Slain journalist Steven Sotloff secretly practiced Judaism while he was working in the field and during his ISIS captivity — praying in silence and pretending to be ill during Yom Kippur so he could skip meals.
At the request of his family, details of Sotloff’s Jewish heritage and Israeli roots had been kept private to keep from endangering his life.
“Cleared for publication: Steven Sotloff was Israel citizen RIP,” Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Paul Hirschson tweeted Wednesday.
The grandson of holocaust survivors, Sotloff kept his Jewish faith under wraps when he ventured into conflict zones throughout the Middle East as a freelance reporter for publications like Time, according to the Jewish Daily Forward.
“We refused to acknowledge any relationship with him in case it was dangerous for him,” explained Jerusalem Report editor Avi Hoffman.
In the field, Sotloff often told locals he had been brought up as a secular Muslim, his Facebook pen pal Oren Kessler told The Times of Israel. And he’d sometimes claim his commonly Jewish last name was of Chechen origin.
But Sotloff found ways to practice his faith while in captivity — and even fasted during Yom Kippur by pretending he was ill, a former fellow hostage told the Israeli publication Yedioth Ahronoth.
“He told them he was sick and doesn’t want to eat, even though we were served eggs that day,” the friend told the paper. “He used to pray secretly in the direction of Jerusalem. He would see in which direction [his Muslim captors] were praying and then adjust the angle.”
Sotloff was ultimately beheaded by Islamic State thugs in a video aimed squarely at President Obama and his intervention in Iraq.
In the three-minute clip released Tuesday, the 31-year-old was held at knifepoint by the same British-accented killer who executed American journalist James Foley.
Prayer also helped Foley, a Catholic, survive his captivity with ISIS and an earlier, 44-day stint in captivity after being abducted in Libya. Foley’s mother, Diane, called both of the journalists “our martyrs” on Wednesday. “I just beg the world that they might not have died in vain,” she said.
Described by friends as “brave” and “hilarious,” Sotloff was raised in Miami and studied journalism at the University of Central Florida.
With his sights set on covering the tumult of the Middle East, he picked up and moved to Israel in 2005. There, he joined a rugby club and earned his degree at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya. “He was an innocent young man who wanted to tell the story of these oppressed people,” Sotloff’s uncle, Edward Pulwer, told the Sun Sentinel newspaper.
Michael Sapir played rugby with Sotloff in Israel and spoke with him about a month before he was kidnapped near the Turkish-Syrian border on Aug. 4, 2013. He said his teammate was well aware of the risks involved in reporting from war-ravaged regions.
“He went to where the world was changing,” he told The Post. “He knew it was dangerous.”
Also Wednesday, family spokesman Barak Barfi said Sotloff “was not a war junkie” but instead wanted to give voice to the victims of the crisis. “He ultimately sacrificed his life to bring their story to the world. Steve was no hero. He was a mere man trying to find good among darkness,” Barfi said.