Shabbat tables in Times Square

(New York Jewish Week) - In front of a long U-shaped table in Times Square, set for 224 people, a crowd began to sing "Happy Birthday" for a 12-year-old boy named Erez.

Thursday was Erez's birthday, but the gathering was no celebration. Erez, along with his sister, Sahar, and father, Ofer Calderon, are three of the more than 200 hostages taken by Hamas in the terror group's Oct. 7 invasion of Israel. Erez's grandmother and cousin were killed.

The song was led by Omer Lubaton-Granot, an Israeli activist in New York who has his own connection to the hostages: four of his relatives were taken cap...