Gaza mosques to Jerusalem synagogues: A radical Islamist's journey to Judaism

“I’m sorry for all the mess, I’ve been busy with setting up my new restaurant, a dream come true,” said Yaron Avraham, 46, smiling apologetically while talking to The Jerusalem Post. Almost nothing in the appearance of Avraham, a religious Jew, can provide any hint of his past life and horrible childhood experiences.

Avraham was born in Lod to a radical family affiliated with the Islamic Movement in Israel, the 12th child in a household of 18. “We usually start observing some of the Muslim commandments at the age of seven. This is when I was sent to mosques for the first time, aspiring to be a religious and pious man. I would wake up at 5:30 a.m.,” he remembered.

However, growing up in a poverty-stricken neighborhood, he was also exposed to crime at a very young age. “I remember finishing my studies around 3 p.m., finding myself walking around with a backpack full of drugs to distribute between addresses I got.”

Drug trafficking was not the only type of crime he was exposed to. “In our culture, family honor is of the highest importance. It is not a religious matter but a cultural one, with the value of preserving the honor of the family sometimes even bypassing some religious commandments, especially when it comes to women, something the Western world would find difficult to grasp,” he explained.

“Women must uphold the ‘honor of the family’ by essentially obeying everything the men tell them, including how and when to leave the house, how to dress, whether to open a bank account and get a driver’s license, etc.,” he said.

“I had an older sister, Sarah. She was in 11th grade, around 17-18 years old, when I was nine. My older brother, a cruel and merciless drug dealer, yet pious in his way of life, approached Sarah one day and informed her that she was not allowed to leave the house without his consent. Not to meet friends, not to go to school – she had to get his permission for everything.

“But Sarah was not ready to listen. She had dreams and hopes and wanted to do everything that girls her age did, so she stood her ground. My brother did not like that, and soon Sarah was subject to recurring, terrible violence from him and two of the other older brothers. 

“After three months of violence and torture, the older brother approached Sarah again and told her that he allowed her, in all his ‘kindness,’ to go out to work, but only if she dressed modestly and returned home at a set curfew of 5 p.m. There would be no talking to men, no going out, not anything else, just from work, home, and back.

“Sarah would sometimes come home late by a few minutes and had to face beatings and violence again. One evening she returned very late, around 8:30 p.m. She was ‘interrogated’ by my brothers and she admitted that she had gone for a walk in the mall. 

“My oldest brother determined straight away that she had crossed a red line and disgraced the family’s honor. This is an unpardonable offense for which only one punishment exists.

“Around 10-10:30 p.m., the older brothers dragged all of us to our rooms and locked us in them, while Sarah was locked in another one. We heard terrible beatings and screams from the room next door, and it kept on going like that for hours. 

At around 12:30 a.m., we started hearing the most horrible screams I have ever heard, of Sarah begging for her life. These terrible screams were the last 15 seconds of her life; the three brothers had slaughtered her there.

“I can hear her screams in my ear to this day, though it’s been 37 years. This is not something I can ever forget, a sister who screams and begs for her life – and then complete silence. 

“During the night the body disappeared and no one knows where she is buried. For some reason she is still defined as ‘missing’ by the authorities,” Avraham added somberly.

“The doors were opened soon but we didn’t dare to leave our rooms. I left around 6:30 a.m. and saw that the room where everything happened was clean with barely a trace of anything.

“I saw my mother sitting in the yard, her eyes red, crying. She was sad and nervous and I asked what happened to my sister. My brothers who murdered my sister were also sitting there, smoking and laughing. It was as if death and killing were just a normal thing.”

Stranded in Gaza

For the culprit brothers, Avraham’s questions were was a red flag. “They thought I would endanger them so they had to get rid of me. Three days later they forcibly dragged me to the car and I found myself abandoned in a mosque in Gaza.”

Avraham stayed in that mosque, which had a sort of boarding school, for more than five years. “It was a difficult time for me. It was a cruel education on the path to being a martyr. I see it as a defense mechanism to confront the fear of death, while looking fear in the eyes. 

“They made me experience death and find the ‘thrill’ in it. We were taken to participate in funerals of so-called shaheeds. Imagine this: Children are made to walk past the corpses of those alleged martyrs, kiss their hands or feet, depending on what’s left of them. Lots of brainwashing about heaven, hell, the afterlife.

“I managed to study the Quran by heart. At the age of 12.5, there came a stage where, according to them, I now rose to a higher level and should continue the mission to fight the Jews. By the way, this fight was never related to an occupation. This war is religious. To this day, when I am asked when there’ll be peace, my answer is always: ‘When the last Jew stops breathing,’” he added somberly.

“The most cruel experience I remember was at the age of 14, when we were taken to a cemetery in the center of Gaza, near a military base, each of us had to go down and lie in a grave with our eyes closed while other kids were reading verses of the Quran over us, so that we could feel the so-called ‘ascension of the soul.’ 

“I also remembered how kids paid with their lives for various offenses, including the execution of two of my colleagues, aged 13 and 15, who were beheaded following accusations that they had sexual relations.

“Death was just such a central part of life and life there has almost no value. What we were taught to fear was not death, rather life itself,” Avraham explained.

“After more than five years I decided I could not stay there. I approached the disciplinary coordinator and took out all my frustrations on him, including cursing and hitting. Of course, they punished me violently and called my brothers to take me out of that mosque. 

“They came to get me, unwillingly of course. I thought I was heading back home – but they ended up just transferring me to a similar mosque near Hebron.

“I was already 16 and had gained at least some self-confidence. One evening I decided to run away after gathering ‘intelligence’ from the area, attempting to find out where I was and how I could escape. In the end, I managed to get back home, and, to say the least, my brothers were not at all happy to see me there.

“They planned to drag me back to the mosque again, but they didn’t realize that they were not talking to the same nine-year-old, scared boy. After all, I had lived with death around me, experienced education on the importance of becoming a martyr, and I wasn’t afraid of dying. 

“I confronted them and told them that the next time they drag me somewhere I will run away and report everything to the police and the army – or they should just take me and bury me next to Sarah.

“In the end, they decided to leave me at home and lock me inside, but I lasted there only two weeks, as they kept threatening me that what they did to Sarah was nothing compared to what they will do to me if I kept making trouble.

“I couldn’t stay there anymore, and I left when one of them forgot his keys in the door. I ran away and hid for 10 days in a Muslim cemetery. I looked for food in bins; I didn’t go out during the day. Ironically, it was the dead who protected me from the living. Here too, death became my shield.

Angels along the way

After 10 days in that cemetery, Avraham passed by a small shop and approached the Jewish owner, who happened to speak Arabic. 

“I asked for something to eat and drink; he saw my condition and brought a baguette and a bottle of water. I told him briefly that my sister was killed and I’m hiding from my family in a cemetery. So he drove me to the central station in Tel Aviv, gave me money, and escorted me to a bus to Eilat. 

“He told me: ‘This is the farthest I can help you get away.’ He was my first guardian angel.

In Eilat, Avraham walked around aimlessly until he walked past a restaurant. “A worker from the Work-Study Youth movement, named Uzi Sadeh, saw me and realized that I was in trouble. For an entire month he cared for my every need.

“At one later point, I asked him: Do you help every child you just see walking around? And he told me: ‘Definitely no, but I saw you and I couldn’t leave you hanging around on your own.’

Sadeh’s brother Rami was a parliamentary assistant to Benny Temkin, then a Knesset member. The three adopted Avraham and took care of him, transferring him to a home under the auspices of Elem organization for youth in distress in Tel Aviv.

“I was there until I was 18 and decided I would join the IDF. I was mainly jealous of the ‘recruitment parties’ my Jewish friends had before they enlisted. But I also thought it would’ve been a way to repay the angels who helped me along the way, as I had no money on me whatsoever and felt like I had to pay them back somehow. I thought: ‘I’m not afraid of death, so at least I’ll be a soldier.’”

The manager of the home was less enthusiastic about the idea. “So I turned to Temkin, who for six months did everything he could, until I managed to enlist in the Givati brigade. It was in the ranks of the IDF that I received the most important lesson antithetical to anything I had ever known before: the value and sanctity of life.

“We had a conversation with our commander about the IDF’s orders to stop a suspect approaching, which include, in an escalating manner, calls to stop, threatening in Arabic, shooting at the air, then at their feet, and only then if the threat is still feasible – shooting at the mass center. 

“I laughed and told him that if a terrorist comes to me and wants to kill me, and knows that this is the only thing separating him from heaven, he wouldn’t care less about this entire negotiation. I added something along the lines of: ‘I know this because I was there, after all.’”

The commander was surprised at what he heard, asking what he meant by “being there.” 

“We sat down for a three-hour talk, and this was the first time I understood the meaning of the sanctity of life – willing to risk one’s own to save a human, and even someone who intended to kill or get killed. 

“It sounded weird to me at first, but it made a deep impact on me, and this issue of the sanctity of life, this is what first sparked my interest in wanting to be part of the Jewish people.”

The path to Judaism

Following his military service, Avraham studied cooking at the Tadmor hospitality school in Tel Aviv and worked in several restaurants across the city. “I lived life in the most amazing way. I made friends and I felt like I was making progress but still there was something missing.

“My best friend in Tel Aviv at the time was ultra-Orthodox, named Yaron. We had many conversations about life, religion, and Zionism. At one point he brought me to synagogue with him on Shabbat evening, and he also took me to my first Shabbat meal. 

“This was the first time I had ever seen this – a family meal that brings together parents and their children, all happy and singing and laughing, and sharing their experiences. Growing up in a family such as mine, I couldn’t even bring myself to imagine anything of the sort.

“This sparked my interest in Judaism even further. I decided that this was what I wanted and told Yaron I wanted to convert. He was a bit skeptical in the beginning but directed me to Machon Meir in Jerusalem, where I went through a conversion process that took a year and four months. 

“Even though I literally came from the enemy’s territory, they still helped me with everything I needed. There was not a single Sabbath or holiday that I was left alone. They helped me immerse myself in study, and learning in a Beit Midrash was a joy that I have never felt before – a feeling of true serenity and cleansing of the soul.

“After I concluded my conversion process, and the moment when I returned to the Beit Midrash, after immersing myself in the mikveh, everyone welcomed me with roaring singing, saying: ‘Veshavu Banim L’gvulam,’ (And the children shall come again to their own border). It was the most exciting and moving moment of my life.

“I went to the Western Wall, put on tefillin, and went up to the Torah for the first time, only to find out that the first parasha I am being called to was none other than Chayei Sarah – the life of Sarah, echoing the memory of my sister. 

“I felt like I was falling apart there. It was the most incredible thing that happened to me in my life. For me, Chayei Sarah became a second birthday, a day of rebirth, when I truly became a free man.

Avraham is now married and a father to four children – three girls and a boy. “I keep on asking myself what good have I done in life to have been given these blessings. I see my children every night in bed, sleeping soundly, not being afraid of each other. I hug them firmly and thank God that they’re free.”

He lives in Jerusalem, giving talks about his journey from his horrible past to his present as a free man, and his path to conversion to become part of the Jewish people. “I’ve been giving lectures to crowds from the security forces, yeshivas, students, schools, and communities. We have a wonderful people whom I will never stop admiring. I receive so much love daily and still can’t believe what I’ve accomplished.”

He is now in the process of fulfilling another dream, this time in the culinary field – opening a new restaurant in Givat Shaul in Jerusalem named Bar Baguette. It is scheduled to open right after Shavuot.

Modern lessons

Avraham has completely disconnected himself from his former reality. “I have no contact with them, I don’t miss them at all. Some ask me about it, but I say that I have nothing to fear, certainly with a kippah on my head. 

“I go everywhere and speak up. Let them be afraid – not me. Incidentally, whoever is afraid of them will be the first one to suffer. They appreciate the fact I’m not afraid.” 

Unfortunately, though, Sarah’s case was never solved. “Thirty-seven years have passed, and to this day Sarah is still considered ‘missing.’ In the State of Israel there are hundreds of such women every year who disappear or are murdered, from all sectors of society. However, the unwritten law between the state and the Arab sector is that regarding everything related to honor killings, the state will not interfere.

“Our situation as a country and a people is one of the most difficult ones we’ve faced. I came from the other side, and I know how they think there. For them, what happened on October 7 was not at all a one-time episode nor the height of their cruelty. They will not rest until they see the last Jew deported or dead. 

“We have a tendency as a country to be surprised; for hours they slaughtered and murdered and raped and burned, yet we still wear our silk gloves. Half the country is literally on fire, and we are busy listening to what everyone has to say. 

“We must wake up and take care of ourselves. If not, October 7 will happen again and again. They see the very attempt of October 7 as a success and victory. By the way, Israel is more interested in how many Palestinians are killed than the Palestinians themselves.

“Unfortunately, the solution is military and not political, as peace is unachievable, and only long-term agreements out of self-interest can hold. But let there be no doubt, we all know who will win in the end: the Jewish people. I meet soldiers and commanders and many people from so many parts of society and I tell you for sure: there are no such people in the entire world, and we will definitely prevail.” ■