Sarai Teherani was a very private person until October 7, 2023.
“My husband did all the volunteering,” she said while guiding this reporter around the Mishor Hagefen neighborhood of the southern city of Ofakim.
Teherani was at home on October 7, 2023, with her husband and children, then aged 17, 12, and 8, when Hamas terrorists invaded the neighborhood and surrounded three streets.
Her husband, Motti, who belongs to the Hatzalah volunteer EMT service and owns a pistol, readied to go out and fight until he received a message telling him to stay indoors.
Few houses in the veteran neighborhood have protected rooms, and many of the people who dared to venture out were murdered on their way to public bomb shelters.
In Ofakim, 52 people, including residents, soldiers and police officers, were cut down, 39 of them in the western Mishor Hagefen neighborhood. Some 1,200 people, most of them civilians, were slaughtered by Hamas-led terrorists along the Gaza border that day.
“After October 7, people said I needed to talk to a psychologist. I rang up and said, ‘Don’t worry, I’m not looking for psychology, I just want to know that I’m sane,'” she said. “Then I got to the stage of survivor’s guilt. The psychologist told me to be thankful that I’m alive, to take the life I was given and do something productive with it.”
“I told myself that those who saved me did so by going out of their comfort zones, and that’s what I need to do, too,” she said.
So when the principal of the high school where 37-year-old Teherani works as an English teacher asked her to guide a Jewish Agency delegation, she bit the bullet. Since then, she and students studying tourism for their matriculation exams have guided multiple tours of Israelis and Diaspora Jews, from school principals touring the Gaza border area to pupils about to travel to Poland and visit Auschwitz.
In Ofakim, locals have placed banners and memorials marking the spots where residents were murdered. Aside from those, little evidence of the massacre remains thanks to a decision by the Ofakim Municipality to prioritize Mishor Hagefen for repairs — such as fixing bullet holes — and the upgrading of public spaces.
The house of Rachel and David Edry, for example, in which Rachel famously kept five terrorists distracted with coffee and cookies for 15 hours, has been restored. Nobody would know that pitched battles between security forces and terrorists had raged just outside.
אופקים: שוטרים מול מחבלים pic.twitter.com/Ey10lgSBom
— הדיגיטאלית (@LTurkishdizi) October 7, 2023
“We made Mishor Hagefen our priority for renewal,” a city spokeswoman told The Times of Israel.
One young person from Ofakim, 24-year-old Matan Zangauker, was abducted together with his girlfriend, 30-year-old Ilana Gritzewsky, from the home they shared in nearby Kibbutz Nir Oz. While Gritzewsky was released as part of a temporary ceasefire on November 30, Zangauker remains in Hamas custody. His mother, Einav, is a vocal leader of the campaign advocating for the Netanyahu government to quickly cement a deal with Hamas for the release of the remaining hostages.
Post-October 7, Mishor Hagefen puts down more roots
Ofakim, a hardscrabble city of around 40,000, lies 29 kilometers (18 miles) from the Gaza border. Unlike residents of other towns and cities targeted on October 7 that are located much closer to the Strip, those living in Ofakim’s Mishor Hagefen neighborhood were not evacuated after October 7.
“In retrospect, I think it was the right thing to do,” said city community worker Hila Sarusi. “Our people stayed with their communities and the services worked. There was continuity. Five weeks after October 7, we invited the residents of Tamar Street to a theatrical event with roundtables, exactly where the fighting took place.”
“It was like a playback [a form of improvisational theater where audience members tell stories that are immediately acted out on the stage]. An actor and a therapist sat at each table. Everyone who fought or was injured met. It was bittersweet and very powerful. It created an experience of solidarity, togetherness and a common neighborhood story. We gathered 500 pages of stories and used them as a basis for a songbook we produced for Hanukkah.”
On that same day, the city also opened a community hub (which was closed in the run-up to Passover when this reporter visited), the House in the Mishor, in a rented property on Tamar Street whose owners fled after October 7. It is backed by the Joint Distribution Committee, the MetroWest Jewish Federation, and the Natan NGO.
Former school principal Bruria Neuberger took the helm, organizing a mind-boggling variety of events and workshop courses that drew 200 people weekly through 2024, a number that has dropped this year to an average of 150.
“The unity in a neighborhood is less than on a kibbutz,” Sarusi said. “I see the need and demand for community activities.”
“We are creating community,” said Neuberger. “People of all ages from all backgrounds and socioeconomic levels meet, with or without the children, for activities that range from art therapies to cooking, yoga, and dog training for kids.”
Teherani said that after October 7, residents wanted to feel safe leaving their homes, but also discovered that they don’t really know one another.
“You heard about this one or that one who was killed, who lived very close, and you said, ‘How can it be that I didn’t know them?’ It saddened me. We said that if something like this ever happened again, God forbid, we wanted to be in touch with one another,” Teherani said.
“Bruria works around the clock. Whatever we asked for, she organized, and we started to feel safe going out,” she added.
‘I owe you my life’
Community activities since then have included Purim parades and events for Holocaust Memorial Day and Israel’s Memorial Day, Yom Hazikaron.
One special ceremony saw over 100 certificates of appreciation awarded to individuals who fought and survived, and to the families of those who were murdered.
“You cannot understand what it did for the neighborhood,” Teherani said. “We saw our heroes. Suddenly, you say, ‘Wow, I know him! You feel admiration and pride.'”
“One man spoke on the stage, and when he got down, I told him, ‘I owe you my life.’ Suddenly, I understood the human connections here that we’re unaware of during normal times,” she said.
One question that arose in consultation talks with the city was how to memorialize the dead while continuing to live, Teherani said.
“We didn’t want to be Yad Vashem,” she said, referring to Israel’s national Holocaust memorial and museum. “The council devised many ideas and asked how we’d like the neighborhood to look. We discussed wanting life, flowers, maybe a garden for [the victims]. They died so that we could live.”
Working with architects, the Housing Ministry and the community, the city council has budgeted an initial NIS 20 million ($5.4 million) for landscaping and infrastructure, including new lighting and security cameras.
Soon, the city will erect a neighborhood fountain and memorial.
It is also laying bicycle paths and upgrading the promenade on the western outskirts of Ofakim, through which the terrorists entered the Mishor Hagefen neighborhood.
But the longing remains.
Teherani pointed out where new pavement has been laid. Still, her eyes immediately focused on a bench where an elderly couple from the former Soviet Union, Yuri and Roza Yadgorov, had sat every evening. They were murdered on the way to a public bomb shelter.
There is a memorial placard on the bench, and roses have been painted on a wall nearby.
Teherani lamented, “They were part of the landscape. And they’re missing.”
The Times of Israel Community.
