{"id":194973,"date":"2026-08-31T15:46:51","date_gmt":"2026-08-31T12:46:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.nli.org.il\/?p=194973"},"modified":"2026-08-31T18:49:08","modified_gmt":"2026-08-31T15:49:08","slug":"yehuda_katz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.nli.org.il\/en\/yehuda_katz\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cYavneh and Its Sages\u201d – Yehuda Katz Comes Home"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cYehuda, go get some rest. We\u2019re going to war soon, and who knows when we\u2019ll get another chance to sleep,\u201d Yehuda Katz\u2019s friends urged him.
\u201cAnd who knows when we\u2019ll get another chance to study Torah?\u201d Yehuda replied, hurrying toward the beit midrash, the yeshiva\u2019s study hall.
That night, a bus arrived at Kerem B\u2019Yavneh Yeshiva to take the students who had already completed their mandatory military service to their reserve unit in northern Israel. It was the first day of Operation Peace for Galilee, the 1982 Lebanon War. \u201cWe go to war from the beit midrash,\u201d Yehuda said as he boarded the bus.
He would return to Kerem B\u2019Yavneh only 44 years later.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
Yehuda Katz\u2019s funeral at Kerem B\u2019Yavneh, August 21, 2026<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The idea of establishing a yeshiva that would combine advanced Torah study with a life of practical work and agriculture was first proposed by Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook in 1913, when he was serving as the chief rabbi of Jaffa. He envisioned the yeshiva being established in the Yavneh area, the ancient home of the Sanhedrin.
It took more than 25 years for the idea to become a reality. Rabbi Meir Bar-Ilan, president of the World Mizrachi Center, and Menachem Ussishkin, director of the Jewish National Fund, selected a suitable site south of Gedera. After donations had been collected and an architectural plan prepared, they began construction.
These pioneers – many from Germany – would also become the founders of Kibbutz Yavneh, beside which the yeshiva building was eventually established.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
<\/a>Part of the building plans. Meir Rubin Archive, National Library of Israel<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
<\/a>Architects visiting the site. Meir Rubin Archive, National Library of Israel<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Construction was delayed by the Second World War, but by the time of the War of Independence, the large and impressive stone building was already standing. It had yet to serve as a yeshiva, however.
Fearing an advance by the Egyptian army, a small company of fighters was stationed there. They dug trenches that were connected to the homes of Kibbutz Yavneh. Later, as the threat appeared more imminent than ever, explosives were placed inside the building and the entire area was mined. The Egyptian advance was halted at the Ad Halom Bridge, and both Kibbutz Yavneh and the yeshiva building were spared.
For a time, the building housed students from the Religious Kibbutz Movement\u2019s Torah seminary. But the World Mizrachi Center continued to press for the building to be dedicated to a yeshiva, in accordance with Rabbi Kook\u2019s vision.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
<\/a>The yeshiva building, 1953. Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi Archive, ISRAELI archival project (RAI)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The final push came from students at the Bnei Akiva Yeshiva in Kfar HaRo\u2019eh, who wanted to continue their yeshiva education after high school in an atmosphere that combined religious Zionism with a strong connection to the Land of Israel. Yaakov Drori, a member of Bnei Akiva\u2019s national leadership, stepped in to help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There were potential students. There was a building. All that was missing was a rosh yeshiva \u2013 someone willing to take responsibility for establishing, running, and teaching at the new institution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After an extensive search, Drori found a young rabbinical scholar in Bnei Brak: Rabbi Chaim Yaakov Goldvicht. A gifted scholar who had studied in the Lithuanian yeshiva tradition and had Hasidic roots, Goldvicht was not an obvious choice for a religious-Zionist institution. He consulted his own teacher, the revered Rabbi Avraham Yeshaya Karelitz, known as the Chazon Ish, who approved of his taking on the new position.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the end of 1953, Rabbi Goldvicht and Yaakov Drori arrived at Kibbutz Yavneh in a vehicle loaded with a Torah ark, lecterns, beds, and mattresses. Twelve students \u2013 the yeshiva\u2019s first class \u2013 were waiting to greet them. Together, they entered the empty building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first academic year of Kerem B\u2019Yavneh Yeshiva had begun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
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<\/a>Yeshiva students planting trees. Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi Archive, ISRAELI archival project (RAI)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The idea of combining Torah study with active military service emerged several years later. It was the yeshiva students themselves who expressed their willingness to pursue both religious studies and military service. After extensive discussions and considerable efforts at persuasion, it was decided that the yeshiva would serve as a kind of Nahal nucleus, with students dividing their time between military service and study at the yeshiva.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The process was not a simple one, but eventually an \u201carrangement\u201d was reached with the army for this unique service track, which attracted many religious students from across Israel. Today, there are dozens of such Hesder yeshivas, whose students serve in all the IDF\u2019s combat brigades, in combat-support units, and in the Military Rabbinate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, a yeshiva also needs a proper Torah library.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In those early years, books were difficult to come by, and the yeshiva library relied on donations from private collections and the estates of rabbis. One of its donors was none other than the renowned writer S. Y. Agnon. He donated books following a personal request from the yeshiva\u2019s librarian, Israel Rosen \u2013later a well-known rabbi and head of the Tzomet Institute for Halakha and Technology.<\/p>\n\n\n

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<\/a>A request for books from S. Y. Agnon. S. Y. Agnon Archive, National Library of Israel<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The National Library of Israel also contributed books to the yeshiva.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 1950s, as part of the National Library\u2019s \u201cTreasures of the Diaspora\u201d department, large numbers of books began arriving in Israel. These books had been stolen from Jews during the Holocaust and were subsequently recovered. The National Library retained the books it needed, while the rest were transferred to the Ministry of Religious Affairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ministry received numerous requests for books from institutions throughout the young State of Israel. Among the institutions to receive books was the Kerem B\u2019Yavneh Yeshiva.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
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The book Imrei Ha-Tzvi<\/em> in the yeshiva library. The stamps of Kerem B\u2019Yavneh, the Ministry of Religious Affairs, and the original library \u2013 the Hachmei Lublin Yeshiva \u2013 can be seen inside the book.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Over the years, the yeshiva library continued to grow and expand its collections. Following the death of the yeshiva\u2019s head, Rabbi Chaim Yaakov Goldvicht, in 1995, his personal library was also added to the books of Kerem B\u2019Yavneh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks to the arrangement with the IDF, the yeshiva\u2019s students combined sifra ve-sayfa<\/em> \u2013 \u201cbook and sword\u201d \u2013 and took part in Israel\u2019s wars from the country\u2019s establishment onward. Some fell in battle. One student also went missing \u2013 which brings us back to Yehuda Yekutiel Katz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yehuda was born in 1959 to Holocaust survivor parents. He grew up in Ramat Gan, attended the Nahalim Religious High School, and joined the Kerem B\u2019Yavneh Hesder Yeshiva in the 1977\u201378 academic year. He proved to be a serious and exceptionally modest Torah scholar. The yeshiva\u2019s head relied on him in preparing his lessons. Yehuda also helped students who had difficulty understanding the rabbi\u2019s classes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During his military service, when Rabbi Goldvicht came to visit his students during training, Yehuda hurried to change out of his dirty fatigues and put on his formal uniform, explaining that it was important to show proper respect for the head of the yeshiva.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
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Yehuda Katz with his fellow yeshiva students<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

When the First Lebanon War broke out, Yehuda had already completed his regular military service and was in the final year of his Hesder program. The mobilization order reached the yeshiva on the first day of the war, and the students called up for service began preparing to head to the front.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yehuda and his fellow students served in Reserve Battalion 362. The armored battalion, whose ranks consisted largely of Hesder yeshiva students, fought in the eastern sector of Lebanon, not far from the Syrian border.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the fifth day of the war, June 10, 1982, the battalion was ordered to move north toward the Beirut\u2013Damascus highway and block the route to prevent Syrian forces from reaching the area. To reach its destination, the battalion had to pass near the village of Sultan Yacoub and move through open terrain surrounded by hills \u2013 a location highly vulnerable to an enemy ambush. Intelligence indicated that there were no Syrian forces in the area, apart from perhaps a few individual soldiers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At night, the battalion advanced toward its objective under cover of darkness. Suddenly, tank and anti-tank missile fire erupted from both directions along the route. The battalion commander ordered the troops to push forward rapidly, but the intense fire prevented most of the tanks from moving. The battalion was split in two and began suffering casualties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After several hours of fighting, surrounded and trapped, the operational tanks managed to retreat rapidly southward under cover of Israeli artillery fire. Only after reaching a safe area did the soldiers realize that a large part of the battalion was missing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several hours later, a ceasefire came into effect. The soldiers returned to the area to search for their comrades and tow back damaged tanks. The full scale of the disaster then became clear: 20 soldiers had been killed, dozens were wounded, and six were missing.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
The village of Sultan Yacoub. Wikipedia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

As part of a prisoner exchange agreement, two soldiers returned alive, while the body of one soldier was repatriated. The fate of three soldiers remained unknown, and no information about them was received. They were Zachary Baumel, Zvi Feldman, and Yehuda Katz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The families of the missing soldiers waged a public campaign in an effort to discover what had happened to their sons. Yehuda\u2019s family met with government leaders around the world and pursued every possible connection in the hope of obtaining even a fragment of information about his fate. Their extraordinary efforts were documented in the book Ayekha?<\/em> (\u201cWhere Are You?\u201d), published by Yehuda\u2019s parents in 1994.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

But all these efforts were in vain. Yehuda\u2019s mother died in 2011, and his father passed away three years later, without ever learning what had happened to their son.
When Yehuda went off to battle, he left clothes and personal belongings behind at the yeshiva. His possessions remained packed in a suitcase in the top cupboard of Room 7 in the dormitory. The suitcase was never moved. At the yeshiva, they decided to leave it there until the day Yehuda would return home. <\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
One of the dormitory buildings. Yehuda\u2019s room is the first on the left.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The dormitory building has since been renovated, but Yehuda\u2019s room remains the first on the left.
Yehuda also left his personal books and notebooks containing summaries of his lessons at the yeshiva. These books, together with additional volumes brought from his parents\u2019 home, are preserved in the Kerem B\u2019Yavneh library behind glass doors, on special shelves known as the \u201cYehuda Ya\u2019ale Library.\u201d
These are the books Yehuda studied from as a yeshiva student, and some still bear the notes he wrote in their margins.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
Yehuda\u2019s books in the Kerem B\u2019Yavneh Library<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
A Talmud volume with Yehuda\u2019s handwritten notes<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

On August 18, 2026, the IDF announced that Yehuda\u2019s remains had been located and brought to Israel, 44 years after he went missing in Lebanon. Zachary Baumel and Zvi Feldman had been found not long before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yehuda Katz\u2019s funeral procession departed from the Kerem B\u2019Yavneh Yeshiva and made its way to the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. Among those who delivered eulogies was Rabbi Aharon Friedman, one of the yeshiva\u2019s senior rabbis, who read from words Yehuda had written in 1980. Yehuda had written them in his notebook on the Memorial Day for the fallen soldiers of the Yom Kippur War, among them students of the yeshiva.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAnyone who is killed for the sanctification of God\u2019s name \u2013 no creature can stand in their presence,\u201d Yehuda wrote in his notebook. \u201cContemplating those who fell in war obligates us to change the way we live; this is part of their [the fallen IDF soldiers\u2019] influence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yehuda could not have known then that his own name would one day be added to the list of the fallen. And just as he had reminded himself to remember those who fell and learn from their deeds, it is now our task to do the same: to remember and to learn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

May his memory be a blessing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The author, Daniel Lipson, is a graduate of the Kerem B\u2019Yavneh Yeshiva.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For 44 years, Yehuda Katz\u2019s suitcase remained in a dormitory closet at the Kerem B\u2019Yavneh Yeshiva. Here is the story of the student who left to fight in the First Lebanon War and fell in the Battle of Sultan Yacoub \u2013 and of the library that kept his memory alive until he was finally laid to rest in Israel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":194883,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[217],"tags":[238,3068,1749],"tags2":[3067,2657],"class_list":["post-194973","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-land-of-israel","tag-land-of-israel","tag-3068","tag-jewish_manuscripts_secrets-en"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\u201cYavneh and Its Sages\u201d - Yehuda Katz Comes Home<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"For 44 years, Yehuda Katz\u2019s suitcase remained in a dormitory closet at the Kerem B\u2019Yavneh Yeshiva. 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