Couple weds in kibbutz where groom hid from terrorists on Oct. 7

A couple who had been due to get married four days after the October 7 Hamas assault in southern Israel returned to Kibbutz Mefalsim near the Gaza border this past weekend, and wed in a private ceremony in the fields of the place they had fled just three months prior.

On the morning of October 7, Omer Feinstein was supposed to be spending time with family members who flew in from abroad to celebrate his upcoming wedding to Tal Kashi, the couple told Channel 12 on Sunday. Instead, he found himself hiding in a safe room with his extended family, including his three-year-old nephew, as the kibbutz security team battled Hamas terrorists at the front gates.

After 13 hours, Feinstein and his family escaped the kibbutz under the cover of night, and two weeks later he was called up for IDF reserves duty, the couple recounted.

The couple rescheduled their wedding and will celebrate at an event with their families in a few weeks, but decided to first hold a private ceremony, just the two of them, outside of Feinstein’s childhood home.

“It was important for us to go back and take pictures in Omer’s house and in the place where our wedding was supposed to be,” Kashi said. “Omer knows that the house he grew up in is not going to be his home again in the near future, so it was important to us to have it as a keepsake.”

In photographs shared by the couple with Channel 12, they can be seen inside Feinstein’s safe room, but instead of sheltering in fear as terrorists try to break through the kibbutz defenses, they share a moment with the door open, Kashi wearing a white two-piece wedding dress and Feinstein his IDF uniform.

The couple also took photos in the fields surrounding the kibbutz, as well as at their original wedding venue in the neighboring community of Kibbutz Bror Hayil.

“In the safe room where our family was hiding, Omer changed from his uniform into a suit, and in the kibbutz and fields that had been full of terrorists and evil, we posed as bride and groom,” the two said. “We hope that by the new date of our wedding, all the hostages will have returned home.”

Kibbutz Mefalsim, which in peacetime is home to just over 1,000 people, was one of the more than 20 different communities that Hamas terrorists targeted when they burst into Israel from across the Gaza border on October 7.

Some 1,200 people were brutally slaughtered across southern Israel that day, and another 240 were dragged into Gaza as hostages. In Mefalsim, however, while at least one person was killed outside the front gates, the civilian security team was able to hold off the terrorists at the entrance, preventing them from unleashing death on the civilians hiding inside, as they did in so many other communities.