{"id":1845,"date":"2025-10-14T03:50:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-14T03:50:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/1845\/"},"modified":"2025-10-14T03:50:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-14T03:50:06","slug":"tears-of-joy-plano-synagogue-celebrates-hostages-freedom-after-2-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/1845\/","title":{"rendered":"Tears of joy: Plano synagogue celebrates hostages’ freedom after 2 years"},"content":{"rendered":"

There were tears of joy Monday evening in Plano, where members of a Jewish synagogue with close ties to the families of hostages celebrated the release<\/a> of those who were still alive after 2 years in captivity.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It wasn’t easy to cut the zip ties that had been holding the poster with Eitan Mor’s face on it, but Michelle Meiches was elated to finally do it after more than 2 years hanging on the fence.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Meiches couldn’t contain her emotions after a day of homecomings in Israel for 20 hostages released from captivity after 738 days.<\/p>\n

“For two years, we’ve prayed for this exact moment, and today, early this morning, our prayers were answered,” said Meiches.<\/p>\n

The Rabbi for Anshai Torah in Plano held a special outdoor service to celebrate the release of the remaining Israeli hostages during a time that coincides with a Jewish fall festival.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We’ve been a bit subdued for the past two years, knowing this cloud has been on top of us, knowing that our brothers and sisters in Israel were held hostage,” said Rabbi Michael Kushnick, congregation Anshai Torah. “But tonight, and over the last two days of this festival, we can be at full joy.”<\/p>\n

That joy included taking down 20 of the posters created 2 years ago by Lisa Birenbaum as a shrine to the hostages.<\/p>\n

“This was my passion project from almost the very beginning,” said Birenbaum.<\/p>\n

Twenty photos will remain on the fence after Monday. They are murdered hostages whose remains have been lost in Gaza.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bar Kupershtein was reunited with his family<\/a> only days after his father visited the Plano synagogue.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Monday, the Rabbi and others here watched their emotional reunion in Israel.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“It just brought chills down my spine,” said Kushnick. “And right now, as I’m talking to you, it’s literally the same feeling to say I gave the gentleman a hug last week.”<\/p>\n

Monday evening’s service ended with a call for a lasting peace in the Middle East, with signs of hope all around the grounds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There were tears of joy Monday evening in Plano, where members of a Jewish synagogue with close ties…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1846,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[1944,1939,160,162,161],"class_list":{"0":"post-1845","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-plano","8":"tag-hamas","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-plano","11":"tag-plano-headlines","12":"tag-plano-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}