Michal Admoni: Overcoming Difficulty and Writing a Better Life

Michal Admoni endured a great deal of suffering and difficulty in her life, after a medical procedure left her disabled. Writing became her refuge, a means of self-realization, and a remedy for her pain. She shared her insights and love with others—both her readers and her neighbors in Kfar Aza, who used to come to her porch seeking encouragement and comfort through conversation. On October 7, she was murdered with her son Guy, just before she finished writing her third book.

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Michal Admoni and her book "Raiti Tsvaim Behirim", translated into English as "Five Years & One Day"

“We are not accountable for the cards we are dealt with, but we do get to choose how to play them, and however we decide to play them, is what our lives will look like. My life has been tossed around like a fishing boat in the midst of a tsunami. It fell apart, and I reassembled it to suit me perfectly. It wasn’t simple, and it didn’t happen overnight. It took me four years to understand where I wanted to go, to express the optimism and strength within me, and to give others the strength to move forward with courage.”

When the late Michal Admoni wrote these words, she was unaware of the cruel way her life would end. But what she wrote wasn’t simply a euphemism. Michal fully embraced life even after she was injured and became disabled. She fulfilled her dreams and did everything she could to take hold of her life and help others in similar situations cope with the challenges of disability and pain. She did this through her books, the lectures she gave, the assistance she lent others, and even on her “therapy porch” (as she called it) at home, where residents of Kfar Aza would come to talk with her about anything they wished, receiving a hug or a piece of warm, loving advice. “We are a family that rises from crises; we always seek the light in a genuine way, not just in theory,” says Doron Admoni, Michal’s widower. “I know that’s what Michal would have wanted.”

Michal was born on May 5, 1966, in Kibbutz Beit Keshet. When she was five, she moved with her family to Ein Vered. She served in the IDF as part of a Nahal group [Nahal – a special IDF program that combined community building and military service] and later worked in the education system of Kibbutz Kfar Aza, three miles east of Gaza. It was there she met Doron. This was Doron’s second marriage, and together they raised four children—two from his previous marriage and two they had together.

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Michal and her children. Guy, who was murdered alongside her, is standing on her left. Photo from a private album.

Long before October 7, Admoni faced difficulties and pain that changed her life: “20 years ago, Michal had a medical procedure that went wrong. It left her injured and disabled, suffering from excruciating pain daily. She underwent rehabilitation for six months at Loewenstein Hospital. After half a year there, I told her ‘Come on, let’s go home’.” They returned to their home in Kfar Aza and continued her rehabilitation there, installing aids to assist Michal. She, for her part, never gave up. At first, she used a wheelchair, and later crutches. “We did everything,” recalls Doron, who dedicated his life from that moment on to helping her rehabilitate, with the help of the entire family. “She slowly learned how to do everything and worked very hard on her rehabilitation. After almost a year, her medical condition worsened again, and she suffered a pulmonary embolism. For three days, she was clinically dead but she survived that as well. Each crisis strengthened our family, and we learned to cope,” says Doron. After another round of rehabilitation, Michal returned home.

Michal never gave up on herself, but as a resident of the Gaza border region dealing with a disability, she found it objectively challenging to cope with the endless rocket attacks that require residents to rush to bomb shelters. Her injury and rehabilitation brought Michal an extraordinary gift. She had always loved writing and had received praise for her talent. She began writing posts on her Facebook page almost daily. Due to her medical condition, she was in constant pain, and the keyboard became her refuge. Eventually, she was told that she was onto something real with her stories, and the idea of turning them into a book took shape. “Since Michal was in great pain, it was hard for her to sleep. She would wake up every morning at four AM and write on the porch. She began working with an editor, and it took two years of writing until her first book was published. She was ecstatic— on cloud nine,” Doron recalls with a mix of excitement and sadness.

He says that from the moment her book Five Years & One Day (Raiti Tsvaim Behirim in Hebrew) was published, Michal became a changed person. As she put it, the period following her severe medical ordeals and disability turned her into someone who pursued her dreams to the fullest. “She called me her ‘dream fulfiller,’ and was very active and full of daring. You could even say she reinvented herself. She studied medical coaching and began helping people in crises. She began working with nonprofits and the National Insurance Institute [Bituah Leumi], offering guidance and traveling the country with her story and her zest for life, inspiring others and leading groups. She didn’t care about making money off of her story. She didn’t earn anything from it. She wanted to help people,” he says. When her book came out, Michal began offering lectures based on it. People from all over the country came to hear her story. She used those lectures as a way to convey her message: Don’t sink; grow from the pain.

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Michal and Guy. Photo from a private album.

“We translated the book into English, and it’s sold on Amazon. I can’t describe how happy that made her; it was her self-realization. And then she thought about writing the second book,” Doron tells us. Five Years & One Day was published in 2018, followed by Bata Elai (You Came to Me, Hebrew) n 2021.

Michal’s books were not autobiographical, but they certainly dealt with topics close to her heart, focusing on coping with crises and disability. Five Years & One Day tells the story of Ella, a young woman who gets injured in a car accident and is hospitalized in a spinal cord injury rehabilitation unit. She must relearn how to live life and how to control her body. Ella feels like a prisoner in the ward and inside her own body. She wants to feel like a desirable, sexual, vibrant young woman again, and she begins to open up to the world again thanks to a budding new love. You Came to Me, Michal’s second book, revolves around Mika, a divorced mother of two daughters, who is no stranger to disability. The plot unfolds about three years after a skiing accident and a failed medical procedure that has left her on crutches. Mika focuses on motherhood, work, and friends, completely pushing away anyone trying to get close from the outside. Her firm refusal to attend a reunion with her high school classmates leads to some surprising heated correspondence.

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Michal signing her first book, Five Years & One Day. Photo from a private album

Despite the difficult themes addressed in Michal’s books, they are also filled with humor, love, and passion. What sets her works apart—and perhaps makes them stand out as innovative in the Israeli literary landscape—is their approach to broken bodies and souls from a different perspective: one of growth, vitality, and even sexuality. Passion radiates from her pages, refusing to isolate people with disabilities from sensations of pleasure, lust, and sexuality. “Her stories are ultimately tales of love that teach us how to live and feel desirable, even if you’re not a typical person or you have some sort of particular limitation,” Doron says. Michal herself said that the words burned within her and that the moment pen touched paper, she found peace.

One month before she was murdered in the October 7 massacre, Michal told Doron that she had finished writing her third book. She didn’t get to see it published. “I’ll start working on the book,” Doron says painfully. “I’m not at that stage yet, I’m not mentally ready to bring myself to do it, but of course, I’ll publish it in the future.”

On October 7, Doron was in the U.S. with his daughter. He was texting with Michal, and when she didn’t respond, he flew back to Israel, certain of what had happened — Michal and Guy were murdered. “I felt something impossible to explain. God sent me a feeling. I landed in Israel, and I was informed unofficially. I had anticipated it all, and I was right. If their fate was to be murdered, at least they were together.” After the horrific massacre, rescue teams found Michal and Guy together, embraced and lifeless. At Doron’s request, they were buried together in the military section of the Tel Mond cemetery.

After their deaths, Doron committed himself to continuing the legacy of Michal and Guy. “This is our life’s mission. I rented an apartment in Herzliya with our youngest daughter. Our older daughter lives in Shefayim, and my other son lives in the U.S. We’re trying to stay active. Beyond Michal’s book, she had fallen in love with a place in Greece and dreamed of having a vacation home there where she could write, overlooking the sea. We bought that house not long ago. Now I’m renovating it, and it’s going to be a special place—the home of Michal and Guy.”

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Guy and Michal, alongside her crutches. Photo from a private album

Doron is a shy man who doesn’t like to be in the spotlight, but Michal’s captivating energy and support swept him along. After her death, many people approached him to talk about the books she wrote. “In a way, the books also tell our story—a story that can’t be taken for granted. I didn’t marry a disabled woman. At first, when we discovered her disability, I didn’t know what would help her. But little by little, I learned. The love between Michal and me always flourished. Our son Guy, who was murdered alongside her by Hamas terrorists, always said we taught him what relationships and love truly are.”

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Guy Admoni. Photo from a private album

The family bond is also deeply felt within the pages of Michal’s books. The extended Admoni family loved to travel and attend Hapoel Tel Aviv games, and they believed in expanding their horizons and fulfilling their dreams. Michal’s relationship with her son Guy was an especially close one. “From the moment he was born, they were bonded as one; they never left each other’s side.” The deep bond between Guy and Michal was highlighted in all the texts and eulogies written in their honor. Even at a young age, Guy, a young IDF officer, showed himself to be a sensitive, brave, and determined boy who knew how to respond to the many challenges his family faced. Their close relationship was built on a foundation of mutual respect and deep commitment to one another. For many years, he worked with children and adults with disabilities. He was a guide in the Amichai youth movement’s Hod Hasharon branch and also worked with children at a special needs center in Gan Liman in Kfar Saba.

Six days before she was murdered, Michal wrote on her Facebook page: “I love to follow my heart because my heart takes me to wonderful places.” Michal’s enormous heart continues to beat in spirit through the books she wrote, the people who loved her, and of course, the incredible connection she shared with her son Guy. In her life as in her death, Michal Admoni is a symbol of the power of hope and faith, and the ability to find light even in the darkest moments.

Read more at: Lives Lost: The Works of the October 7 Fallen – A Special Project

Dr. Hayim Katsman: A Brilliant Academic Lecturer and Car Mechanic

He chose an academic career for himself but refused to live in an ivory tower. He financed his studies first by working in a garage, and later through gardening and DJing. He grew up in a religious household in the city of Petah Tikva but decided to dedicate his life to the only place he wanted to call home: Kibbutz Holit in the Negev desert. Dr. Hayim Katsman was a brilliant, special, and generous person whose young life came to an end on that tragic Saturday.

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Hayim Katsman as a DJ (photo by Naama Kaspi), and one of his published academic articles that explains how working in a car garage led him to research Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh.

As anyone who attended Dr. Hayim Katsman’s political science classes can tell you, he dedicated the first two minutes of each session to meditation. The world outside is filled with noise, distractions, and nuisances, he used to tell his students, so it was important to spend those first couple of minutes meditating together, to create a buffer between the outside world and the classroom.

Starting classes with a meditation session wasn’t the only thing that made Dr. Katsman stand out in academia. It’s doubtful whether any other lecturers in Israel willingly chose to finance their studies by working in a car garage or gardening. Those who knew Katsman describe him as someone whose principles were the guiding force in his life; if he believed in something, he stuck with it no matter what. Katsman believed in integrating manual labor with intellectual work, and he lived by this principle. Professor Doron Shultziner from Hadassah College in Jerusalem recounted first meeting Katsman when the latter was his teaching assistant in his “Introduction to International Relations” course: “He’d come to the office with hands covered in grease, a very unusual sight at the university. That’s how I discovered that he also worked in a garage,” Shultziner shared.

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Hayim Katsman was born in the Israeli city of Petah Tikva into a religious Zionist family with ties to academia. Despite being considered gifted from a young age, he preferred spending time with friends over focusing on his studies. He and his friends played soccer regularly, but Hayim wasn’t always the best player. In fact, one childhood friend confessed he used to pray that Katsman wouldn’t be picked for his team, to improve his own chances of being on the winning side.

But Katsman wasn’t one to shy away from a challenge, and he carried out difficult tasks with admirable persistence and diligence. When he set a goal for himself, he stuck to it. Speaking about his job at the garage, his friend Aviad Bashari says: “He had ‘two left hands’ [a common expression in Hebrew, indicating clumsiness or a lack of manual skills], but the garage manager had a lot of patience and allowed him to get hands-on experience. He gave him the chance to learn everything, and slowly, Katsman figured it out.”

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The late Dr. Hayim Katsman (right) alongside his close friend Aviad Bashari, on the latter’s wedding day. Photo from a private album.

“It always started for him with some sense that, ‘there’s a challenge here’,” Aviad Bashari explains. “The challenge would ignite him, and he’d enter ‘work mode’ and get into a routine. He’d set rules for himself, like ‘I’m going to get up in the morning and sit down for an hour to write, no matter what.’ Slowly, this would evolve until things came more easily, turning into a creative process rather than just hard work. But he worked hard to achieve things, so yes, it’s easy to say he was a talented man, but his success was the result of a process that involved failure and a lot of hard work,” says Bashari.

Alongside his physical work, Katsman’s life was also filled with intellectual and artistic pursuits. For example, music was always a part of his life. As a teenager, he decided he wanted to learn to play the guitar. He found himself a teacher, bought a guitar, and began learning.

“He had huge speakers at home, like the kind you see at parties, and there was always something playing in the background,” Bashari recalls. “It got to the point where I stopped playing music in my own home and would just open a window to hear what was playing at Katsman’s house. He was the type to discover an album and listen to it over and over, from start to finish.”

In recent years, Katsman decided to turn his love for music into a hobby and began DJing. As with everything he did, this was a conscious choice to combine art with his values: he decided that he’d be a DJ specializing in Arabic music to expose the Israeli public to it. Katsman discovered Arabic music when he was studying the language. He fell in love with it and decided to bring it to Israeli audiences. “He wanted people to connect, and wanted this culture to be accessible,” Bashari says. “But over time, he realized that if he truly wanted his music to connect people, it needed to be really good in its own right, and the rest would come later. He turned out to be a great DJ, and his parties were places where Hebrew and Arabic speakers came together. He created a space where Bedouins also came and danced with us, which is something that we’d never had before. A bit before October 7, I told him, ‘Listen, you’re becoming a DJ we come to listen to not just because you’re our friend and we feel obligated, but because we genuinely enjoy the music.’ His music was one of his gifts to the world,” says Bashari.

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Dr. Hayim Katsman doing what he loved – DJing. Photo: Naama Kaspi

In addition to music, books always played an important role in shaping Katsman’s worldview. His family and friends recall that he was an avid reader from a young age (“At least one book a week, if not more,” says Bashari). As a teenager, Katsman began reading works by Richard Dawkins, which had a significant impact on his decision to leave religious observance. His mother, Hannah, recalls that when he was 16 years old, he confronted her, arguing that it was wrong to force children to fast during Jewish holidays like Yom Kippur. He based his arguments on one of Dawkins’ books. From that point on, while Hannah continued to fast, she made sure that there was always food available for her children during the fast, letting them know they could take it without asking or informing her.

In addition to Dawkins, Katsman also began reading philosophy books. At 16, he was expelled from his religious high school after refusing to conceal his religious criticism, as the school administration had requested. He was sent to attend an external high school program and, at the age of 17, began pursuing a bachelor’s degree in philosophy at the Open University.

After a break for military service, Katsman wanted to resume his studies, but he soon discovered that the Open University did not offer a standalone philosophy degree, and that he needed to enroll in a double major. Of all the available options, he chose political science. During his studies, he developed a passion for the subject and decided to work towards a master’s degree, and later a PhD, in political science.

The topic he chose for his thesis – Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh’s political philosophy – came to him by chance. While working in the garage, Katsman noticed several cars with bumper stickers quoting Rabbi Ginsburgh’s teachings. The stickers caught his attention, eventually leading him to immerse himself in writing a thesis on Ginsburgh’s political philosophy and its place in the politics of contemporary religious Zionism.

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Many of his colleagues, including his mentor, Dr. Joel Migdal, described him as a brilliant researcher with a unique and innovative way of thinking. After completing his thesis, Hayim Katsman decided to continue exploring contemporary religious Zionism. He began investigating the rise of conservatism, neoliberalism, and the influence of Americanization on political views within the Israeli religious Zionist community. He was one of the first researchers to study the rise of organizations like the Kohelet Policy Forum, way before the forum became more widely known following its involvement in the movement for judicial reform in Israel.

Alongside his passion for academic research, Katsman dedicated most of his time and energy outside academia to developing Kibbutz Holit, the tiny kibbutz near the border with Gaza and Egypt. He was particularly focused on cultivating the community garden. Even when life in the remote kibbutz limited his career prospects, he remained committed to it. And when it meant making the long journey from the kibbutz to Hadassah College in Jerusalem twice a week – over two hours in each direction – he chose to stay in the kibbutz.

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Hayim in his beloved kibbutz. Photo: Eliyahu Hershkovitz

Hayim Katsman arrived at Kibbutz Holit thanks to his friend Aviad Bashari. He joined the kibbutz after completing his military service, a year after Bashari had moved there. “At first, he was hesitant and told me not to expect him to join any of the committees, but he quickly became one of the most involved figures in the kibbutz,” Bashari recalls. Apart from a brief period when Katsman was in the U.S. for his PhD, he never left the kibbutz.

During Katsman’s last months, he was uncertain about the future of his academic career. Among other things, he considered going abroad for a postdoctoral fellowship, but the thought of leaving the kibbutz again weighed heavily on him.

On the weekend of October 7, Katsman was supposed to be celebrating his birthday at the kibbutz. However, some of the kibbutz members had gone on family trips, so they decided to postpone the festivities. At 6:30 AM on the morning of October 7, when the sirens began to wail, Katsman entered his safe room. Shortly after, he contacted his neighbor, Avital Aladjem. During a lull, he went over to her house to help her .

When they realized that terrorists had infiltrated the kibbutz, they decided to hide in a closet. The terrorists managed to enter the house where they were hiding, found Katsman in the closet, and shot him at close range. Avital was initially kidnapped to Gaza, with two children of another neighbor, but eventually managed to escape from the terrorists while already inside the Gaza Strip and walked back on foot into Israeli territory. Katsman remained behind, inside a closet in the kibbutz he loved so much. He was 32 years old at his death.

Hadassah College has established a scholarship fund for students in the governance program where Hayim Katsman taught, in his memory. Donations to the fund can be made here. In July 2024, Tel Aviv University published a collection of Hebrew essays entitled The Americanization of the Israeli Right, dedicated to the memory of Dr. Hayim Katsman.

Lives Lost: The Works of the October 7 Fallen – A Special Project

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Life After Death: On the Works of Aner Shapira

Aner Shapira never dreamed of becoming a tragic hero. He was a creative artist, a musician, composer, and a writer starting to find his way in the world. In notebooks, on scattered pages, or in computer files – his work filled his home. But he never got to show it to the world. “If I die, publish this,” he wrote to his family, and since his heroic death on October 7, they’ve been doing just that, working to tell not just the story of Aner’s death, but also the story of his life’s work: an album of his songs was released months after his death, and another is on the way.

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Aner Shapira, photo: IDF Spokesperson.

The young man’s head rests on the window pane. It’s raining outside, but he doesn’t see the drops pouring on the glass beside his cheek, nor does he hear the groan of wheels on broken asphalt as the bus makes the long way north. Large headphones cover his ears, and he is busy with his phone. He isn’t idly scrolling through social media posts, he’s writing. Fragments of thoughts, shards of his soul being formed into words. This is his art. His songs.

He is young, but he already has great dreams of the musician he wants to become in the future.

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Aner Elyakim Shapira was born and raised in Jerusalem by a family with deep Zionist roots, the eldest of seven children born to Moshe and Shira.

He was born on the 17th of the Jewish month of Adar, which was also the birthday of his grandfather – Haim-Moshe Shapira, one of the leaders of the religious Zionist Mizrahi party and a signatory to Israel’s Declaration of Independence. In an unsettling coincidence, his great-grandfather was seriously injured by a grenade thrown into the Knesset building, the same month that Aner was killed by a grenade on October 7, 67 years later.

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Aner’s grandfather Haim-Moshe Shapira. Photo: the Boris Carmi Archive, the Meitar Collection, the Pritzker Family National Photography Collection at the National Library of Israel]

Already as a small child, Aner was creating and writing. In those early years, he wrote stories rather than songs: piles of notebooks filled with imagination and hair-raising tales of monsters and dragons, accompanied by lively illustrations. He also played classical piano from the age of six and was exposed to the works of the great composers.

A bit later on, during his early adolescence, Aner began to combine his creative imagination with his musical talent. This is when he found his way into the world of hip-hop and rap. The youth possessed a serious mind, walking this earth with a sense of justice and social awareness which burned within him. Having been exposed to entirely different types of music at home, Aner discovered that this musical genre, with its biting social commentary, fit him like a glove.

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One of Aner’s fantasy-inspired monster drawings. Photo courtesy of the family

When he enlisted in the army, he dreamed of serving in the IDF’s elite Sayeret Matkal unit, but was wounded during tryouts. Twice. The injuries led to a year and a half of rehabilitation at home. During this period, he bought recording equipment, researched how to build a home studio and then proceeded to build one for himself. He started recording the texts he wrote and composed using his own voice, and also began to dream and plan how he would one day release them.

Alongside music, Aner continued to work on drawing and art, designing a logo and a visual language for himself which was meant to accompany his future music career.

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Not just a musician. “Red Marker,” by Aner Shapira. Courtesy of the family

On October 6, 2023, on the eve of Simchat Torah, Aner – then a soldier in the Nahal Brigade’s Orev Company, came home for holiday leave. After the family holiday dinner, he joined a group of friends, including his good friend Hersh Goldberg-Polin, and made his way to the Nova festival – a dance rave being held near Kibbutz Re’im.

When the attack began, he got a phone call from his army commander – it’s war, come quickly. Aner gathered his friends and they left the rave, but then came under heavy fire while on the road to Re’im, which would later become known as the “road of death.” Then they stopped and entered a public bomb shelter placed beside a bus stop, which already contained almost 30 other young people.

Hours later, most of these panicked young men and women were murdered. Three of them, including his good friend Hersh, who was wounded by the grenade which killed Aner, were taken captive to the Gaza Strip.

But in the meantime, as they huddled in fear in the small space, terrified at the sounds of shooting and shouting in Arabic, Aner took charge. He stood at the entrance, with a broken bottle as his improvised means of defense, and tried to calm the terrified people around him. “I’m in the army,” he said, penetrating the fog of anxiety behind him, “I spoke with my commander, and they’re on their way.”

He explained to them very simply, as though he was doing something entirely routine, what he was going to do: When the terrorists throw the grenades inside, I will grab them and throw them back out. If something happens to me, someone else will have to do it instead of me. A picture that was published later on shows people lying on the ground, protecting their heads with their hands, with Aner standing tall and waiting for whatever comes.

He managed to throw back seven grenades with his bare, stable hands. The eighth took his life.

Aner left behind hundreds of texts and dozens of recorded songs at various stages of completion and production. These were complex, sensitive, soul-baring texts. In them, he never spared himself or the world any criticism, but he also imbued these writings with hope and faith.

Aner never admired anyone blindly, but he greatly appreciated art itself. In his work, he drew from an enormous range of influences and inspirations. His songs, full of intelligence and wordplay, contain a heartening and amazing mixture of musical, cultural, and historical references from a range of genres and periods – Psalms alongside Jerusalem hip-hop slang, classical French composers alongside sentences like “children in the [Gaza] Perimeter, in the shelter on their butts.”

Among the songs he left behind, his parents found a simple sentence which became his will and testament: “If I die, publish this.”

The first single to be released was Jerus, just weeks after his death. This is a song entirely devoted to the city which was Aner’s great love, Jerusalem.

Aner – Jerus (classical version):

“I never understood,” his mother Shira said, “how you can love a city like that, to consider it your identity,” but something about its scrambled and complex chaos captured his heart. The Jerusalem experience of a meeting of worlds was also his. He believed with all his heart that this friction, this passion, was a great opportunity for repair and growth.

Less than half a year later, with the help of his friends and producer Avri G., the album Introduction to Anerchism was released. It will not be the last.

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Cover of Introduction to Anerchism. Courtesy of the family

One of the people who helped produce the songs on the album was Sha’anan Streett, lead vocalist and rapper for the well-known Israeli hip-hop group Hadag Nachash. Streett, a proud Jerusalemite himself, came across one of the songs Aner wrote, Sin’at Achim (Brotherly Hatred), and asked permission from his parents to add a verse to the song, and to effectively join in on Aner’s project, in a kind of posthumous duet.

I’ve never done a duet with a dead person

And to tell you the truth, Aner

I’m not sure that was something I needed

At first, they didn’t feel comfortable with this addition, which underlines the great absence and void left by Aner’s death. Aner’s music was about life, not death, his parents told Sha’anan. It speaks of our world with open eyes, adopting a bright worldview. But in the end, Streett managed to convince Aner’s parents to let their longing for their child to also enter into the song.

The following lines (originally in Hebrew) refer to Aner’s favorite hangout spot – the Sirah pub located in downtown Jerusalem:

And they’re still saving you a seat at the Sirah

So don’t worry, if you come there’ll be someone there you know

We’re saving you a seat at the Sirah

And there’s one chair for you at the bar, and one chair for Hersh

The last line in the song refers to Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Aner’s friend who was with him in the bomb shelter. When Sha’anan Streett wrote these words, Hersh was still a hostage in Gaza. After the album’s release, Hersh was murdered in captivity, and this line, the last line of the last song on the album, has become even more chilling.

Aner – Sin’at Achim (Brotherly Hatred), feat. Sha’anan Streett:

Aner’s parents do not intend to let his voice disappear or be forgotten. They spend their time these days selling his drawings, as well as prints based on them, in a shop they’ve set up, while also working on producing the next album.

One of the songs on the next album is called “Just Believe”, and its chorus speaks to all of us, in Aner’s name:

I’m a person who believes in change
Forget change
It’s enough to be a person who just believes.
Well,
So I’m a person who believes.
Forget belief.
It’s enough to be a person…
 

Lives Lost: The Works of the October 7 Fallen – A Special Project

Bilhah Yinon: The Woman Who Created a New, Better World – From Scrap

Bilhah, who was murdered along with her husband on October 7, was an artist full of optimism, compassion, and good-heartedness. She dedicated her life to educating younger generations to love and preserve nature. The adorable children's book character she created is part of her legacy.

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Bilhah and Ya'akov Yinon, and the book “Parparit, Gruti and Me" [Hebrew], written by Bilhah Yinon. Photo from her daughter’s Facebook page

”Gruti”, a riff on the Hebrew word gruta’ah (junk, scrap), is made of a can of juice, duct tape, bits of cloth, and plastic bottles. But for Bilhah Yinon, author of the books Gruti and Parparit, Gruti, and Me, Gruti is a guard dog and loyal friend she created to help connect us to nature and remind us to protect it. One could perhaps translate Gruti as “Scrappy”.

The book Gruti, which came out in 1993, is part of a long-standing vision of Bilhah’s, a vision in which members of the younger generation would be taught to protect nature, recycle, and create. Bilhah Yinon was an artist, an art teacher, and an educator, as well as a credentialed parental instructor at the Adler Institute. She lived in Netiv Ha’Asarah, a moshav (a cooperative agricultural community) located on the northern border of the Gaza Strip.

At age 56, she took an early retirement and set up a studio on the moshav. There she worked, taught, and produced art – primarily using the Mandala Method which serves as a form of meditative exercise and an artistic expression of universal human values, while also strengthening concentration and balance.

The studio is the only part of the home Bilhah shared with her partner Yaakov that remains standing today in Netiv Ha’Asarah. The events of October 7 cut their lives short – but they did not destroy the dreams, artworks, and love which Bilhah spread to her students, to her family, to her five children to whom she devoted her books, and to everyone who knew her.

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Children’s books written by Bilhah Yinon and kept at the National Library: Gruti and Parparit, Gruti, and Me

Bilhah was designated as the last “missing person” of October 7. In early August 2024, the IDF confirmed that it had identified her body. That cursed morning, three terrorists infiltrated Netiv Ha’Asarah. Yaakov was murdered in the massacre and his body was identified.

Bilhah, meanwhile was designated as a “missing person” because there was no sign that she had been taken to Gaza and because no sign of her remains was found at first. Since the two were together, the family expected to hear the worst and even sat shivah for both of them the day after the massacre. Despite this, the ultimate confirmation of her death was painful, forcing the painful feelings and trauma back to the surface.

Her daughter Maayan Yinon spoke to us about Bilhah’s books which can be found at the National Library, as well as her mother’s worldview: “My father would always laugh at mom that she was a trash collector. She was really ahead of her time when it came to recycling. She would do amazing things,” Maayan told us. “I remember her artworks hanging up since I was a baby. It was part of the mindset of her and my father, who’s an agronomist. They had a connection to nature and the land, and she believed that the less you bought, the better.”

In the book Gruti, a lonely child decides to make himself a dog from scrap – who then becomes his friend. The child presents the dog to his parents, who aren’t big on the idea at first, but who later help their son collect more elements for his dog-doll. Gruti protects the child, the home, and the garden and reminds the family to protect nature.

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Cover the can with cloth, glue on a mouth, eyes and ears using cloth or felt…” – instructions for how to make your own “Gruti” at the end of the book

In the book’s sequel Parparit, Gruti, and Me, the child and his good friend Gruti find a plastic bag in the street. They turn it into a butterfly doll called Parparit (“female butterfly” in Hebrew), who teaches them to be happy and dance. The two books contain a detailed description for children on how to make their own “Gruti” and “Parparit” with bottles, caps, bags, and more at the back of the book.

Maayan has the original Gruti doll from the book: “Originally, my mother and Maurizio the illustrator submitted the book’s text and illustrations to a scholarship fund and they won first prize. That’s how she published it. I remember her excitement when the books came, we were all excited. All the grandchildren were given a workshop on how to make their own Gruti and Parparit. At the party for my daughter’s fourth birthday, she and mom prepared a play for kindergarten based on the [Levin] Kipnis story, Shloshah Parparim [Three Butterflies]. Mom made three butterflies just like Parparit.”

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“When Dad came to tell me good night, he saw Parparit in my bed…” – From the book Parparit, Gruti, and Me

Literature, creativity, and the art of reading storybooks were all a part of Bilhah’s everyday life. She very much missed her grandchildren who live in London. Every morning, she would get up to read them a story by Zoom, and the grandchildren would sit and listen to Grandma Bilhah.

Bilhah’s connection to her children and grandchildren, both in Israel and abroad, was exceptional, and she chose to communicate with them using her various senses as well as their own creativity:

“She believed that that we’re allowed to feel anything and that [the children] should express their inner creativity. Her house was almost entirely devoid of things you needed to ‘protect’ and you could always act freely, even if something fell down. There was a lot of creativity around – paper, markers and blocks. You could always find something to do which didn’t involve watching a screen. This was at the core of the atmosphere in that house,” Maayan said.

“There was a ‘rage corner’ in the yard. Whoever was really angry and needed to get out their anger – got to do it there. She would give the children plates and you could break or throw them in that corner which had many shattered fragments of all sorts of plates. I am sorry I didn’t understand then just how much she understood children and youth. It took me time to understand, but the grandchildren were simply privileged to have a grandmother and grandfather who were very sensitive to their needs and who really understood them. No judgment.”

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Bilhah reading a book to her grandchildren in London. Photo courtesy of her daughter Maayan

Bilhah and Yaakov were special people, who were connected to the land and who had a great deal of humor and love in their hearts. Bilhah would come each time with a new creative idea and Yaakov would encourage her and support her and her desire to do what she wanted. She used various materials from everyday life in her works, even collecting stones from around the world to create art that was full of life.

In the books she managed to publish, Bilhah wrote happy stories about magical places. Through these stories, she succeeded in delivering deeper messages about love, friendship, and overcoming difficulties, while weaving together reality and imagination. Today they carry on the memory of their author, who was murdered by Hamas terrorists – a woman who left behind a legacy which continues to touch many hearts.

“I learned from mom about the importance of ‘communicating at eye level’ with children and adults, on the possibility of creating in almost any situation, that it’s worth it to paint together or do something simple, a pleasant jaunt together, it’s very important,” Maayan said. “It was important for her to accumulate good experiences together and teach that the nature around us is just as sensitive as we are and that it’s important to protect it.”

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With great sorrow we announce the death of our grandfather and grandmother, our beloved mother and father, Bilhah and Ya’akov Yinon…” – an obituary notice published on the Facebook page of Maoz Yinon, son of Bilhah and Ya’akov, on October 8, 2023

The family went through very difficult days upon learning of the certain death of Yinon, even though they already knew and assumed this was the case. Maayan, a body-mind therapist by profession, deals with the pain admirably:

“These are very challenging days. We feel great sadness and anger. But I want to stress – we have received love which accompanies us. First of all, the love of my parents is very much felt even now, and we also received love and support from many good people along the way. Every opportunity to talk about them, and any project done or planned in their memory provides hope and belief for me that we can establish a reality of gentleness, sensitivity, and beauty in this world even in terrible and difficult times.

“This is mom’s legacy. She would succeed in creating a magical, amazing, beautiful world within a complicated reality. She would find creative solutions for renewal amidst depression. So, if I choose to be here, then I must think how I want to feel. It’s true that it’s very hard right now. I don’t feel happiness, maybe for a few brief moments. But I do succeed in experiencing a sense of gratitude, for the family I had and have, and the parents I had.”

Lives Lost: The Works of the October 7 Fallen – A Special Project