Photo: IDF Spokesperson’s Unit
Home at Last: A Eulogy for Zvi Feldman, hy”d
The Talmud tells us that one reason we celebrate Tu B’Av is because the dead of Beitar were finally buried. In Israel today, we know this same anguish – families waiting to bury their sons, especially soldiers whose bodies are held by enemies.
On May 11th, 2025, the IDF announced they had recovered the body of Zvi Feldman, killed in Lebanon in 1982. Zvi died fighting at Sultan Yaakov that June, in a battle where 22 soldiers fell. At his burial, 43 years later, his sister Anna Cohen spoke these words.
Yesterday we heard that you had returned. It is a joy that is shrouded in great sadness, but we know that there is no joy like the resolution of doubts, and we are happy with the good we received. My dear brother Zvi, you have returned to us.
You have returned to the homeland that you loved so much. How symbolic that last Shabbat was Parashat Acharei Mot and Parashat Kedoshim. At this time you will find peace. Now that you are buried, you are buried as a warrior who defended the Land of Israel and our people, and you fell al kiddush Hashem.
I am so proud of you. And up there in the high and holy place where you are, I ask that you will be a messenger of righteousness over us and strengthen our prayers to Hashem, for the return of all the kidnapped, captives and missing from all of Israel’s wars. “And may the sons return to their borders.”
I would like to end by reading a poem that you wrote when you were in high school, a kind of prophecy that fulfilled itself. Indeed, it fulfilled itself, and I found it when I was organizing your library. It is in your handwriting:
“I am here, yes it is me, the last of the last. A long time has passed since then, much more than a few years. I did not fall alone, of course not. It is just a pity that so many fell, and all the good ones.” Written by Zvika Feldman.
I will always remember you, my brother, forever.
The body of Zechariah Baumol, who also fell in the battle of Sultan Yaakov, was returned to Israel in March 2019. The body of Yehuda Katz still remains to be returned to Israel, and to ‘kever Yisrael’.