On a Sunday morning in Central Park, you can usually see many regulars circling the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir, or perhaps catch a glimpse of an organized charity run or marathon.

This past Sunday, January 14, was different. An estimated 2,000 runners and walkers gathered with hostage posters and Israeli flags held high to mark 100 days that the hostages taken by Hamas have been held in captivity, and to “Run for Their Lives.”

Before the run began, several addressed the crowd. Organizer Shany Granot-Lubaton stated, “We want to send a message to everyone, to the international community, to ambassadors, to D.C., to Jerusalem, to Qatar, to Egypt, to everyone involved,” that our No. 1 mission is to “bring them home now.”

Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine spoke in Hebrew before switching to English. Observing that the world has not paid enough attention to the hostages, he said: “Hamas has perpetrated the largest mass kidnapping in modern world history. This should have been at the top of every country’s diplomatic agency for every day, every hour and every minute of the last 100 days. From the beginning, this was downplayed by the world community. And now, to their enormous shame, they have entirely moved on.

“We will be here every single week as long as it takes,” Levine continued. “We will march, we will walk, we will run, we will scream until every one of the hostages is home where they need to be.”

Among the hostages’ relatives in Central Park was New Jersey resident Yael Alexander, mother of 20-year-old hostage Edan Alexander. Sho cried out, “I am begging [President Joe] Biden and the American government please bring my son home,” further exclaiming, “The suffering and anxiety we live with every day is unbearable.”

“Run for Their Lives,” part of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, organizes weekly gatherings of runners and walkers to raise awareness of the hostages.

As Granot-Lubaton told those gathered, we hope that we won’t have to see each other at future runs because the hostages will be released.

Until that time, however, we will heed the caution of the organizers who told us to stick together as we proceeded through Central Park, because we were proudly holding our Israeli flags high.

Judith Falk is the creator of the Upper West Side Shtetl Facebook Group. You can follow her on instagram @upperwestsideshtetl. She is an employee of The City of New York and is writing this article in her personal capacity, and not as an employee of The City of New York.