Reflecting on חללי צה"ל on Yom HaZikaron - 3 Students & 3 Chalalim

Before you start, you should know where you're headed tonight. a few stories of people gave their lives in the wars of the hope is that at the end each of us will feel a greater understanding a deepened ais and a force to learn more. In front of you are pictures of just a few and their names online. There are so many tools by which a person can learn more and connect more to individual stories. Some of them hopefully will share using all the technological ways to get out ways of doing it. But knowing that by the end I may not be uh as clear as I am now. So I wanted to start with that. That that's the goal. Before hearing from I just want to start for a second just by reading the first kina written for people who gave their lives in who obeys David after hearing of the son composed the following po eulogy in the form of a poem we've heard as an elegy that the Jews will need at times to take the the bow and arrow It's already been said from the land of Israel that on your hills have been have been found bodies. How have there fallen these great heroes? Don't tell it among the among the Palestinians so that the Palestinians don't rejoice over the death of the Jews al-Matar. The fields in which the our soldiers fell should not be blessed with the blessing of due who stay mash. Those hills shouldn't be blessed with dew because they're the shield of of heroes, the shield of sha was contaminated, the the blood, the flesh of heroes cashes, the bow and arrow of yonasan which typically did not turn back the and the sword of which for you know was successful. Now says David and who were loved and beloved and pleasant in their lives in their death they stayed together. They went higher than eagles and stronger than lion. Skipping a We ask now as said, how is it that heroes fall in war? You pure soul. How can it be that you are now? It is painful. It is difficult for me, your brother. You were very sweet to me. Your love was superfluous, was astounding to me. We ask how did they fall and we lost the tools of war at that precious moment. One by one. Uh, I want to take uh time tonight to speak about um uh someone named Amai Amikhai Oster. Um someone that I I got to know my time in Yeshiva, my one of my closest friends, older brothers. Um, I want to spend a little bit of time just telling a little bit about his story, who he was, um, how I how I got to know him, and just three things that I think really really capture who he who who he was. I'm Oster was born in Cleveland, Ohio. When he was one years old, he he made aliyah to Carne Shamron. Um, so yes, in the Shamron, that's where he grew up. He was a person who was so authentic and full of life. He loved music. He played many different uh instruments. He loved nature too. Lem he loved his friends, his family. Um he was like a real bivven was a madri in his own community looking out for the younger um the younger kids in his he really was a person who looked out for everyone and he was full of life. He he grew up in cares and he went to yeshiva yes. Um he spent two and a half years there learning learning seriously. Um and then decided he was going to do two and a half years learning and then a full service two and eight and he drafted to Givati. Um he became a methaded a commander. Um and that was a year in 2020. That's when he drafted. when he finished his service, he wanted to to do what all Israelis do and like to go on Tulim. Um he went to Thailand, came back for a little bit. Um and kind of in that in between stage when I would go for Shabas is when I got to know him. Um and then he decided to go on a big tule. He went to America, rented a car and just was driving, seeing family, friends. And October 7th, he was in Salt Lake City. Um, and he heard the news and before he got any call, he just said, "I'm I'm going back." And he flew back to Israel and his his unit wasn't even going in. They weren't even ready. And he said, "I'm finding a place and I'm going." And he was calling people and he was on Facebook and he finally found another another brigade that needed him. and he signed up and he switched over and he went straight into Gaza. And on January 1st, 2024, he was killed in a mission in Gaza. Like I said, I got to know Amihai. Um when I was in Yeshiva Haritz, when I was in Gosh, I wanted to become friends with, you know, the Israelis. And I became very close with someone Yonotan, his his younger brother. And he was the type of guy who I didn't I didn't know he was American. He only spoke to me in Hebrew. Like his his family had this like little bit they were going where they wouldn't speak to anyone in English. And I remember the first time I showed up to his house there was like a a LeBron James 2016 like championed like picture of the newspaper and I in English. I'm like what is going on? Like he doesn't know any English. And then he walks in. He's like hi Ema. And I'm like, whoa, that's not that's not what's supposed to happen right now. Um, and that's when I first met Amii going for Shabbat, going for Chabases. Um, I spent my Shana bed, all of Sukkot there. Um, and we spent time together in Shul Shabas afternoon, you know. Um, we slept together in the suk and got rained on. Um, and he really like him and his whole family really like took me in. They were really like a second family for me in uh when I was in Israel. Um and I knew I had like made it with Amiha. He's like this cool guy type of personality but like very sweet. And there was one Shabas afternoon when we were playing a board game and he was like started messing around with like Yonatan, his younger brother, like like all old like good older brothers. And then he started like messing around with me also and I'm like that's when I really felt like wow like he's like an older brother. Um, I was home, you know, that that went through break my second year in YU when I when I got the news. Um, and it it just felt Yeah. Um, it just felt like I had lost really someone who was part of my family. Um, so I I want to say just three three things that I think really encapsulate him just to finish. Um, three like character traits that I think really define him. Um, when he was going on these two limb when he was in Thailand and in the States, he was extremely committed to making sure he daved every day and he ate kosher. Even if that meant that he was going to Thailand and buying vegetables and eating nothing but vegetables or whatever it was, he was committed. He dive into every single day. Even though he was alone, he spent Tishabove in a forest sitting on the ground reading keynote. That's just like who he was. He was so authentic and he was so committed and no matter where he was going to be, he was going to be committed. Number two, his family. He cared so much about his his family and the people around him, the people he considered family. Every Chabus when he was was when he was traveling, he would call all of his siblings. Even if it was just a quick, "Hi, I'm good. How are you? Good chabas." He always called. Family was important to him. It was it was a key to him. And he and he kept that with him no matter where he went. Lastly, he was driven and he was passionate. He fought for the things he believed in and stood up for the things that he he felt were right. I want to read to you um the last piece of Amikhai's mother's um eulogy um that I think really encapsulates this point. On October 7th, Amikhai was in Salt Lake City, received a message from the IDF, and immediately set out to return home. He was determined to serve his country. And when his reserve unit was full, he transferred to a unit that needed him. Recently, when he was home on a two-day leave, I told him that I'd felt responsible for the fact that he was in fighting in a war that he did not make that decision to come on aliyah that we made for him. He thought about it for a moment and replied, "Ima, what makes you think that if you never made aliyah, I would not have come here to fight for our country?" Amai did indeed rush here to fight for his country and for all of us. He was doing he was here doing exactly what he wanted to be doing. He died doing what he came home to do. And now he will remain forever in our memories as a beautiful, brave, caring young man, a quiet hero. Not a day will go by that we don't think about you. I wanted to see you get married to be a father. I wanted you to have everything. We must honor his memory by loving and protecting this land and by living our best lives, learning about something new, having adventures, living every day to the fullest. Several years ago, I asked my morning sad Kusa, who had just joined the army a few months earlier, how his first Yomad and Yoma in the army were. And he said it was great, very moving. They sent us to Harertzel on Yumazi Karon to stand guard over the graves of the different soldiers. Each grave had a soldier standing over it. We went with the armored core, the Shirion. And it was so moving. I never imagined that three years later I would be spending Yumhazi Karon at the grave of Eton Fish. He was killed in a tank by a anti-tank missile two days before Kaneka. And when I think of his memory, I still keep coming back to that phrase from Kaneka near ishuveso. I could go many directions with this, but here's just a little sampling of who he was to me. Nitzvah of a Torah or first of all, I could talk about N just in terms of his enthusiasm, his love, his sense of humor, his love of when Por was coming along and everything was getting exciting. He was a person with a lot of enthusiasm even though he's very quiet by nature. But really to go to the heart of that nare that idea of his attachment to Torah. Some of my vividest most vivid memories from learning with him was when he would talk about how he was really struggling preoccupied him for much of that year that we were learning together in Sherbet with what are we doing this for? What am I going to remember five years out from that learning? And when he went back in the middle of his service, he did his before he be he became an officer. before he became an officer, he got to spend a few months back in yeshiva in Yukim in the middle. And he was by then he was a pro at all these different khazittas and he had all these bookmarks and sticky notes and he had the different shittas that he basically made up himself. And just that intentionality, not even just that flame, but really that way of making sure what he was doing was meaningful and that his learning was something meaningful was one thing I really take away from him. The ish I think is really what I think about the most in the context let's say of when I first met him was on the week that I went to check out the yeshiva in the head yeshiva for looking out where I would go for my second year in Israel and we hit it off he was friendly I didn't remember him that much and he reached out in the middle of the summer when I was home to say, "Are you looking for a kabusa?" And that changed everything for me. I was so nervous going into a totally Israeli yeshiva that I beyond what I'd experienced before. And I figured, okay, I'll figure something out when I get there. I don't know. And the fact that he thought about me and went out of his way to realize there was somebody here who is coming from a totally different country, totally different world, and let's find him. Karusa was also just that stepping up to the bat. And when he was back in yeshiva again in that little midpoint during the army, he also the karus he had at the time Ysef Gutle for nights his his younger Karusa was totally on his own and everything was not working out and really um the way that he spotted that this person needed somebody to learn with and somebody to look out for him was a real stepping up. I think the big stepping up of course for such a quiet, laid-back, sort of always in the corner kind of guy was that he chose to be an officer to be a Katsine. He extended his service for the extra year and um was actually an exceptional leader and he made that sacrifice for his people for Israel. on the last day that he was home before he went back into battle was actually a date of his nephew's bris. And he got the call that they were finally ready to go in. They'd been waiting outside of Gaza for weeks and weeks doing nothing. And they finally got that call that morning that they're ready to go in. And he came downstairs with his uniform and his parents said, "Aren't you coming to the bris?" And he said, "I'm called up. This is it." And they asked him, "Aren't you disappointed?" He was very passionate about family and he loved all of his nieces and nephews. And he said, "No, this is what we prepared for. This is what we're going to do." And the family loves to tell this story also. that once they were in Gaza, his soldiers that he commanded in that tank started to complain because when they had to choose a tank to go for one of the different missimot for the different tasks that needed to be done, he was always the first to volunteer. And all of their friends and all the other tanks were having it easy. And every day they would have to go and go here and go there and do whatever, which already speaks for his enthusiasm. And they were grumbling and grumbling and here's the big authority figure, the commander, the officer that they have to deal with. And some, you know, little soldier comes up and really gives it to him. And he says, "We can't put up with this anymore. It's like mutiny. It's it's been so many days, weeks that we're in here and you're making us do all everybody's dirty work." And the guy was terrified after that came out of his mouth. It was like, "What was I thinking? He's going to chew me out. He's going to punish me." And fish responded with three words. Shamati sapper. I hear you're right. I'll do better. I think that's also part of that leot to be a real leader and to do what needs to be done and not just lord it over because you have the power. And finally, the baso. It's funny how many of the things that uh Diddy shared that I really could have just said the same thing which is speaks a lot for who our soldiers are. When we were learning and everybody has their topics for Batala I think and um we ended up often what I remember talking about genealogy about family. He always had pictures of his nieces and nephews like he was pretty obsessed. And I bring this up not only just because of who he was, but also the inspiration that I've got since he fell from his own family and the strength and comfort they've given to all his friends to Kalis and not just receiving not just mourning but really being in that place of strength and of going forward with unbelievable resilience whether it's the Torah that they did a beautiful movie that they put out that you can ed with English subtitles and that sense not only of passion for the next generation and the nieces and nephews and drawing from all the generations that wanted so hard to come to and being part of that line of family that I think is also really inspiring. There's so much more I could talk about. Again, again, as described, is something that applies to so many of the fallen soldiers. His passion for guitar, for piano, he could really was very musical, loved to draw and do visual art, sense of humor, sweet smile. I also think part one of the most meaningful parts of my relationship was how him messing with me and teasing me made me feel cool. So that was interesting. his love of basketball just a person who was a wonderful friend whose shoulder I miss leaning on at the end of a long sader and if there's one thing to take away I think really going back to that hishadelio ish it's hard when we're here far away from the front lines and yum what we're celebrating what we're commemorating is a society where what people do is step up and even though it's the brisk, what people do is go because this is what they've been preparing for and they notice who's on their own from a foreign country or just struggling without a ka and that's something that I hope we can all take with us in memory of fish and so many of the to look at what's needed to improve what we're doing and really have that big picture of what are are we doing for Kalis. I must begin first with a little bit of appreciation. I don't think actually I know that I wouldn't be sharing u anything this evening if not for Yija's um very light but persistent encouraging me to do this and Rabbi Diamond's unusual and incredible uh insight um that gives a person the ability uh really to see and to even feel you know the truth um of the of the of the insight. Um, and that that really is what brings me here. So, I just I really just owe a great debt of gratitude to the both of you. Arying Hashem Yiko and I weren't always so close. Our families were connected forever, but our friendship truly began when learning in Gush. I became a Benbias in the Zering home, confiding in Mark and Debbie and finding a brother in Ary. It was not easy getting to know him, though I wanted to very badly. He wasn't charismatic at all, but had a magnetic quality. He didn't say much, but was very serious, soft, yet extremely intense. Arya was private, even Adidal and very sensitive. And I thrived on the challenge of trying to open him up. I was, we all joked, the family scout to squeeze out whatever private information Arya held under lock and key. And I loved trying to find the man beneath the surface. And yet until the final days of his life, he was incredibly silly, especially around kids. In some ways, he was the most comfortable around around them. He would tease them and they would tease him back. On that night of Simha's Torah, all the kids took turns dancing on his shoulders. Ary was a manchild, serious and private, yet the first to rile up the Kinderl. We often think of heroes as being born ready to battle, but that isn't how it was with Arerier. I remember a boy who lived a comfortable life in Ranana, well-mannered, connected to American culture, who not only loved but lived basketball. It was his whole world. He would get up early to practice and he was incredible, poised, quick, athletically gifted. I genuinely marveled at his talent, which is a lot for me to say. The one thing I always told him is that he lacked the thing only thing that I always told him he lacked is the confidence that he was always the best player on the court. He and I often sat in the kitchen eating American brands or in the basement playing NBA 2K on the PlayStation. When he first came of drafting age, Arya sheepishly mentioned to me the possibility of going for sports mitain which is an army exemption to pursue sports and to be ashamed of for Israel the Jewish people in another way. I tell you this because it makes what he ultimately became not just a tragedy but a triumph and a conquest of a human spirit. He was physically and athletically exceptional. He also worked really hard at it. I remember his early mornings coming back from swims in the ocean or country club before most of the house woke up. He was always very successful in army things, but it wasn't smooth sailing from day one. After working incredibly hard to get into Sier, which is I think the equivalent to the US Navy Seals, that's what he told me. He faced the crushing disappointment of having along the line to switch units. But Ary didn't break. He took that intensity and poured it into OKATS, the canine unit. And he didn't just join, but he became indispensable. Looking back, the irony is staggering because Ary's greatness wasn't that he was born wanting to fight. It was it was his resilience when things got hard. Once he set himself toward this path, he poured his entire being into it. By the end, he was in charge of a hundred soldiers. He didn't just accept his path, but he mastered it. Years later, Ary spent Shivuis with my family in America. He was stuck here. Those are his words. After teaching some of his units tactics to US soldiers in the West Coast, we walked through the streets of Woodmir and Lawrence well into the night. As we walked back to my home from the other side of town, we had a very, very open talk that took me by surprise. And I looked at him differently ever since. Ary looked at the Jewish life in America and told me it felt very empty to him. Not because we weren't kind people or religious but because he felt it lacked gravitas. The sense of it lacked the weight of reality like some show or pretend for a boy who used to dream of the NBA. He had undergone a transformation. He couldn't breathe properly unless he was connected with Erisel and serving Clalasurel from wanting to be a sports mitzen to be this geore which became his sole ambition. Every time we caught up and I asked him the classic questions, Ari, what's the plan? College? Any ideas of what you want to do? He would just smile gently and say, I'm in the army for now. We'll see. There was no after. There was only the duty in front of him. More than that, the army gave him profound sense of meaning he couldn't fathom finding anywhere else. On the night of Simas Torah 2023, Ary was in Israel being the life of the shul dancing with the kids. The next morning, he didn't wait for an order. He didn't wait for handholding. Beginning to sense what was happening down south, he saw a need. He organized his troops and ran toward the fire to protect families he didn't even know. And on that sora in Tene, I was standing at a podium. I was giving a shir about the role of encapsulated by the medishvi after the entire period raship sukis we have which is just insur hashem says this is going to now be the longest stretch that we're going to have without seeing each other we were dancing together the the young kids on the adult shoulders these courtyards were filled filled with my children and now they're going to be empty for seven months until Pesak and we must endure the cold winter nights and those images of you dancing and then fading away, Hashem says, are going to haunt me. So says Hashem, I just need one more day. Part of me says, I always knew he had been dead. The pit in my stomach that I felt was for Claia Soel, but also for him. And yet when my father called me that night, I couldn't believe it. Arya's earring, he said, fell in battle. I really couldn't believe it. It wasn't possible. this close friend that I had, this amazing person who was the epitome of courage and of bravery, who was relentless and unstoppable, killed going back to save a wounded soldier. A few months after Ari was taken from us, his father Mark visited me in Washington Heights. He came to see my son born a month and a half after whom we named Yitkak Ari standing before a father who had lost his oldest son. I felt so silly. I felt small. I told Mark the story I had always told Arya that I was in America because I wanted to serve the Jewish people through Torah. But seeing the price that Arya paid for his responsibility, I broke down because we here use the word aas a lot in yeshiva and we should use it even more and for more categories. We talk about aas in broad strokes but Arya defined it. Responsibility isn't a trajectory or a career path. It's a decision a person must make every single day about every single choice. It's willingness to consistently give up what is easier for you personally for the sake of an objective greater good. Mark teiered up a bit too and went on to highlight just how proud he was of Ary and his commitment to our nation. I used to struggle with how to finish a portrait of Ary. So I always stop a few thoughts or sentences in. But I've realized that a final portrait is never written. Ary nor the other kalahal are not at terminus. He is a formless and powerful presence in my life in all that knew him and in those who bear the messages his life projected. He is in the name of my son. He is in the silence of the siren. He is in the commitment we all must make to stop waiting for handholding to stop living lives lacking gravitas and weight and to step into the breach when our people need us. Ashenu, how fortunate we are that we had such a person among us. Every uh soldier has a yard site. And yet we have a yard today for all of them because soldiers in their death live double legacies. There's the personal legacy that has a date attached to it. And there's the second legacy that is born and expressed in the commitment that they made and for which they died in today already 24 hours before commences. So they put a little marker by every Kev in every Bum of someone who was who who was killed in Marot in the wars of our nation and the rest of the ones that don't have a specific place to go go and find in their Bum the place to go. Sometimes there are people who died particularly in theat who had no relatives. They came from the shawah and they were the last of their family and there's no one to say kadesh and there's no yard sometimes and all there is is a a marker that kasa won't forget. CL will hold on. We hold on for multiple reasons. We hold on because there's something that we need to learn. There's a strength that we need to take from them to carry us forward. And we hold on because it's very important for all of us to know the debt that we have. It's important for us to push ourselves to find the kev among all the of the person who gave that sacrifice so could push its mission forward. Every single Israeli 16-year-old at some point between 16 and 17 and a half gets a letter to their house, an invitation to go to the bakum. And you show up there. You're not going to start army yet. Have to finish high school. But you get your first set of madim and you get a letter that says that you'll come at a certain time and the mother's proud and the father's prouder sometimes and they see these madim these green clothes and they know of that it's in these madim that their son will be buried. Everyone, not only the ones you hear about, every mother in an entire nation, looks reality in the eye and says, "In this I choose. This is what I choose. So takes a day and they go to the Bum and they're pulled in two f totally different directions. On the one hand, they're remembering and feeling a loss and on the other hand they're swearing their their their total commitment that they will keep this going forward. This is not a story that began in the past two years, but it's a story which has been brought to to an even higher level in the past two years. Amit seal wrote today. that we are a nation of people who run to the grenade, who run to the war like kids running to the Yan. And we're a nation of people who arise every morning and go to bed at night with the awareness that they might hear. It's been permitted for us to announce to explain and another name will be added to the list. I remember early two years ago when Rabbi Zurkman from Kyabna called me and he just said two Leviath in two days. We stand in front of the karos and we say that we are a nation thankful for the mysterious We're an ancient that knows that that our father Bashim is proud cavo of each and every one of them. And we're a nation that commits and recommmits to to living as Last year when I was at Tus briefly I met someone who looked me in the eye and said that on Torah in the morning so he went as he was told to towards the north and he has that he didn't take his prati which he carries at all times and go straight towards choose your point anywhere in Aza that's a death sentence they were carrying kalishnikovs this little with the few bullets that you have I don't have to explain to him what that means he knows much better than When I heard him say that, I heard the voice of David Hamelik and the voice of thousands of years of living bigger and greater. Yes. But I would have I would have joined with would have joined with intern. The hour is late. I I think that the avoda going forward is clear. Each of us has opportunity to find, to dig deep, to meet, to learn, to understand a story, another story, to see each in the hole that they left and the world that they built and that they leave us with. and to try then to see how we can be worthy of their ms nephesh and the the double legacy that they left us with. Elimin. forch. ford. Amen.