Why we stood: a founder’s reflection on the Borehamwood hostage vigil

There was no grand strategy and no ambition to build an organisation. What we wanted was something steady and human. A fixed point in a disorienting time. A place where the hostages remained central - not as symbols or slogans, but as people.

Lara Lipsey[Missing Credit]

In time, the vigil became more than an act of remembrance. It became our safe space. At a moment when many Jews felt exposed, isolated or unsure where grief could be expressed without qualification, we built a community with one mission and one promise: to bring them all home.

From the outset, the vigil was intentionally quiet. No chants crafted for attention. No speeches designed for applause. Just stories and photographs of the hostages, candles, Israeli and British flags and people standing together, week after week. In solidarity, in hope and in song. That restraint mattered. This was not about politics or performance. It was about presence. Every week we sang Oseh Shalom, the Hatikvah and the National Anthem at the end.

What none of us anticipated was how deeply personal it would become. Over time, we came to know the families of the hostages thanks to Borehamwood superhero Nivi Feldman, who was leading the Missing Hostages and Families’ Forum - not as distant figures in news reports, but as parents, siblings and children living through an unthinkable reality. We carried their names, their messages, their hope. The vigil became a bridge between Borehamwood and Gaza’s shadows, between a local pavement and families waiting for a knock on the door.

It also became a place where voices emerged that had never been heard before. People who had never spoken publicly stood up to read a name, light a candle, or simply say, through tears, why they were there. Teenagers found the words adults could not. Elders of the community, including Holocaust survivors, spoke for the first time about fear, memory and responsibility. It was a place for people of all faiths and none. No one was trained. No one was polished. That was the point.

In a climate where Jewish expression has increasingly been scrutinised or misrepresented, the simple act of standing - and sometimes speaking - took on added weight. The vigil was not an argument. It was a statement of fact: innocent civilians were abducted, many remained in captivity, and this should matter - without caveats, without conditions.

And then, slowly, impossibly, the unimaginable happened.

One by one, the hostages came home. Each release brought relief threaded with grief for what had been endured, and for those still waiting. And then, finally, Rani - the last - came home too.

Lara Lipsey (left) with other vigil organisers, and the Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis, at the final Borehamwood hostage vigil[Missing Credit]

The week after, we stood again. But it felt different. The photographs were no longer a demand, but a testimony. The silence was no longer only heavy with longing, but with something unfamiliar: release. There were tears, embraces, and a collective exhale many of us did not realise we had been holding for more than two years. We will dance again had been in our sights but finally, at last after 843 days, we danced again.

What remains now is not triumph, but something quieter and deeper. Gratitude. Humility. And a profound sense of having shared something sacred with people who were once strangers and are now part of our lives.

The vigil no longer exists in the same way - because it does not need to. Its purpose has been fulfilled. But the community it created endures, shaped by 119 weeks of standing together when it would have been easier to look away.

We did not bring all the hostages home alive, but we brought them all home, and we refused to let them be forgotten. And in doing so, we learned something enduring: when institutions feel distant and words fall short, ordinary people standing together has immense power and meaning.

Standing was the least we could do. It turned out to be enough.