JERUSALEM (VINnews) — Former Hamas hostage Yosef Chaim Ohana delivered an emotional address this week before thousands of Hasidim and visitors who filled the main synagogue hall at the Chabad-Lubavitch World Headquarters (770 Eastern Parkway) in New York.

Ohana, who returned from Hamas captivity in Gaza at the beginning of the year, was invited to speak to the audience and shared the profound spiritual and personal insights he developed during the long, harrowing days of uncertainty and constant danger while being held underground. For Ohana, speaking from the podium of the famous Brooklyn study hall marked a deeply moving personal milestone, given his longstanding connection to the Chabad movement dating back to his childhood.

Freed hostage Yoseph Chaim Ochana and his father, Avraham, spoke at the Yud Beis Tammuz farbrengen at 770. The two concluded by reciting Nishmas with the crowd before joyous dancing. pic.twitter.com/3knsGzJCZl

— Shchuna News (@ch_shchuna770) June 29, 2026

He opened his remarks by speaking emotionally about his Chabad roots, which he said had shaped his character.

“It’s a privilege for me to be here, in a place that I grew up with. I studied at the Chabad Talmud Torah in Nachalat Har Chabad in Kiryat Malachi,” he said to enthusiastic applause from the audience, adding with a smile and pride, “Kvutza Peh-Alef” (the Chabad term for the year during which students studying in Israeli yeshivot spend a year learning at the movement’s central yeshiva in New York).

He went on to explain how Chabad’s emphasis on every Jew having a personal mission in the world accompanied him even in his darkest moments.

“Everyone has their own mission. Whether it’s helping another Jew put on tefillin…We know that the greatest mitzvah in the world is to do good for another Jew.”

He continued: “So I, 50 meters underground, came to understand that the meaning of doing good for another Jew, for another human being, was enough to give me the strength to live anywhere and endure everything that happened to me.”

Throughout his remarks, the former hostage emphasized that despite the immense suffering and trauma he experienced, he feels that the ordeal ultimately refined his character and left him spiritually and emotionally stronger.

“Yes, in a certain sense, it was for my benefit that I was there, because today I can stand before you and tell you that I feel stronger, with greater faith. There are many difficulties, but no one can ever take away from me what I gained there, the understanding of the importance of the small, meaningful things in life.”

He explained that it was specifically in the place where all of his physical freedoms had been stripped away that he discovered the true depth of the values on which he had been raised, especially the commandment to love one’s fellow Jew.

The most moving part of his speech focused on how they tried to live by the commandment “Love your neighbor as yourself” while confined in the narrow tunnels of Gaza under conditions of extreme hunger and overcrowding.

“We say ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ so often, and we know that it’s the great principle of the Torah,” Ohana told the captivated audience. “But you don’t truly understand it until you realize that there were five or six of us together most of the time. Everyone around us hated us and wanted to harm us. We were the only ones who had to want what was good for each other.”

He continued:”And that wasn’t easy. Imagine six people in a space barely a meter by a meter, with no food, under constant threat of death, suffering, every little thing getting on everyone’s nerves. ‘Love your neighbor as yourself’ there, the ability to truly see one another, to be friends, that was what we worked on all day.”

Ohana concluded with a thought-provoking message directed at people living in freedom. He expressed hope that those living ordinary lives would find connection and mutual responsibility instead of losing their way amid the abundance of choices and distractions of modern life.

“How much more so for us, now that we’re free. We can choose so many other things, but you know what? Maybe that actually makes it harder. Maybe because we have so many options and so many distractions, money, careers, and whatever each person’s life revolves around, it becomes harder to recognize the importance of ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.'”