My White Dress: Why Do Jews Wear White on Holidays?

During the holiday season, most of us will likely arrive at synagogue or at the family meal dressed in white, praying that no red wine or beet juice gets sprayed on our dresses and shirts. In fact, some Jewish men will be showing up at synagogue wearing a striking white robe - an introduction to the "kittel".

Judith Kagan | 09.10.24

Men praying at synagogue dressed in kittels, photo by Dancho Arnon, the Pritzker Family National Photography Collection at the National Library of Israel

Fall is here, and collections of white dresses are sprouting up in stores like mushrooms after a rain shower in many a mall across Israel. Even though it’s probably the least practical color for holiday festivities, many of us will end up wearing a white outfit during the various holidays of the Hebrew month of Tishrei. White has been associated with ritual practices, holiness, purity, and prestige since the dawn of history, and it has become an inseparable part of this month’s “uniform.”

The color white has accompanied humanity from its very beginning, and it has come a long way from adorning cave paintings to being part of the latest fashion trends.

שמלה לבנה משכית — A white dress designed by Tamara Yovel Jones for Israel’s Maskit fashion house in the early 1970s. The Tamara Yovel Jones Archive is digitally accessible courtesy of the archive owner and thanks to the collaborative efforts of the Ministry of Jerusalem and Heritage, the National Library of Israel, Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art and the Judaica Division at Harvard Library.

In the beginning, there was white, black – and red

Human society has always had a thing for bright colors. The first three colors which humans succeeded in producing were white, black, and red. The first evidence of this can be seen in the Lascaux cave system in France, which is dated to the Upper Paleolithic period. The images of horses, bulls, and celestial bodies were painted by hand, with natural materials. The color white, incidentally, was generally produced from stones, bones, and clams.

A few thousand years later, in the ancient world, the color white symbolized a high social stature, due among other things, to the raw color of cotton and the wealth required to keep it clean.

During the Middle Ages, white was tied not only to purity but also death. In Christian works of art, the color white was often used to paint resurrected souls when depicting the second coming of Jesus. But then a turning point occurred which changed the color’s status: The means of producing the color black were slowly made less and less expensive, meaning that this color was no longer restricted to the aristocracy alone. As black became cheaper, the color white gradually lost its morbid symbolism. Black became associated with seriousness, honor, and death, while white was dedicated to purity, holiness, and innocence.

800px The Young Queen Victoria — A portrait of Queen Victoria at age 23, oil on cloth, by Franz Xaver Winterhalter

The wedding march

In modern times, coloring techniques greatly improved and white became a far brighter color than in the past. It also became more common and popular – first among the European aristocracy and then, with improved manufacturing techniques, also among the rest of the population.

One of the most significant turning points in white’s popularity came with the white bridal dress worn by Queen Victoria (1819-1901). Throughout history, brides commonly wore a ceremonial and practical dress on their wedding day, the sort that could also be worn on regular holidays or Sabbath days. But Victoria’s dress turned the wedding dress into a one-time item, an article of clothing meant to amaze – a true show-stopper.

Thus, when Queen Victoria married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, she stunned everyone with a pure white dress, meant particularly and exclusively for her wedding celebration, and which has since become a must-have for any bride. The great success of the dress is of course also tied to white symbolizing purity – including virginity.

Isidor Kaufmann Portrait Of A Rabbi Wearing A Kittel And Tallith — A portrait of a rabbi wearing a kittel, Isidor Kaufmann

An outfit for the High Holy Days

And what about the Jewish wardrobe? In biblical times, the priests in the Holy Temple wore white. The High Priest wore a number of uniforms while doing his work, some of them gilded and very expensive, but when he performed the special rituals of Yom Kippur, he wore white. White was tied to happiness, and Jewish women customarily wore white on Tu B’Av and on Yom Kippur, as well as on other holidays and Shabbat.

In the Ashkenazic Jewish tradition, a custom developed that men should wear a “kittel” – a special article of clothing worn by Ashkenazic Jews on the High Holy Days, and which is entirely white. The kittel was a kind of simple, white robe with no frills which was tied together with a white waistband. Before being adopted for the Jewish holidays, it was worn for meaningful events, such as under the wedding canopy and when the dead were being buried – men were often buried in their kittels.

It was customary in some Jewish communities to wear the kittel on Yom Kippur and sometimes also on Rosh Hashanah. Others took care to wear it twice a year – during the High Holy Days and the Passover Seder. Therefore, Nachum Zitter, director of Information Services at the National Library, recommends taking care to clean the kittel between these events to prevent chametz [unleavened grain products forbidden on Passover] from accumulating on the clothing. And even then – not all men are supposed to wear this ceremonial article of clothing. In some communities, all married men wear it while in others – only those with communal religious roles such as the gabbai (treasurer or steward), chazan (cantor), and the blower of the shofar (ram’s horn) wear a white kittel.

How did the kittel become such a multi-purpose item, which we can use both in times of great happiness and sadness? The kittel had unique manufacturing conditions which linked it with the shrouds worn by the dead. Thus, it customarily did not contain pockets, because Jews take nothing with them to the grave, and it contained no decorations or knots to maintain its simplicity. “My grandfather had two kittels,” Nachum Zitter recalled. “And you must wonder – why does one need two kittels? After all, you only die once. Except he was the chazan in the synagogue, and he would end the prayer for Rosh Hashanah sweating a great deal, so he took care to have a clean kittel for the second day of Rosh Hashanah. And so it was that he left behind an additional kittel after he passed, which was very rare.”

יום הכיפורים מאוריצי גוטליב — *Jews Praying in the Synagogue on Yom Kippur*, oil on cloth, 1878, Maurycy Gottlieb

Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?

Some claim that the kittel was already worn in the time of the Mishnah, as a white sheet or robe worn special for Shabbat. The Midrash Eichah Rabbah describes an incident in which a Roman mocks the Jewish Shabbat garments which seem to last forever, as they are only worn once a week.

The Jerusalem Talmud describes a custom of wearing white clothes on Yom Kippur. It attributes this custom even then to the duality of the High Holy Days themselves – the happiness mixed with sadness and fear of God’s judgment, and how wearing white is an expression of feelings of security and happiness despite Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur being seen as the Time of Judgement:

“What nation is as this nation? The custom of the world is that a man who knows he is being judged wears black and wraps [himself in it] … but Israel is not so, but rather wear white and wrap in white … and are happy, knowing that the Holy One, Blessed Be He does them miracles.”

(Jerusalem Talmud, Rosh Hashanah, 1.3)

The connection between ceremonial white clothing and happiness slowly took on a more sober meaning in Medieval Europe. Rabbi Mordechai Ben Hillel Ashkenazi brings another reason for the custom in the name of the Maharam:

“And another reason is because on a Yom Tov all are happy, and they wear a sargenes [another term for kittel] which is the garb of the dead, and they remember the day of death, and his heart will not become haughty within him.”

In other words, despite the happiness which comes with a holiday, a person must wear shrouds to remind themselves of the day of their death and the fleeting nature of life. This led to the development of another reason to wear white: to confuse Satan by adopting an angel-like appearance, since Jews fast on Yom Kippur and are therefore already in the process of behaving somewhat like angels, incapable of sin.

“There was no specific garb like the kittel among Mizrachi Jews,” explains Nachum Zitter. “But there was still a widespread custom to wear white. The Mizrachi Jews were greatly influenced by the Kabbalah, which is very favorable towards wearing white cotton clothing. There is also a symbolic connection to Rachav the prostitute who hid the spies inside cotton [in the Book of Joshua]. So, the kabbalistic context greatly influenced Mizrachi Jews, and the custom gained further influence and spread.”

*Yael and Her New White Dress*, by Malky Weinstock illustrated by Steve Pileggi, Brooklyn, N.Y.: Lite Girl Inc.

White clothing also plays a part in modern Israel and in today’s Jewish communities worldwide. The color white is often worn by members of kibbutzim on the festival of Shavuot, a holiday symbolizing a connection to the land and agricultural crops. The custom of wearing white is also passed on to new generations in children’s literature, as in the book Yael and Her New White Dress, whose target audience is the Haredi community.

This year, despite all we have been through, we will once again sit round the holiday table and will nevertheless wear white – a color which symbolizes goodness, purity, something greater and more wonderful than ourselves, showing that death and life are intertwined.

May it be that this time around, this year and its curses will end, and the next year and its blessings will begin.

Tari Kipnis: A Kibutznik and an Artist, to the Very End

Tari Kipnis was born near the sea and sailed around the world – only to settle in Kibbutz Be'eri with his beloved Lilach. He lived and breathed art and never stopped looking for ways to create it. When he was stricken with a chronic neurological disease, he began to paint. On October 7, he was murdered with his wife and his caretaker Paul – but he left behind breathtaking paintings, including those which tell the story of the Gaza border region.

Guy Polat | 06.10.24

Gaza Border Region History of Israel Jewish Art Lives Lost: The Works of the October 7 Fallen – A Special Project

Tari Kipnis. Photo from a family album, with one of his works in the background

Eviatar “Tari” Kipnis was born in Kibbutz Ma’agan Michael near the sea, and from that point on, water never ceased to be a part of his life. He served in the Israeli Navy, and following his service he continued to enjoy sailing around the world, leading him to experiences and adventures worthy of a book. He reached every corner of the globe, including places few Israelis visit, such as Papua New Guinea and the Maldives. He successfully combined his hobby with work and even served as the skipper of a Singaporean yacht used to monitor and study whales. He even learned how to swim alongside them.

On one of his trips, he encountered Lilach. Like him, she was also born and raised on a kibbutz – her parents were among the founders of Be’eri – and she had never left it since. Tari decided to go with her to Be’eri – first for a trial period of one year, before eventually deciding to settle down for the rest of his life.

Tari and Lilach Kipnis lived, loved, and made art in Kibbutz Be’eri. Lilach was a social worker; she worked at the Cohen-Harris Resilience Center which is dedicated to caring for and advising people dealing with crisis situations, while also helping those coping with trauma at the personal, collective, and communal levels.

Her work at the center and her experiences with local children from the Gaza border region led her to write Shirat Hatrigger: Al Tzlilim SheMavhilim (“The Trigger Song: On Sounds That Scare Us”), a book for children dealing with the anxieties of living near the Gaza border, where falling rockets have been a routine part of everyday life for decades. The events and aftermath of October 7 have made this book relevant for all Israeli children.

Tari Kipnis worked a variety of jobs, including at Kibbutz Be’eri’s famous printing press. Alongside the sea, art was an inseparable part of Kipnis’ life. He attended Betzalel Art School where he was directed to the crafts department because of his skill working with his hands. As part of his final project, he prepared a special series of kitchen knives for celebrity chef Yisrael Aharoni. He also became an expert watchmaker and knew how to fix almost anything himself.

Whatsapp Image 2024 09 11 At 15.22.52 — Kipnis as a child, the only picture of him drawing. Photo from a family album

In his later years, Kipnis was afflicted with a rare infectious neurological disease called chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy or CIDP and his body steadily weakened. This did not prevent him from continuing to create art. After he became sick, he was hospitalized for an extended period at Sheba Hospital for rehabilitation. He understood that to return to function and live, he needed to find a new way to continue to create art. At Sheba, Kipnis discovered a new form of art to create: painting.

“On Wednesday afternoon, there were painting classes in the rehabilitation department. I remember accompanying him to classes and loving it. The instructor there helped everyone paint as well as their level of disability and physical state allowed them to. And this way Tari was exposed to the world of painting and was able to develop his artistic skills,” recalled his sister Tsafra.

Since his stay at Sheba, Kipnis never stopped painting, and the watches and sharpened knives were now replaced in his workshop by brushes and colors.

Kipnis was also a man of action and resourcefulness. He found creative ways to create, contribute, and maintain an active lifestyle – even with both his arms and legs becoming ever weaker due to his chronic illness. He crafted himself a special bicycle which was adapted to his weakened body, and which allowed him to continue to ride around the area. When his hands weakened and it was harder for him to hold brushes, he taught himself to add thickness to the brushes by wrapping them in rags so they would be easier for him to hold. Even when he was forced to move around with a wheelchair and required the aid of his caretaker Paul, he never stopped making art.

Some time after he became ill, Kipnis decided to realize an old dream and sailed for Antarctica of all places. “I have to prove to myself that I can still do it,” Tari said, explaining his decision to take one last trip to such a distant destination. Tsafra feared his decision to sail for the distant continent by himself. “He was already sick but he nevertheless decided to travel alone. There were places during the expedition where he did not get off because it was hard for him and he could no longer walk. But he returned with a crazy high from the trip: both from realizing his dream and from not giving up on himself,” she said.

Nature and life on the kibbutz – first at Ma’agan Michael and later in Be’eri – were a repeated motif in his art. Nature, plants, plowed fields, tractors – all common kibbutz sights which featured often in Kipnis’ art.

The 1973 Yom Kippur War broke out when Kipnis was just thirteen years old, and almost all the men were called up to fight. The responsibility of keeping the farm work going at Kibbutz Ma’agan Michael was transferred to the local youth. Kipnis was sent to work in the kibbutz’s cotton fields, reaping the cotton every day. Some of his paintings portray this work.

קומביין אצל ישראל — A combine harvester in action

In Be’eri, the frequent fires breaking out due to Hamas’ rockets and incendiary balloons changed the landscape Kipnis so loved to see and paint. “He very much liked to go out and gather mushrooms,” Tsafra said, “and when the incendiary balloons started and everything in the area burned down, the Bedouin would no longer bring their goats and sheep there to eat the grass. With everything burning and no grass for them to eat, there were no longer mushrooms to grow, because the mushrooms needed the goats’ and sheep’s feces as fertilizer, and without that they didn’t grow.”

Evitar Kipnis Be Eri0181 — You can see the love of nature – and the changes in the nature around him due to the security situation – reflected in Tari’s artwork. Although most of his paintings are colorful, featuring bold colors, the reality of life in Be’eri – with its rocket warning sirens, incendiary balloons and frequent fires in the area – found its way into the paintings. In one of these, Tari painted one of the entry paths into the kibbutz, which was surrounded by green trees. This painting portrays the same path that appears in the previous painting, after one of the fires had taken hold following a wave of incendiary balloons.

Evitar Kipnis Be Eri0161 1 — A painting by Tari describing the experience of sowing and reaping in the shadow of incendiary balloons and burnt fields, and the efforts to continue nourishing the earth to bring forth new life from burnt soil.

Evitar Kipnis Be Eri0132 — *A Kipnis painting following his trip to Antarctica*

But it wasn’t just art that interested him. When Kipnis was captivated with something, he studied it until he became an expert. This happened with coffee as well: Kipnis became interested in coffee beans and how they are roasted, and he ultimately planted a number of coffee plants. Not only did he manage to grow them, he was even able to produce his own coffee.

“He would buy green coffee, mix all kinds and then roast the coffee he grew. He was very proud of the trees he grew,” Tsafra said. On October 7, Kipnis’ coffee plants, like other trees and houses on the kibbutz – were burned down.

That cursed Saturday, Tari Kipnis was home with his wife Lilach and his Filipino caretaker Paul. At eight in the morning, they spoke with their son Yotam. It would be their last conversation.

Tari, his wife Lilach, and caretaker Paul Vincent Castelvi were all murdered in their home in the kibbutz. After the murder, the whole house was burned down. Paul’s body was immediately identified and there was initially a fear that Lilach and Tari had been taken hostage to Gaza – but their bodies were later identified.

Caretaker Paul was the husband of Jovelle Santiago, a caretaker who treated an elderly woman at the nearby Kibbutz Or Haner. She was eight months pregnant with their first child when Paul was murdered. She survived the events of October 7 and gave birth to their son Paul, who has never known the father he is named after, in November 2023.

A few months later, Tari’s family and friends moved the coffee plants to Kibbutz Ma’agan Michael. “Now the plants are truly blooming nicely. They came burnt and dry, and they haven’t yet produced flowers, but they have already begun to bud again,” Tsafra said.

Despite, and perhaps because of the difficulties of life on the Gaza border, Tari Kipnis was both a man of peace and an atheist – principles he adhered to all his life. His relatives are sure that if he had survived October 7, he would have stuck to both principles.

At the eulogy given by his son Yotam, he said:

“Do not recite ‘David’s Lamentation’ for Dad – recite ‘On the Slaughter’ by Bialik,

Without forgetting what he meant when he wrote ‘No such revenge – revenge for the blood of a little child – has yet been devised by Satan.’”

A few days after October 7, with volunteers working to clean up the kibbutz, they found a burnt page from a book of Hayim Nahman Bialik’s poems in one of the burnt houses. It was not “On the Slaughter,” but it was no less fitting:

Who by a miracle escaped the great fire

Your fathers lit an eternal fire on their altar.

And who knows if not the streams of their tears

Took us across and brought us this far

And in their prayer from God asked us;

And in their deaths commanded us life

Life until eternity!

Tari Kipnis’ family have collected his paintings and produced a book and exhibit entitled “Striving for Spirit.” The exhibit is now being shown at Beit Daniel in Tel Aviv until November 3, 2024.

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.

Guy Polat | 25.09.24

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

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.

***

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.”

Whatsapp Image 2024 08 29 At 17.12.48 — 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.

Whatsapp Image 2024 08 29 At 17.12.47 (1) — 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.

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.

Whatsapp Image 2024 08 29 At 17.12.46 — 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.

Miryam Zakheim | 23.09.24

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

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.

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 17^th 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.

Nnl Archive Al11382505950005171 Ie160783632 Fl160783636 — 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.

Whatsapp Image 2024 09 10 At 08.53.37 — 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.

Anerart1 — 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.

Capturemavolanarchism — 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