Lena Troufanov – whose only child, Sasha, was released from captivity in Gaza on Shabbos, became a ba’alas teshuvah after she herself was released from captivity in November 2023.
As she is now Shomer Shabbos, she traveled to the IDF facility near the Gaza border on Friday in order to reunite with her son on Shabbos morning without being mechallel Shabbos. She also asked Israelis to light Shabbos candles in the zechus of the hostages.
Sasha’s partner Sapir Cohen, who has also kept Shabbos since she was released from captivity in November 2023, traveled to the IDF facility together with Lena.
On October 7, Lena and her husband were at their home on Kibbutz Nir Oz. Sasha, who was visiting, was sleeping at the guest house across from her house. By the end of that day, her husband had been murdered and her house burned to the ground. Lena, Sasha, and her mother, who lived in a separate home on the kibbutz, had been taken into Gaza.
Lena and her mother were returned to Israel in November but Sasha remained in captivity.
Despite these horrors, or as Lena said, because of them, she embraced emunah and became Shomer Shabbos and kashrus.
Lena told Channel 14 News that she began keeping Shabbos when she returned from captivity “because I saw so many things that I couldn’t describe as just coincidental.”
“I mamash saw a hand leading, the hand of Hakadosh Baruch Hu in the incidents I witnessed,” she said. “I began to keep Shabbos and kashrus and I daven – and that’s what gives me strength.”
“Because what else do I have? My husband was murdered that day and I still don’t know how he was killed. My house was burned. And my son – my only child – is still in captivity. So what do I have? Only to hope and daven that he’ll return.”
In the video below, Sasha arrives at Sheba Hospital on Motzei Shabbos and is reunited with his grandmother.
(YWN’s Jerusalem desk is keeping you updated after tzeis ha’Shabbos in Israel)
Join the official YWN WhatsApp status
2 Responses
@ chariedi hafakey, the only shtus I see is the assumptions you have about chareidim. Please take a double dose of metamucil, perhaps that will stop up your verbal diarrhea.
Rav Landau shlit”a, whom you seem to know nothing about, has been meeting the families of hostages all along and is on camera multiple times crying like a child for them. Yes the same Rav Landau, who blames the Zionists for all these horrors, is probably the biggest ohev yisroel of our dor. If you ever get chance to meet him you can experience that love first hand.
You may also learn that you don’t come to the dirt in his toenails in gadlus and should probably take back your pithy and stupid statement.
That being said, mi keamcha yisroel, who show time and again the purity of the pintele yid, and the stalwart loyalty of the distressed jew to their Loving Father and Protector. What a kiddush Hashem! I am so
grateful to be part of this glorious nation!
So far, every chareidi assumption I have heard about the ‘non frum’ in in Eretz Yisrael has gone up in smoke. I see more Emes and Emuna from these people than from any mashgiachs shooze. Perhaps Rav Landau should meet some of these individuals before verbalizing the shtus that was said last week.