In recent weeks, the Israeli Defense Forces and Shin Bet security service have recovered the remains of five hostages who were murdered and abducted during the Hamas-led Palestinian terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, bringing them home to Israel to be laid to their eternal rest with a Jewish burial.
Israel has also placed a high value on returning its fallen, and the importance of a proper burial in Jewish law and tradition cannot be underestimated. “For dust you are, and to dust you will return,” G‑d told Adam, the first human being. Chabad.org’s extensive section on Death and Mourning quotes King Solomon, who said: “And the earth returns to the land as it was, and the spirit returns to G‑d, who gave it.” The article explains that “the next stage in the continuing saga of a human life is that the body should return to the earth, the source of all physical life, and be reunited with it, just as the soul returns to its Divine root.”
Taking part in the proper burial of a Jewish person is considered a mitzvah of the highest order. The Talmud (Nazir 7:1) teaches that even the High Priest, who was prohibited from attending his own family’s funerals, was required to take it upon himself to personally bury a met mitzvah, an abandoned Jewish body that had no one to attend to its proper burial.
The latest operation, announced on Sunday morning, returned Ofra Keidar, 71, from Kibbutz Be’eri; Yonatan Samerano, 22, from Tel Aviv; and Staff Sgt. Shay Levinson, 19, from Givat Avni.
All three were murdered on Oct. 7 in Israel, and their bodies were kidnapped and held for ransom in Gaza. Their bodies were recovered through what military officials described as precise intelligence operations conducted by elite units.
Ofra Keidar worked in Kibbutz Be’eri dairy farm for decades, rising before dawn to tend to the cows that sustained her community. Even in retirement, she never missed a day, arriving early each morning to tend to her beloved herd.
On that fateful Shabbat morning, Palestinian terrorists murdered Ofra during her customary walk near her home. Her husband Sami, suffering from Parkinson’s disease and unable to reach their safe room in time, was killed in their living room. Their daughter Yael survived by hiding, emerging only when silence returned to their shattered world.
Yonatan Samerano was killed when he fled the massacre at the Nova Music Festival site and ran toward Kibbutz Be’eri, where Palestinian terrorists murdered him and carried his body to Gaza. The operation to bring him home happened on what would have been his 23rd birthday.
Staff Sgt. Shay Levinson, a tank commander from the small northern community of Givat Avni, was killed while defending the Nova music festival area from the frenzied assault; his body was taken to Gaza.
The previous week brought home two more souls also murdered and kidnapped on Oct. 7 and recovered on June 12: Yair Yaakov and Aviv Atzili, both abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz.
Aviv, 49, died defending his community as a member of the civil defense squad. A warrant officer in the reserves, he had devoted his life to protecting others while pursuing his passion as an artist and handyman, painting miniature scenes of kibbutz life on tools and machinery. Atzili’s wife was also kidnapped on Oct. 7 but was released in the first ceasefire deal in November 2023.
Yair (“Yaya”) Yaakov, 59, lived in Kibbutz Nir Oz, near where his three children resided. He was kidnapped with his partner Meirav Tal, while two of his children staying alone at their mother’s house were taken as well. While his children and Tal were released in November 2023, Yaakov was murdered in captivity. Mourners at his funeral at the Nir Oz cemetery remembered him as a humble and humorous man of the land.
Some 50 hostages from the 251 men, women and children taken on Oct. 7 remain captive in the Gaza Strip. About 20 of those are believed to still be alive, while the rest are presumed deceased, according to the Israeli authorities.
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