Sign up for Weekday J and get the latest on what's happening in the Jewish Bay Area.

Zehava Dahan arrived at Civic Center Plaza at 10 a.m. Friday to start arranging the tables and chairs. She and a crew of volunteers initially set out paper plates and plastic cutlery for 239 people — not in preparation for a “nice dinner” in front of San Francisco City Hall, as one passerby speculated, but in honor of those captured by Hamas terrorists in Israel on Oct. 7.

After the volunteers had finished taping posters with the hostages’ photos, names, ages and nationalities to the chairs, Dahan removed two of the place settings. The Israeli press had just reported that those people were actually dead, not kidnapped, she said.

“We feel hopeless, so we do this,” said Dahan, who lives in San Francisco and recently returned from a trip to her native Israel. “We put our fear and sadness into something good.”

The empty Shabbat tables have appeared in recent weeks in cities around the world, beginning in Tel Aviv and spreading to Rome, Sydney, New York and Washington, D.C. The number of place settings has fluctuated, as Israeli authorities continue to work to identify the bodies of those murdered last month. (On Monday, the family of Vivian Silver, a Canadian Israeli peace activist who was thought to have been kidnapped, confirmed that she was killed in the initial Hamas assault.) Five hostages have been released by Hamas or freed by the Israel Defense Forces to date, but at least 235 are believed to remain in captivity, including a now 10-month-old baby and several people in their 80s.

On Friday, in advance of the fifth Shabbat that the hostages have been unable to spend with their families and friends, the Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area coordinated with the Israeli American Council, local synagogues and other groups to set up tables in parks and other public spaces in six Bay Area cities: Berkeley, Foster City, Napa, San Francisco, Sausalito and Walnut Creek. A table (actually dozens of tables standing end-to-end) was also set up separately by the local Jewish community in Piedmont the day before.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by J. The Jewish News (@jewishnews_sf)

Collectively, the tables — or exhibits, as some referred to them — were visited by thousands of people and represented the largest outdoor Jewish art installation in the Bay Area in recent memory.

“JCRC has collaborated on rallies and prayer services and we’ve spoken with political leaders and brought them into Jewish spaces, all of which felt internal for the Jewish community,” Rebecca Goodman, JCRC’s director of Jewish community engagement, told J. “The empty tables for the hostages are to show the public that we want our family home.”

While all of the tables were set with standard Shabbat elements, including challah loaves and flowers, the volunteers in each city added their own touches.

In San Francisco, stuffed animals and books were placed at the children’s place settings. In Foster City, red balloons were attached to the children’s seats and mini challahs were put on their plates. In Berkeley, four city council members stopped by to see the table, which included a special spot for 23-year-old Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was born in the city. And in Piedmont, volunteers researched each of the hostages and brought items of significance to them — including musical instruments, books and toys — to place at their spots.

To prevent vandalism of the tables, which were up from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., JCRC worked with local police departments and, in some cases, hired private security. In San Francisco, which has seen several antisemitic vandalism incidents in recent weeks, a police van was parked off to the side. (Goodman said that aside from a motorist shouting “apartheid!” toward those gathered in Foster City, there were no major disruptions.)

As Natasha Kehimkar walked around the table in Foster City’s Leo J. Ryan Park, she pointed out hostages she had read about to her daughter. They included Shoshan Haran, a 67-year-old Israeli-German woman from Kibbutz Be’eri who started a renowned farming project in Africa, and Bipin Joshi, a 23-year-old Nepalese student who was kidnapped from Kibbutz Alumim. Joshi is among the many hostages who are foreigners or dual citizens hailing from about 40 countries. (The second largest group of hostages after Israelis are 24 Thai nationals.)

“This is a story about Israelis and the global community living in Israel,” said Kehimkar, who comes from a family of Indian Jews and serves on the JCRC board. “What it really means is that none of us is untouched.”

She added, “The number of hostages is almost inconceivable. Our minds block out what it actually means. But when you see it like this, you can start to put faces to names.”

With the sun beginning to set over the lake next to the park, Cantor Doron Shapira of Foster City’s Peninsula Sinai Congregation led a Kabbalat Shabbat service for around 200 people. The group sang “Oseh Shalom” and “Hatikvah,” the Israeli national anthem, and recited the Mourner’s Kaddish for the Oct. 7 victims.

“We hope and we pray that this was a one-time event, and that by next Shabbat all of our brothers and sisters will be back home,” Shapira said.

Back at Civic Center Plaza, a constant stream of people approached the long Shabbat table to inspect the posters of the hostages and take photos as the upbeat music from an outdoor Zumba class provided a dissonant soundtrack. A non-Jewish man who said he was from South Vietnam asked what the table represented. After someone told him, he repeated several times, “Hope they come home.”

Yakira, a Jewish San Franciscan who asked to be identified by her Hebrew name, wiped away tears as she slowly walked along the table with her two young children.

“I’m an immigrant from the former Soviet Union, and I came here as a Jewish refugee,” she said. “It feels like we’re never safe. And even in our homeland [of Israel], we’re being murdered.” She said she became emotional when she saw the poster for 9-year-old Ohad Munder Zichri, who was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz with his grandparents. In his photo, he wears a blue hat with a smiley face.

“He’s the exact same age as my child,” she said, choking back tears.