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A Shabbat table is set with empty seats for Israeli hostages on Independence Mall

Flower petals and wine glasses dotted the white tablecloth, and during a brief ceremony, members of the Jewish community lit Shabbat candles and prayed.

Sharona Durry, PhillyIsrael Productions, puts glasses on a table in front of Independence Hall Friday to assist with an installation organized by the Israeli American Council, Philadelphia, (IAC Philly), which is installing long, empty Shabbat Tables with 200+ empty place settings to raise awareness and demand the release of the 200+ hostages taken by Hamas during the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
Sharona Durry, PhillyIsrael Productions, puts glasses on a table in front of Independence Hall Friday to assist with an installation organized by the Israeli American Council, Philadelphia, (IAC Philly), which is installing long, empty Shabbat Tables with 200+ empty place settings to raise awareness and demand the release of the 200+ hostages taken by Hamas during the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.Read moreJessica Griffin / Staff Photographer
    by Max Marin
    Published 

The Israeli American Council of Philadelphia placed a long, empty Shabbat table with over 200 empty chairs on the lawn of Independence Mall Friday to raise awareness for the Israeli captives in Gaza who have been missing for three weeks.

The table, which was set up until Friday at 5 p.m., held a symbolic empty seat for each of the 224 hostages who were taken by Hamas during its Oct. 7 attacks in southern Israel, each chair adorned with “missing” fliers with their names and faces.

Flower petals and wine glasses dotted the white tablecloth, and during a brief ceremony, members of the Jewish community lit Shabbat candles and prayed for the families who were without loved ones for another Jewish sabbath.

“Friday evening is sacred,” Dafna Ofer, a volunteer with IAC Philadelphia, said. “It’s a festive time for family.”

On Friday, the Weitzman museum also began projecting large-scale photos of the hostages onto the building’s towering glass facade that overlooks the mall lawn, and on Monday, museum workers will install a large collage of the hostages’ faces in its window.

The empty table joined several other pop-up installations worldwide in recent weeks, from Tel Aviv to Times Square. It was not meant to be a political statement, said Ofer, but simply to raise awareness about the ongoing hostage crisis and the impacted family members. “It’s powerful,” she said.

But for relatives, the day of rest that begins at sundown Friday is mixed with anguish. In addition to local Jewish leaders and elected officials, organizers said the brief ceremony on Friday was attended by Elad Shdaimah, the grandson of 84-year-old Ditza Heiman, who is among the missing captives.

The Philadelphia region is home to Palestinian and Israeli families whose loved ones have been killed or remain missing since the Israel-Hamas war broke out. Some local lawmakers have placed missing posters of hostages in their offices and met with their family members, as well as survivors of the Hamas attack.

Just four hostages have been released by Hamas as of Friday, while tense negotiations continue ahead of Israel’s looming ground offensive into the blockaded Gaza Strip.

Emily August, the public engagement officer for the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History, which supported the installation, said that objects sometimes tell a story better than words. She hoped the table would relay a simple message about family and grief to people passing through the historic district during the hours before Shabbat.

“This empty table really conveys to everyone — every passerby, Jews, non-Jews, whether we have a direct connection to hostages or not — a painful absence,” August said.