Episode 58: Rebuilding after disaster with ex-hostage Tal Shoham

Ask Haviv Anything

Haviv Rettig Gur

History

4.9 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 9 November 2025

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

As Israelis wait with bated breath to discover if the body of Hadar Goldin, killed and taken into Gaza in 2014, will be returned for burial in Israel, we sit down with returned hostage Tal Shoham for a conversation about his harrowing experience and insights into Hamas and Gazan society. Long-time listeners will recognize Tal's name from one of our earliest episodes with his sister-in-law, our friend Shaked Haran, who described her fight to bring back the eight members of her family who were taken hostage by Hamas on October 7. Tal is the last member of her family to come home. He returned in early 2025.

We discussed his survival in impossible conditions of abuse, torture and starvation, his grappling with the uncertainty over his children's survival, and the hard work of rebuilding a home and a sense of safety for children who'd had direct experience of evil.

Today’s episode is sponsored by my friend Elissa Wald, a writer who noticed after October 7, 2023 that American Jews were being marginalized, even ostracized, within the American publishing world. She decided to mount a fierce fight against this trend. She started the Never Alone Book Club with the goal of sending Jewish writers to the NYT bestseller list every month. It has become the biggest Jewish book club in the country but more members are still needed to create a continuous series of Jewish bestsellers.

RABBI ANGELA BUCHDAHL will be joining the Never Alone Book Club on December 10th to talk about her new book "Heart Of A Stranger." If you join the book club now, you can join that conversation. Here is the link to join on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/810380537866936/

If you like what we do here, please join our Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything. There you can ask the questions that guide the topics we cover on the podcast, join in our great discussions where listeners share news and valuable resources, and take part in our monthly livestreams where Haviv answers your questions live.

If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at haviv@askhavivanything.com⁠.

Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi everybody. Welcome to a very special episode of Ask Habib Anything. I have with me here today,
0:11.3	Tal Shoham, whose wife Adi is the sister of Shaked Haran, who has been on this podcast before.
0:19.3	Tal, most of Tal's family, was taken hostage on October 7.
0:23.7	Tal himself spent 505 days, separated from the wife, from the children, starved, beaten,
0:31.4	kept in the dark, and emerging from the tunnels with a story of of dignity of how Hamas functions in those tunnels,
0:42.8	what this organization and these people have been able to do to remain alive during the war
0:48.0	and prevent the Israeli war effort from pulling them out of those tunnels.
0:53.5	And we're going to end the Tal's own story
0:56.8	with some very, very thoughtful remarks that he's made in the past about hatred in this conflict
1:02.2	and the future of the conflict. So stay with me. I want to say just for a minute very quickly,
1:09.7	this episode is sponsored by my friend Elisa Wald.
1:13.4	And thank you, Elisa, for sponsoring this episode.
1:15.7	And also because I really want to plug your effort, which is an amazing, amazing book club.
1:20.8	Elisa is a writer who noticed after October 7 that American Jews were being marginalized,
1:26.4	even ostracized within the American publishing world.
1:29.3	It's a very, very well-known secret. The Jewish authors are actually having trouble getting
1:33.9	published, certainly if they don't tell the political line, but even when they do, in order to
1:38.5	mount a fierce broadside against this trend, driven by the politics of the publishing world, she started the Never Alone book club
1:48.0	with the goal of sending Jewish writers to the New York Times bestseller list every single
1:51.9	month.
1:52.6	It has become the biggest Jewish book club in the country.
1:54.8	I myself am a member.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Haviv Rettig Gur, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Haviv Rettig Gur and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.