Editor's Notes: When it finally hit home

I have, I will readily admit, been relatively lucky.

Throughout my life, death has been an occasional acquaintance, rather than a constant companion. While I have certainly encountered death at various times – the loss of my grandparents, the untimely passing of my first cousin, classmates and neighbors murdered in terror attacks – I have largely walked between the raindrops, blessed to have all the members of my immediate family alive and well. As I see friends confronting terrible loss, my heart breaks with sympathy while I recognize that I cannot fully grasp what they are experiencing. I also realize that my incomprehension will not last forever.

There is a religious dimension to this, as well. As a kohen – that is, a member of a priestly family descended, according to tradition, from the biblical Aaron – I refrain from coming in contact with dead bodies or graves in order to maintain ritual purity. While Jewish cemeteries and funeral homes often have ways of accommodating kohanim, we tend to avoid funerals, opting instead to visit mourning families while they’re sitting shiva for a week following burial. My experience of death has thus always been somewhat removed.

That sense of relative removal has extended through the period since October 7, as well.

While I have shared in the collective trauma and mourning that have engulfed all Israelis and Jews around the world since the Hamas pogrom, I had been fortunate not to have experienced the death of anyone I knew personally. While I was surrounded by people who had lost loved ones and people close to them in the massacre and the ongoing military campaign in Gaza, I continued to walk between the raindrops. Each day, when the Israel Defense Forces would announce the names of fallen soldiers, I would join so many others in holding my breath, wondering if I’d recognize a name, and each day I’d breathe a small sigh of relief mixed with sadness upon seeing the names and ages, aware that families I didn’t know were mourning someone who meant the world to them.

And yet, in recent weeks, it has felt as though death was creeping ever closer.

My parents’ neighbors’ grandson. A friend’s cousin. My sister’s boss. With each passing day, with each announcement, it kept drawing nearer, and I became more keenly aware that I wouldn’t be able to avoid it forever.

It finally hit home

Until, on Sunday night, it finally hit home.

Shortly after midnight, an image appeared in our community WhatsApp group. It was an announcement in a format familiar to all Israelis: black text in a blocky font, surrounded by a solemn black border. A death notice, it bore the name Ben Zussman, son of Tzvi and Sarit.

“Oh my God,” I immediately texted a close friend who is also in the group. “Please tell me it isn’t real.”

Of course, it was.

Ben grew up in our community. I remember him as a small boy, the oldest of a trio that included his sister, Mika, and their younger brother, Boaz. Over the years, that small boy grew into an impressive, tall young man. He had a reserved, serious demeanor but also a ready smile and was extremely popular. He was a talented, nationally ranked ping-pong player. His father, Tzvi, used to coordinate our Shabbat morning sermons; his mother, Sarit, has chanted the haftarah on numerous occasions. I knew Ben had become an infantry soldier in the IDF’s Combat Engineering Corps, and although his family had been attending our Shabbat services less of late, I still saw him from time to time. He was 22.

And there on my phone’s display was his name, in a font so large and so bold it couldn’t be denied, even as it was too terrible to be believed.

The next morning, several hours before the funeral, I took a cab to the office. As we drove past the Zussman family home, we saw dozens of people of all ages lining the street with Israeli flags. “What are they protesting?” the driver wondered aloud as he gazed through the window. I told him they were paying tribute to a fallen soldier who lived there. “Did you know him?” he asked. I said I did. He sighed and shook his head. “Too many,” he said. “Too many.”

Shortly before noon, I went to Mount Herzl Military Cemetery. Lingering at the entrance to finish a work call, I saw many familiar faces in the stream of people who had come to pay their respects. We nodded sadly to one another. I then made my way to the designated section, taking care not to come in close proximity to graves. An honor guard of soldiers with the gray berets of the Combat Engineering Corps stood at the ready as hundreds of people crowded around the burial site and lining the surrounding sections in the terraced cemetery.

Sobs swept through the crowd as the flag-draped casket was carried in by a complement of white-uniformed navy soldiers and carefully placed it atop the open grave as a friend of the family led the gathering in singing a prayer. Then, out of nowhere, the hauntingly beautiful song Beyachad (“Together”) by Israeli singers Marina Maximilian and Guy Mentesh started playing. The flag was removed and the casket was slowly lowered into the ground. The soldiers started emptying bags of soil over the casket and were joined by members of the family and friends of Ben’s until the grave was filled. A military chaplain chanted prayers and the family recited Kaddish, the mourners’ prayer.

After a eulogy by an officer representing the IDF, Tzvi came to the microphone and spoke about his son. He elaborated on four words that, he said, described Ben: dedication, love, pleasure, and respect. For each, he listed some of the various ways in which the attribute was reflected in Ben’s life, aside from the last. “Here I choose to mention only one thing: your respect for your parents, which you always, always made sure to maintain,” he said. “We will miss you so much. Go in peace, rest in peace, and we will continue to build here, in Israel, everything you started but didn’t get to finish.”

Mika tearfully reflected on the times they had spent together as brother and sister, describing him as “the older brother any little sister would ask for.” She shared that Ben had been discharged from the army in July and had nevertheless lept to action on October 7. “It was so clear to you,” she said. “As soon as we had a sense of what had happened, you went to pack a bag. You didn’t even wait for the official word. You just left, even though you didn’t have to. It was clear to you that if your country is in trouble, and if your friends are fighting, you have to be there.”

A week before he was killed, Ben had been granted leave and Mika had been surprised to find him at home. They had one last family meal together. “My Ben-Ben, you promised you’d take care of yourself,” she said through tears. “You really promised me, and you asked me to take care of everyone. So I will. I’ll take care of Mom, Dad, and Boaz.”

“My Ben-Ben, we aren’t saying goodbye, because we can’t, we really can’t,” she concluded. “I love you and you’ll forever remain deep in my heart.”

Boaz, the youngest, came next, a red-and-black scarf of their beloved Hapoel Jerusalem team draped over his shoulder. He, too, reflected on the times he and Ben had spent together, including joint runs and Friday nights spent drinking tea and talking. “You once wrote to your unit that no sonofabitch was going to stop their training,” he said. “I promise you and everyone who’s here that no sonofabitch is going to stop everything you started. I’m going to continue everything you started and I’m going to do it as well as I can. I love and admire you.”

Finally, Sarit approached the lectern. “Here lies pure gold,” she began. She described Ben as having lived life to the fullest, a “dream child.” “You managed to connect to everyone, to see the good and the funny in each person,” she said. “I once told you that if you were to stand next to an electrical pole for more than five minutes, you two would also become good friends.” Ben, she said, had dedicated his life to the security of Israel, and had lived a life of value and meaning, but never at the expense of family or friends. “Thank you, Ben, for living a full life,” she said. “Thank you for making us proud, thank you for all the laughter and friendship with me, the silly humor we shared, thank you for being here with us in all your fullness. You are still with us and always will be.”

Then she looked up and addressed the tear-streaked faces around her.

“And now to you, to all of you, to all of us, to the Jewish people in the Land of Israel,” she said forcefully. “As a storyteller, I tell you: our story has a happy ending. We are going to win. We have no other choice. We are a people who want to live, unlike our enemies, lowly and miserable, cowards, Nazis and their accomplices, who sanctify death. We will live, and thrive, and build.”

“And our leaders must be worthy of us, of the Israeli spirit that beats within each of us, of the Israeli spirit that beats within our incredible soldiers,” Sarit continued. “If our soldiers have managed to put themselves aside and the nation at the center, it is incumbent upon our leaders to do the same. Leaders who don’t understand that, leaders who go around with arrogance, should make way for those who do know what to do. Because we have to win. It’s either us or them. It’s either the Nazis and their accomplices or us.”

“Do you hear, people of Israel?” she said, her voice rising. “World, do you hear? Do you hear, lowly enemies who desire death and evil? Am Yisrael chai – the Jewish people live, forever and ever and for all eternity, standing tall and with our heads held high. Now more than ever, be strong, believe, demand the good, insist on the good, and we will win.”

The funeral concluded with the recitation of memorial prayers and a three-volley salute, after which a succession of friends got up to deliver their own emotional eulogies. We sang Israel’s national anthem, Hatikvah, “The Hope,” and as I walked away I could see Tzvi holding the flag that had been draped over his son’s casket.

Before leaving the cemetery, I visited the National Memorial Hall. The recently dedicated hall, shaped like a spiral and meant to evoke an eternal flame, is surrounded by a wall bearing the names of all Israeli servicemen and women who have fallen in defense of Israel throughout the country’s existence. Each name is engraved on a small beige brick, alongside which is an electronic flame that is kindled on the date of the soldier’s passing. The young soldier who escorted me explained that they make a point of installing the bricks within 30 days of the soldiers’ deaths, which has proven challenging under the current circumstances. There are over 400 names from October 7 alone and more are added every day. While I was there, a crew was busy installing a series of new bricks bearing the names of soldiers, police officers, and other security personnel killed over the past two months.

On Wednesday, the third day of the shiva, I visited the Zussmans and sat with them for some time. I will keep the conversation private, but at the end I asked them how they want Ben to be remembered.

“As a proud Israeli Jew,” they told me firmly. “He found common cause with anyone who wants to live in peace, Jews and Arabs alike. He wanted to be friends with everyone. He studied Arabic with deep dedication because he understood that, once we win, we’re going to have to build a shared society here. But he also knew that those who don’t want to live in peace, those who don’t want us here, must be defeated.”

Ben Zussman was the fifth graduate of his Jerusalem high school, Himmelfarb, to be killed in battle since October 7. An old photograph that has been circulating in recent days shows Ben alongside Aner Shapiro – who famously lobbed numerous Hamas hand grenades back out of the bomb shelter in which he and numerous others had sought protection, saving multiple lives before being killed – and Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who lost an arm in the same bomb shelter and is currently being held hostage in Gaza, his condition unknown.

This column is being published on the first day of Hanukkah. Under other circumstances, I would surely have written something about joy and light, but right now I can only think of those tiny flames in the memorial hall – thousands upon thousands of them. Each one represents a light that has been extinguished, a family shattered, a life cut short in its prime. As we kindle the holiday candles over the coming week, let us spare a thought for our fallen young people and for those they left behind. And let us endeavor, to paraphrase Sarit’s poignant words, to be worthy of their sacrifice.