This article is based on the personal reflections of Hadas Hershkovitz and was adapted for publication by Inbar Gabay Zada, Director of Development at Sulamot.
My name is Hadas Hershkovitz. I am Yossi Hershkovitz’s wife – his widow. We live in Gush Etzion, in a very special place called Gevaot, where together Yossi and I raised five incredible children. Yossi was forty-four years old when he went out to war and fell in Gaza.
Before I share what happened to Yossi, it is important to understand who he was – not just what happened to him.
A life of mission
Yossi was an educator – the principal of a boys’ high school in Jerusalem, Ohr Pelech. He was busy and did many things, but everything he did came from a deep sense of mission. Not ego. Not pressure. Mission. Through all of it, he was first and foremost a father. No matter how full his days were, he was insistent on being home in the afternoons, on being present, on being part of our family.
Yossi was born in the Old City of Jerusalem, and he was a man of Jerusalem before anything else – deeply connected to Jewish history, to Tanach, and to the ability to see the broader picture of Am Yisrael and where we are headed. In the army he served in special units, first in a special navy unit and later in a special paratroopers unit. When he finished his service, he was already in the selection process for the Mossad.
Then someone needed help at a school. They were looking for a substitute teacher for a short time, and Yossi – being Yossi – of course said yes. Within a day or two, he fell in love with education, changed his plans completely, and decided to become a teacher.
At first he worked with students from very difficult backgrounds – boys from low socioeconomic situations and boys at high risk. In the mornings he would go to their homes, get them out of bed, and get them moving. At night he would find them on the streets, sometimes collecting them from police stations. Over more than twenty years, over a thousand students became deeply connected to him. He wasn’t just a teacher. He changed their lives.
Yossi had an extraordinary ability to truly see people. He could look at each student – and each teacher – and identify the special character, the unique piece inside them that could give them wings and help them rise. After a few years, we were asked to serve as shlichim at SAR Academy in Riverdale – at the time, this kind of shlichut was not common – and we decided to go.
SAR is a very unique school. The way education happens there is different, rooted in a deep belief in openness, trust, and connection between teachers and students; the physical space reflects that as well, with learning happening with transparency and closeness, not behind closed walls. For us, those four years were a gift – truly life-changing. We came to know Jews living outside of Israel not as an idea but as people, as families and communities, and we learned how Judaism is lived beyond Israel in a way that changed us deeply. I am not a teacher by profession, but during those four years I was “Morah Hadas.” Yossi and I worked together constantly – planning classes, teaching side by side, literally spending twenty-four hours a day together.
The families at SAR inspired Yossi to return to Israel and build differently. When we came back, Yossi eventually served as a school principal, and the first thing he did at his school was break down walls – literally. People thought he was crazy. But Yossi was a principal like no other. He was there for his students, playing the violin with them, earning their trust and their respect.
The violin had begun as a hobby but became part of who he was. Yossi started playing at age six, and years later, at least once a week, he would go to hospitals to play for sick patients. Today this is more common, but back then almost nobody did it, and people were deeply moved by his playing.
October 7th, 2023
That Simchat Torah morning, we were preparing a kiddush hodayah – a thanksgiving kiddush. Yossi was chatan Torah that year, and one of our sons had been very sick and had recovered. I was chopping vegetables and warming up kugel when I went to shul with the children – and on the way, suddenly, there were sirens.
Where we live, there are no bomb shelters, not at home and not in the shul. We lay on the ground together with our children, hands over our heads, listening to the sirens. Yossi told everyone in the shul to go home. He volunteered with the yishuv’s security team and went out to check what was happening. He came back very quickly and said to me, “Des” – that’s what he called me – “Des, there is a war.”
I didn’t understand what was happening. But Yossi did. For a long time he had been waiting for something like this. Ever since the milchemet achim – the deep internal strife that had torn at Israeli society in the previous year – he had felt that something was coming, that this was not a fluke, not a one-day event, not something that would simply pass. By around 9:30 that morning, he told me there were hostages. Not many people understood that yet, but Yossi knew.
He said to me, “I need to go fight. I need to defend Israel.” I said to him, “I know this is your instinct, but think for a minute. Where are you needed most? You have six hundred students. So many teachers rely on you.” If this had been only about me – or even only about our children – there would have been nothing to discuss. Thousands of women across Israel were in the same position at that moment, sending their husbands to fight. But Yossi’s life carried a responsibility beyond our home.
And still, for him, it was not a question. Yossi was forty-four years old. He had celiac. He took medication. But he looked at me and said, “For me, it’s not a question. I have to go. I have to be with our brothers and sisters. I have to help the hostages.”
He spoke to the children and told them he was going and that it would be for a long time. And then he did something I didn’t understand: he went through every holiday with them. He said, “I will be gone, and it will be Chanukah, the holiday of light, and then Purim, and then Pesach, the holiday of freedom.” I listened to him reviewing all of the holidays he would miss because he would be fighting, and I had a very bad feeling.
Yossi went, and I stayed home with the children. Every few minutes there were sirens. We were terrified – we live surrounded by Arabs, and we genuinely thought they might infiltrate. For the next month, my heart was breaking. I couldn’t even speak.
Two weeks later, on a Friday night, I got a phone call from Yossi. It was Shabbat, and the children saw his name on the phone and were scared. He told me, “We are going into Gaza.” No one knew officially yet; it was quiet and secret. But he told me so that I would know he would not have cell phone access.
Before going in, Yossi sent a final WhatsApp message to his staff – to the teachers at his school. It wasn’t a technical message and it wasn’t instructions. It was Yossi speaking from who he was. He wrote about humility – that before he was created he was unworthy, and that even now, his life was never his own. He reminded them that throughout Jewish history, when people were sent on missions by Divine Providence – according to their strength – they answered “Hineni, Here I am.” He wrote that for weeks we had been at war, a war G-d had placed upon us: to extinguish the fire of evil in the world, to spread goodness, and to remove wickedness. Now G-d had sent him on another mission, and so he was stepping away. At the end, he thanked them – because he knew what they were carrying too, and he wrote to them as people who each bear a great burden. I believe Yossi wrote this message because he understood exactly where he was going, and why.
Only later did I understand that Yossi was the first to walk into Gaza, and that after him 3,000 Israeli soldiers followed. He wasn’t the youngest. He wasn’t the strongest soldier or the best fighter. But he was the right person to lead. Yossi could hold many things at once – he was very tough and very soft, very deep and also very funny, the funniest person I ever knew. He was an ish emet, a man of truth, with no ego, who did what he believed was right. He gave the soldiers something essential: bitachon – calm, trust, a sense of meaning and faith in Hashem.
For two weeks they fought inside Gaza, and there were many miracles during that time. Then, on a Thursday, we received word that they were coming out to rest. We wouldn’t see them, but I was so relieved – I was just waiting to speak to him. That night, another message came: there was critical intelligence. They needed to stay for one more mission, just one more day. I told myself: okay. Just one more mission.
That Friday morning, I woke up completely broken and didn’t know what to do with myself. I drove to Jerusalem, then told myself, Hadas, you have children. You need to get yourself together, and I drove back home ready to face another Shabbat with Yossi in Gaza. At 3:30 that Friday afternoon, I suddenly felt a terrible pain in my stomach. I felt that something very bad was happening. I asked my neighbor to come sit with me and told her, “Something very bad is happening.” She tried to calm me down and said everything would be okay, but I was crying, and then the children started crying because they had never seen me cry like that. I asked my children something I had never asked them before: I asked them to go to shul and pray. I asked my oldest son – sixteen at the time – to take our three-year-old and go. After they came back, we ate Friday night dinner at our neighbor’s house. We tried to be okay. We sang. The children played. Everything calmed down a little.
Then, in the middle of Shabbat dinner, there was a knock at the door. I knew. I opened the door and saw three officers standing there and said, “I know. You don’t have to say anything.” I also told them: this is a mega pigu’a – a mass-casualty event – because Yossi’s death will touch so many lives. And I said, “I’m actually glad for you that you don’t know who Yossi was. Because if you knew, you wouldn’t be able to tell me what you’re here to tell me.”
Sergeant Major (res.) Yosef Chaim (“Yossi”) Hershkovitz, of blessed memory, fell on 26 Marcheshvan 5784 (November 10, 2023), at the age of 44. He was laid to rest at the military cemetery on Mount Herzl on Sunday, November 12, 2023.
Kuma
This was never supposed to be my story. Yossi was not a career soldier, and I never believed, even in my worst nightmares, that this would be my life. I have five amazing children who lost the best father they could have had. I don’t think I would be able to stand here and tell this story without the people who held me and continue to hold me – among them, Kuma.
For me, Kuma is a galgal hatzala – a life raft. What is so important about Kuma is that the staff understands that widows are not all the same. Each of us has different children, different lives, different needs, and we need different kinds of support at different times. Kuma knows how to see us as individuals – sometimes that means daily support, sometimes support at a moment of crisis, sometimes something very specific.
Last summer, during the war with Iran, my children panicked. They barely slept, and since we do not have a shelter nearby, every siren meant driving together to a public miklat (bomb shelter) in the middle of the night. My children couldn’t handle it, and neither could I. I realized the only solution was to build a safe room in my house; it was a significant undertaking, but essential for my children to feel safe. Now, we have more peace of mind as Iranian missiles pass above us.
While many partners helped create the room, Kuma navigated the process with me, providing the professional guidance and backing needed to move forward. When the construction damaged our garden, Kuma acted with urgency to fund and restore it just in time for Yossi’s memorial (azkara).
Beyond the larger projects, Kuma is there for the daily challenges of solo parenthood. Whenever I face home repairs or logistical challenges, I know I can turn to them; they immediately step in to help me find a solution.
Kuma provides this same standard of care to every widow in the program. Beyond the monthly stipends, financial guidance and rights advocacy we are all offered by Kuma, it is this personal, professional accompaniment that allows us to truly rise. Today, there is a feeling that everyone is moving forward with “real life,” while we – the widows – often feel left behind. Yet, Kuma stays. They walk with us in this new mission, holding us so we can rise again.
For me, this is an opportunity to say thank you – to Rav Rimon and to all of Sulamot’s Kuma staff. I hope with all my heart that Kuma continues to have the support it needs to go on supporting us, the widows of the Iron Swords War.
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Heroes fell. And the women left behind rise – quietly, step by step – holding their children and rebuilding life as everyday heroines. Kuma is an initiative of Sulamot, founded by Rav Yosef Zvi Rimon, and supported by generous partners around the world, including Mizrachi Canada and the World Mizrachi Movement. To learn more and partner: https://kuma.sulamot.org/en/eng/ or email: inbar@sulamot.org