.
“In November, after 45 days that Mia was in captivity, I heard there was going to be a hostage deal,” Keren continued. “I couldn’t believe it was happening! I made contact with Sarkozy again, and I said, ‘Mia must be in the deal.’ They started to publish lists of the released hostages for each day. But days were going by and Mia was not on the list. One day, then another day … every day, Mia was not on the list.”
Mia recounted that when the ceasefire started, she was taken to the tunnels. There, for the first time, she met five other Israeli women who had been taken captive. The terrorists told the women that they wouldn’t get out. They said the women would marry Gazans because Israel forgot all about them. “Once, we held hands and prayed the Shiur Hamaalot prayer together,” said Mia. “It felt very powerful.”
One day, a guard gave Mia a hijab and an Arab dress and said, “You! Israel.” Mia told the Young Israel attendees: “He brought me out of there, and I left behind those five other women. This is the reason I can’t stop doing what I’m doing.
“After I was released, I was in and out of the hospital for three months and had various surgeries on my arm. But my arm is the last thing I’m worried about. The only picture I always see in my mind is me leaving those five Israeli women behind in the tunnels. We can’t forget them—not even for a second.”
“We should all keep imagining and visualizing that all the remaining hostages will come back home,” said Keren. “I know the reality is complicated, but a picture has so much power. If we can visualize it and picture it, we are creating hope and faith.”
As Keren and Mia were escorted out of the sanctuary, the entire audience stood and chanted, “Bring them home now!”
