Himmelfarb: Jerusalem school staying resilient after losing so many in a year of war

Aner. Ariel. Shachar. Dvir. Ben. Oriya. Hersch. Almken. 

And now: Avi – Rav Avi. Avi Goldberg. 

Each was a world cut short, taken too early, gone too soon. Like the hundreds of others we’ve all heard about and cried over. All since that Oct. 7 – and all of these from one Jerusalem school. Himmelfarb – a National-Religious junior high and high school in Jerusalem’s Bayit Vegan neighborhood – is not far from the Mount Herzl Military Cemetery where most of them have been laid to rest too soon.

This is another sad story – actually many of them, centered around this educational institution that prepares young men for life and sometimes must mourn when they are suddenly and violently taken from it. But it’s also a story of resilience and hope.

“Himmelfarb is a school that feels deeply about its responsibility to its students during their life, and, unfortunately, after their death,” said Rav Yirmiyahu “Yirmi” Stavisky, the school’s principal for 23 years until four years ago. He was a teacher there for five years before that, and continues to teach there since stepping down as head.

The school was established in 1920, and moved to its current location in 1969. The new campus was named after a donor who died before being able to see its completion.

“I was their principal for most of their years,” Stavisky said about his fallen students, exuding an accepting, quiet sadness developed after many years of experiencing such losses. Much has been said about each of them – some more, some less. Every family reacts differently to such tragedy, he said, and each has different strengths and weaknesses in dealing with it. 

RAV YIRMI shared some brief vignettes with the Magazine, pointing out that the student’s stories were much larger than he could express in a few words. And this was before Rav Avi was added to this woeful list just this week. On Sunday night, just a few days after the “Simchat Torah after,” the former principal represented Himmelfarb in eulogizing his former student, who had become a teacher in Stavisky’s school. But first, the others.

Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, whose story is perhaps the most famous among Anglos because he was an American citizen whose parents became famous themselves as passionate advocates for his and other hostages’ release, often traveling abroad to do so. He was killed just a few short and tragic days at the end of August when his body was recovered along with those of five other hostages in a Rafah tunnel. 

Hersh was a Himmelfarb graduate, and unlike the others on the school’s list of recently fallen, he was not on active duty. “He had gone to the Supernova music festival, so he was no longer in uniform,” Stavisky said. We mention him out of chronological order of death because he went to the festival with his school friend Aner.

Staff Sgt. Aner Elyakim Shapiro, 22, from Jerusalem, who served in the Nahal Brigade Reconnaissance Unit. He was killed (“fell” is the nicer way to say it) on Oct. 7, 2023. “He was a very talented musician – and his story is also famous,” his former principal said. 

“They [Hersh and Aner] went to Supernova together. I think that they were the only students of ours who went. Aner saved people who were in a sheltered area by throwing seven live grenades back at the terrorists. He didn’t have a chance to throw the eighth one back, which killed him.” According to Lior Bedein, the school’s vice principal, Aner saved eight lives that day.

“Hersh was this lovely, loving, happy, and funny young man,” Rav Yirmi said, “and Aner had been philosophical from a young age. He thought about and asked the big questions – and sometimes got answers.”

Capt. Ariel Reich, 21, from Jerusalem, who fought in the 7th “Storm from the Golan” Armored Brigade, 77th Battalion, was killed in battle on October 31 along with 14 other soldiers. “I was supposed to be his mesader kiddushin [officiant at his wedding] last Passover,” Stavisky lamented. “He was a career officer then in reserves, who, like many others, heard what was happening in the South and volunteered to go. He left his father, three brothers, and his fiancée.”

Staff Sgt. Shachar Fridman, 21, of Jerusalem, who was in the 101st Battalion Paratroopers Brigade, fell in battle in Gaza on November 18. “He left a moving letter, saying that he was willing to give everything for his country,” the former principal said. “He fought with great valor – and was also very sociable.”

Staff Sgt. Dvir Barazani, 20, of Jerusalem – 890th Battalion, Paratroopers Brigade – fell in action in northern Gaza on November 19. His father is deputy head of the security division in the President’s Residence. “He also fought with great valor – like all of them – in these very hard battles, against hundreds of terrorists in a kibbutz at the beginning of the month,” Stavisky said. Dvir was a very important part of the battle because he had a big MAG submachine gun, so he had a lot of responsibility, and he was fearless. “He told his father, ‘I trampled my fear and I just went on.’ That’s what they’ve got to do over there.”

WHEN ASKED by the Magazine how he handled having two students fall one day after the other, the bereaved principal said, “There was no time to breathe: no time to recoup, no time to recover. It’s like getting one punch in the head, and then another one right after.”

Sgt. 1st Class (res.) Ben Zussman, 22, of Jerusalem, of the 401st “Iron Tracks” Armored Brigade, fell in battle in northern Gaza on December 3. “His grandfather made aliyah, and I actually was his father’s teacher 32 years ago and was at his wedding,” the veteran educator said. “Ben was amazing at tennis and ping pong, and taught underprivileged kids how to play, a year before he went to the army. He was another one of many who volunteered to rejoin the reserves. A lovely, thoughtful, determined young man and a gentleman. He was also Yosef and Asher Guedalia’s cousin. (“The Angel’s Way: Family women mourning a fallen soldier,” the Magazine, March 8, 2024).

Sgt. Oriya Ayimalk Goshen, 21, of Jerusalem – Reconnaissance Unit, 84th (Givati) Infantry Brigade – fell in combat in southern Gaza on January 17, 2024. “His father was a military social worker who had the unenviable task of telling parents that their kids had been killed,” Stavisky said. “He was extremely talented and an outstanding soldier who would have gone far and would have brought a lot of respect to the Ethiopian community.”

HIMMELFARB WAS given a welcome respite from such sad announcements for more than seven months until the news about Hersh in August. Then, just a little more than a month later, on the eve of Rosh Hashanah:

1st Sgt. Almken Terefe, 21, of Jerusalem – Reconnaissance Unit, Golani Infantry Brigade – fell in combat in southern Lebanon on October 2, less than a week before the first anniversary of Oct. 7. “His family was also Ethiopian, but unlike Oriya, he was born there and his family made aliyah when he was two years old. He was also an exceptional young man, a wonderful soccer player, and a very good student. His dream was to be a surgeon, and he would’ve made it,” Rav Yirmi said.

“Being the oldest of four siblings, Almken sort of mediated the Israeli reality for his parents, who needed that,” the former principal said, adding that the school should have more Ethiopian students. “The Ethiopian community comes together under these circumstances from all over the country. Like all of the fallen, he was a great loss for his family and all of us.”

Stavisky’s losses at his school go back much farther, however. 

1st Sgt. Roi Shukran, the first of my students who fell, was killed 27 years ago in Lebanon,” the then-schoolteacher said. He was 21. “A lovely young man, he was a medic who wanted to be a doctor. His nephew is now a ninth grade student in Himmelfarb.”

Not only do his losses go way back, they get more personal: His own son-in-law fell just two days before Capt. Ariel Reich. 

Sgt. 1st Class (res.) Yinon Fleishman, 31, of Jerusalem – 71st Battalion, 188th Armored Brigade – was killed when his tank overturned in northern Israel on October 29, 2023. “He was a Torah scholar and a teacher,” his bereaved father-in-law said, having just experienced the first anniversary of his passing, with the yahrzeit coming up in the middle of November. “He taught Jewish history and ran the Talmud Torah after-school program in Tekoa.”

NOW WE come to the most recent – and hopefully final – fallen Himmelfarb alumnus and educator:

Capt. (res.) Avraham Yosef Goldberg, 43, of Jerusalem was one of five reserve officers from the 8207th Battalion, 228th (Alon) Brigade, aged 29-47, who fell in combat in southern Lebanon on Saturday, October 26, just two days after the first Hebrew anniversary of the Oct. 7 Simchat Torah massacre.

Rav Avi.

“How do I talk about you?” Rav Stavisky began his eulogy by asking. “As a school graduate, as an educator, as a rabbi of the school, as a gifted musician, as a loving and beloved father, or as Rachel’s husband?

“You liked to work; you saw value in hard work,” Himmelfarb’s previous principal and current representative said. “You worked hard as an educator. You worked hard as a rabbi and volunteer coordinator. You saw the big picture of the school but never refrained from tinkering with the small details. You never complained. You always got along with the students. For you, challenging students require us to work harder to reach their hearts. Your days were very, very full.”

LIOR BEDEIN, Himmelfarb’s vice principal, shared some background about Goldberg and the school. “Like Rav Avi, I also studied and graduated from here, and then came back to join the staff,” he said. “Avi had been on staff here for 10 or 11 years – and he had lots of titles here and was responsible for many areas and projects.”

Himmelfarb is the largest of Jerusalem’s 15 National Religious middle and high schools, with about 900 students – “894, to be exact,” Bedein said. “Do you know everyone’s name?” The Magazine asked. “No, but Rav Shlomi does” – referring to Rav Shlomo Danino, the current principal who took over from Stavisky five years ago and had been principal of the high school for many years prior to that.

Two memorial plaques are displayed in the Beit Knesset. The school has lost more than 60 students and staff since moving to its current location in 1969. 

“We have someone from the Dakar submarine sinking and quite a few from the Yom Kippur War,” Bedein said. “And, sadly, we have from Lebanon in the nineties, and from 2000.”

Ari Fuld is another well known alumni of the school. On September 16, 2018, the reserves soldier left his home for a routine shopping trip and became a national legend for the way he shot a terrorist after he himself was mortally wounded near the Rami Levy supermarket in the Gush Etzion junction. He was 45.

A dual US-Israeli citizen, he immigrated to Israel in 1994. The father of four was the grandson of a Holocaust survivor and had miraculously dodged a bullet while serving as an IDF soldier in Lebanon. He served as a sergeant in an elite paratroopers unit in the IDF reserves, and also served on the Efrat emergency squad.

“Avi had been a mechanech [educator] for several years, having been in charge of the 10th grade. Then he was the rav of the school for seven years, and when we grew too big for one rav, he took the position just for the high school division,” Bedein said. “But he had also been a Golani combat soldier and then officer. At age 40, he was released from reserve duty, but in order to continue serving he decided to train to become a military rabbi, who actually sometimes went into battle behind the front-line troops.”

On that fateful Saturday last week, he was behind the front lines. Even though he was “just” the rabbi of the brigade, he also had a gun and fought valiantly until he was killed.

“He played the clarinet,” the vice principal said. “He formed a band of 10th graders who go to hospitals and other places to play.”

Avi had also been in charge of the mandatory 60 hours of public service that all 10th graders in Israel have to do. “If you are a counselor in Bnei Akiva or a volunteer for MDA [Magen David Adom], it officially counts – but not by us,” Bedein said. “We don’t count it because we want them to do extra volunteering. And outside of school time.”

Sixty hours a year doesn’t sound like that much – “but when you have 160 kids to place, it would be much easier to let those kinds of activities count. But Avi found places for everyone. And he would go to visit them to make sure that it suited them. He was involved until the end.”

His colleague said that in spite of all the activities he was busy with, he was always calm, “and always had a very, big smile.”

Bedein also pointed out that Avi need not have returned to the army because of his age and the fact that he had eight children. (Anyone with six children is automatically exempt). But he went anyway – and was there off and on for about 240 days, with someone else taking over his 10th grade homeroom class. That person might be taking it over for good now.

“On Sunday, the day after October 7, he came to school in his army uniform carrying his gun,” Elinoar Gigi, a geography teacher at the school, told the Magazine. “He prayed the morning service with the students, and told them he was going – it was important for him to tell them shalom before he went.”

Avi had performed marriages for more than 50 couples as a rabbi in the Tzohar Rabbinical Organization, she said. “He also used to come and give talks in English to our egalitarian minyan Shir Hadash in Emek Refaim – he just volunteered. And he also came with his wife Racheli to play at the wedding of one of our new immigrant members – also for no charge.”

“He was sunshine – he would just light everyone up,” Gigi said. “He made you feel so happy and confident, give you hope and faith, and alleviate all of your worries – ‘what are you worried about? It will be alright!’”

“Everything he did, he did with light in his eyes – a light that would take you and make you want to be part of it,” his close friend and fellow Himmelfarb teacher Eitan Ashkenazi said, in an Arutz 7 video interview after Avi’s funeral. 

Regarding the 60 hours of 10th-grade community participation that he was in charge of, Ashkenazi said that Ami encouraged them to do it wholeheartedly, and “not just to do it to graduate, but to connect to what they were volunteering for – to give themselves over to it. This is a great loss for the Jewish nation.”

“Avi was very attached to sports in general and basketball in particular,” said Shlomi Goldberg (not related), Himmelfarb’s physical education coordinator. “He loved playing basketball with the students on the courts, came to watch every game of the team, and was very proud of the school’s sports successes.”

He often took his students out to play, Shlomi said. “Avi saw educational value in the shared physical activity, the teamwork and the dynamics it creates within the classroom.”

“It is a tremendous burden on the school’s principal Rav Danino, who has to announce all the terrible news to the staff and students,” his predecessor Rav Stavisky said. “He puts in tremendous effort to sustain the vigor and psychological health of the school’s community.”

“Our school is a place of life,” Danino said in a Makor Rishon article published on December 14, 2023, after the first five of his students had fallen: Aner, Ariel, Shachar, Dvir, and Ben. “We have to relay the bad news in an appropriate way to the students depending on their age and circumstances.”

IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Herzi Halevi and N12 commentator Amit Segal are graduates of Himmelfarb. “Many people ask me if we can recognize the next generation Herzi or Amit – obviously not,” the bereaved principal said. “But I hope each student of ours will feel that he can achieve the highest accomplishments in any field he chooses to pursue.

“Our students have the awareness that it is a great privilege to serve in the Israel Defense Forces and to protect our people and our country,” he said. “Life is complex; we try to teach the students that there are complexities in the world, the world is not black and white.

“You acted from the realization that the Torah begins with kindness and ends with kindness, and that the most important role of man is to alleviate the suffering of others,” Rav Yirmi said, addressing Avi in his eulogy. “You knew that the Torah can spread in the world through human contact and human love. At our school, it is an honor to say, ‘I give what I have to others.’ For us, it is an honor when the strong protect the weak.  At Himmelfarb, it is an honor to say that I defend my country.”

--------------------------------------------

1997

Aug-28   1st Sgt. Roi Shukran, aged 21.

2018

Sep-16    IDF reservist Ari Fuld, aged 45.

2023

Oct. 7    Staff Sgt. Aner Elyakim Shapiro, aged 22.

2024

Jan-17   Sgt. Oriya Ayimalk Goshen, aged 21.

                      And all the rest.

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May Himmelfarb and all other schools – and families – suffer no more fallen soldiers, citizens and loved ones. 