Niv and Nirel met in the army. She was a young training officer and he a decorated combat veteran. Badly wounded in Hebron in 2015, Nirel’s was a story of survival. He’d nearly died having been wounded in the neck. A veteran of Tsuk Eitan / Operation Protective Edge in 2014, Nirel had seen too many of his fellow soldiers, his friends, fall in combat – or suffer the terrible after-effects of war. Now he had a new fight on his hands – to secure the support and services he would need as he undertook the fight to recover. That would open his eyes to a whole new battlefield – one on which far too many wounded warriors find themselves as they face a need for a retinue of services and assistance to which they are entitled, but which require the engagement of Israel’s government bureaucracy.
In time he would make it all the way back – even rejoining his unit, a path that led him to his beloved Niv. On completing his IDF service, he began his studies in law, intent on becoming an advocate for soldiers entitled to these same services, having come to understand the enormity of the navigation required to secure them.
Niv was an empath – a psychologist at heart. She had a gift for reading people and seemed to know how to connect with them, how to help them. Though neither had been raised on a kibbutz, they’d chosen to begin a new chapter together in the young people’s neighborhood of the Western Negev paradise, Kibbutz Kfar Aza, moving in last summer. As ever, they went home for the holidays and spent the night of Simchat Torah with Niv’s family in Netanya. Though they’d always stayed over during prior visits, that night, for the first time, they decided to head back. It was the 6th of October.
The calls and texts started coming in early the next morning. The sirens. The safe room. The terrorists. A final text arrived at 10:04 AM. “Please pray for us.” It took a week for any news to arrive, a week in which Niv and Nirel’s families had been in hopeful purgatory. Maybe they’d been taken. But, perhaps mercifully, they hadn’t. Then word arrived. They’d been identified among the dead. Their small home burning down around them, they’d escaped through the safe-room window only to be discovered by their killers.
They were buried together, in a single grave.
That torturous week, Nirel’s family had expected to celebrate a continuing family tradition. Nirel z’l had sustained his devasting wounds back in 2015 on the 10th of October. Each year since, the family had gathered with friends and a growing circle of others to celebrate his rebirth. Not long before this year’s celebration, he’d bought a ring and planned to propose to his beautiful Niv z’l that day.
The story of Niv and Nirel is also remarkable for another reason. She was raised in a secular home – her family, prosperous and successful. He’d grown up a member of a large religious family, and as a young man came to a more liberal commitment to Jewish life. They’d been afraid of what would happen when their parents finally met and so it had been put off until their engagement. Though the families connected as they began their desperate, shared mission to find out what had happened to their children, they didn’t meet until the night of funeral, Motzei Shabbat (just after Shabbat) on the evening of Saturday, October 14. Gathered at the home of Niv’s family and joined by untold thousands of Israelis of every background and disposition who’d lined the route from the family home to the cemetery, they’d come together after all – a bridge between disparate segments of Israeli society, now joined as one, in mourning.
I met Niv’s mother, Tami, and her uncle, Ilan, at a coffee shop on Manhattan’s Upper West Side this past Thursday morning. They were in the midst of a hastily planned visit, together new friend, Dr. Kfir Feffer, an NIH funded research scholar with affiliations in Toronto and Haifa. Dr. Feffer, a psychiatrist by training, is a leading voice in Israel on the treatment of trauma and trauma related disorders.
Feffer had been in Barcelona on the morning of October 7, to deliver a paper at an academic conference. Recalled to active duty in the IDF, the 45-year-old physician was initially assigned to a mobile field hospital in the north, before volunteering to join a special unit tasked with helping infantry soldiers from the Golani Brigade who’d seen combat in the Gaza envelope as Israel drove the terrorists back over the border. Far too many were overwhelmed by the sights and scenes they’d witnessed and could no longer function as soldiers. They’d been removed from the front and relieved of their weapons out of fear they might harm themselves but were otherwise lacking in critical support. Dr. Feffer and others responded to the call and the experience opened his eyes to a problem of enormous scale – and getting geometrically larger.
Israel’s vaunted medical community has long since hit its capacity for supporting those with post trauma disorders and given the proliferation of combat-related injuries (there are already more than 15,000 newly disabled combat soldiers), the country expects that perhaps 30,000 or more of those who’ve seen combat will require post-trauma support in the coming months and years. Meanwhile, the war goes on with no end in sight and the number continues to climb. Beyond those doing the fighting are the tens of thousands of survivors, eyewitnesses and first responders. There is also the matter of their families – as trauma is rarely confined to those who experience the triggering events first-hand. In short, the country is woefully underprepared for the work that lies ahead.
Tami, Kfir and a growing number of others intend to do something about it and have already developed plans for a new, world-class, comprehensive trauma center, which will be located in the Hadassah Neurim Youth Village, a beautiful community in Israel’s Emek Hefer Region overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. The new facility will offer fully personalized, holistic services including treatment, rehabilitation, administrative and legal support, and has been named the Niv Nirel Trauma Center.
Israel’s growing array of challenges and needs will extend well beyond the war. Israelis have come together to take the fight to those who have shown an unrelenting commitment to her destruction and to the continuing slaughter of innocents. They have joined hands to keep the world’s attention on 129 hostages still held in the dungeons of Gaza by the same savages who raped, mutilated, and slaughtered more than 1,200 innocents on the 7th of October, among them a beautiful young couple who had become emblematic of the bridge-building to which they had determined to dedicate their lives. Young Israelis from different worlds intent on making their country a better place.
As we prepare to mark the celebration of our journey from slavery to freedom, once more Jews are held captive by those who would slaughter our children, by Pesach’s second night – they will have been there for 200 days. May the almighty extend his mighty hand and outstretched arm to bring them to freedom. And may he bless the memories of Niv and Nirel.
Chag Kasher v’Shaket.
As always beautifully written. Glad to se you are writing. May you be in the comfort of your family this Passover.