Family First speaks to Julie Kuperstein, mother of released hostage Bar Kuperstein

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he late afternoon sun hangs low over the Kfar Maccabiah complex in Ramat Gan when I pull up for my meeting with Julie Kuperstein, mother of released hostage Bar Kuperstein. Behind the hotel’s polished glass doors, a uniformed desk clerk surveys the empty lobby, and I scan for signs that I’ve made it to the right place.

Walking to the lounge area, I spot a familiar-looking man in a motorized wheelchair, and I know I’ve arrived. I’d viewed enough clips of Julie Kuperstein at tefillah rallies and mitzvah initiatives dedicated to her son’s release to recognize the woman in the tichel and modest attire sitting in a far corner of the lounge.

A few weeks after October 7, Julie visited the hostage headquarters for the first time. Until then, numb with pain and grief, she’d been closeted in her room, crying and unwilling to communicate. “I was entirely nonfunctional,” she recalls.

After fellow hostage parents impressed on her the importance of joining them at the headquarters, Julie acquiesced. But eventually, she bowed out of their efforts and took a path of her own.

“After hearing the speeches and promises of various politicians to us, I sensed they were empty words. I saw how disappointed we were after these meetings and felt the political angle was simply a waste of time for me,” she explains. “At the same time, I feel every hostage mother acted in accordance with what she knew and understood, and I respect the path chosen by every mother.”

Advocacy of a Different Kind

Her first effort focused on getting people to take on Shabbos observance in her son’s merit. Her reliance on emunah and her focus on garnering spiritual merits during Bar’s captivity is best expressed in a catchphrase she popularized early in her ordeal, “Bar isn’t in the hands of Hamas. He’s in the Hands of Hashem.”

She underscored this point when she gave rare consent to a meeting with Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. There, she declared to him, “My journey in this endeavor began with emunah, continues with emunah, and will end in a place of emunah, and I believe that you’re an emissary of Hashem. You do the best you can do, and I’ll do as many mitzvos as I can and daven that you succeed, because we can’t endure another day without Bar.”