A year after his family marked the Jewish New Year without him as he remained a Hamas hostage in Gaza, Angrest returns to the holiday table, calling freedom with his loved ones his ‘personal victory’Last year, Anat and Hagai Angrest did not buy groceries for the holiday, plan a meal or know where they would spend Rosh Hashanah eve.“We don’t have a holiday. We don’t have dates,” they said at the time, while their son, Matan, was still being held hostage by Hamas in Gaza.GalleryMatan Angrest and his parents Hagai and Anat (Photo: Gil Nechushtan)This year, the dining table at the Angrest family home is being extended once again, and Matan returned especially from a trip to South America to celebrate the Jewish New Year with his family.“Last year, I tried to hold on to the hope that one day I would get out and celebrate the holiday with my family,” he said. “It’s hard for me to describe the depth of the sadness and pain, surviving those days while at the same time feeling such a strong connection to my parents and my three siblings, remembering the white holiday table, the family atmosphere and the laughter that belongs only to us.“My mind is only now processing, as I hear all the preparations for the holiday, that tonight it is really happening. Thank God, I’m here a year later, celebrating Rosh Hashanah for the first time with everyone close to me. Free and happy. That is our victory — and my personal victory.”A year ago, the Angrest home, which had always filled with family, friends, cooking pots and tables being extended from the afternoon onward during the holidays, was quiet.“We’re stuck on Oct. 7,” Hagai said then. “We don’t have a holiday. We don’t have dates. When everyone else is celebrating, those are our hardest hours.”A year has passed, and Anat is once again thinking about holiday shopping, what she will cook, how the table will look and who will be there.Hagai and Anat, last year (Photo: Gil Nechushtan)“It’s emotional,” she said. “Everyone wants to come. This will be the first time Matan has been here for the holiday since Oct. 7.”Only in hindsight do they know how close they were at the time to the end of his captivity.“We had already learned to protect ourselves emotionally and not get disappointed,” Anat said. “There was constant talk — there’s a deal, there isn’t a deal, these people agreed, those people didn’t. And suddenly, things began to develop.”For Matan’s parents, every report of a possible hostage deal carried another fear. Matan was an Israeli soldier when he was abducted, and they worried that even if some hostages were released, their son might be left behind.“There was always this dilemma — whether to support a partial deal that saves people or fear that afterward it could take a very long time to get the others out,” Anat said. “Those are incredibly cruel decisions.”Only now, the family says, are they beginning to process what they endured.The Angrests at a rally calling for the release of hostages held in Hamas captivity (Photo: Lior Rothstein)“I give talks about my journey as a mother, and suddenly, when I talk about my family and show the videos, I realize that this is actually our personal story,” Anat said. “That we are part of this national story. Only now do we have the space to understand what happened here. Throughout that entire period, we were on autopilot.”The joy of having her son home does not diminish the scale of the tragedy, she said.“We constantly live with the sadness for those who did not get to come back, for those who were murdered and for those who were alive there but were not brought home in time,” Anat said. “Even during this holiday, my thoughts wander to those families.“We learned how to be happy and how to be sad at the same time. I didn’t even know that was possible.”At her first reunion with Matan, Anat said, all she wanted was to look into his eyes and hear his first words.“From that, I knew I would be able to tell whether he had returned mentally broken or in a condition that would allow him to recover,” she said. “And when he said to me, ‘Mom, it’s me, Matan,’ I knew that from there we would recover. That the same kid had come back. He came back even more resilient, even tougher.”Matan comes home after his release from Hamas captivity (Photo: Sharon Tzur)Matan spent five months traveling in South America before returning to Israel ahead of Rosh Hashanah eve.“It was important to me to come back and spend the holidays from beginning to end with my family here in Israel,” he said.For the new year, he said his main wish is “to continue my recovery. To be close to my family, keep making up for lost time and be with my friends.”Anat added with a smile that perhaps it is also time for him to “get on some kind of path” and begin studying.Anat said that although the family tries to stay out of politics, she hopes the coming year will bring change in Israel.“As much as we try not to get into politics, I wish for all of us that there will be change here, and it has to begin with investigating what happened here so that it does not happen again,” she said.The Angrests arrive at the hospital after Matan's release from Hamas captivity (Photo: IDF)“I hope Israeli society will look like the young people who enlist in the military, where all they care about is being together and defending this country. I am the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, from the generation that built the country and taught me how important it is and how important it is to defend it, and that was passed on to Matan as well.“I hope those values become part of Israeli society — togetherness, mutual responsibility, one for all and all for one.”A year ago, when Matan was not there to hear them, Anat and Hagai sent their son a message: Do not lose hope, stay strong and know that the people of Israel want you home.This year, Matan can answer them himself.“Happy holiday to everyone,” he said, “and may this new beginning be a successful one, God willing.”