Not mine.
Nivi Feldman (right) with foreign secretary Yvette Cooper (centre), Sharone Lifschitz (second from right), whose parents, Yocheved and Oded, were both taken hostage, and other relatives of hostages[Missing Credit]
I do not think I am special. I think I learnt how to connect people, how to build bridges, and how to ask for action. The cause was so important – so much bigger than any one person – that doors were opened.
After October 7, I did not wake up deciding to become an advocate. No one appointed me. No one trained me. I simply met families. I listened. And once you hear their stories, you cannot unknow them.
For many months after October 7, our community lived with an impossible weight. Parents, siblings, children, grandparents taken into darkness. Families suspended in a nightmare of waiting.
And now, against all logic, against every statistical probability, they are finally home. Not all alive. Not with the endings anyone prayed for. But home.
It is a miracle. A fragile, complicated, painful miracle. One that obligates us to remember every name, every face, every family who paid the highest price.
Nivi Feldman about to start filming during the hostage campaign (Photo: courtesy)[Missing Credit]
But long before October 7, I was shaped by two people who quietly modelled what it means to live with humanity.
I grew up watching my father help anyone he could. He shared even the little he had. He had Jewish friends, Muslim friends and Christian friends. They all knew he loved them. Where you came from or how much you earned never mattered to him. His mission in life was simple: to make people smile.
My mother was a gentle soul. Deeply perceptive. She knew which questions to ask to reach the heart of things. She was not afraid of hard work, and reading was her greatest joy.
Nivi Feldman with her mum, Nurit Sofer (photo: courtesy)[Missing Credit]
When they became ill, I did everything I could for them. Watching my mother’s body crumble bit by bit from motor neurone disease, her life cut so cruelly short, taught me that not all stories have good endings. That there are things in this world beyond my understanding.
Then my father suffered a stroke while my mum was in a hospice. It taught me something else. That we have to cherish the present. The now. Not live inside “what ifs”. Looking back, I think that was my first education in showing up.
Nivi Feldman with her dad, Stanley Moss (Photo: courtesy)[Missing Credit]
I may have lost my parents, but the last two years have given me a new family. The hostage families. And the quiet warriors who cared, who showed up, who volunteered, and who opened their hearts along the way. You know who you are.
I know that if my parents had been alive and well on October 8, 2023, they would have done everything in their power to help. To cook. To listen. To share the burden.
Both of their yahrzeits are approaching. Seven years without my mum. Five without my dad. Everything I have done over the past two years, I dedicate to their memory and in their merit. Shmuel ben Shlomo Halevi ve Esther. Nurit bat Naim ve Rut. May their souls have an aliyah.
You can grow up in a complicated family. You can be an all-rounder, unsure of where you belong. You can come from a modest background. None of this determines your worth.
What matters is your soul. And saving one soul is like saving an entire world.
Nivi Feldman (left) with Merav Daniel, the mother of hostage Oz Daniel, and Ronen Neutra, the father of hostage Omer Neutra (photo: courtesy)[Missing Credit]
I did not choose this role. But I choose, every day, to continue. Because silence helps no one. Because indifference is a choice. Because if you can use your voice, your time, or your presence to lessen someone else’s suffering, even a little, you have a responsibility to try.
Perhaps that is what strength really is. Not the absence of brokenness. But the decision to build something meaningful from its shards.
