Doron Boldas, 34: Chef dreamed of opening a smoked meat food truck

Doron Boldas, 34, from Gan Hashomron, was murdered on October 7 after being kidnapped from the Supernova music festival by Hamas terrorists.

Doron was working at the rave that morning at a food stand. When the rocket fire began, he began to close down the stand and pack up the equipment since the festival was shut down. Piecing together his final moments from video, evidence and testimony, his family believes that Doron — after helping treat wounded at the site of the rave — left via car and headed in the direction of Be’eri.

Near the kibbutz, he was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists and placed in the back of a pickup truck with others being kidnapped from Be’eri. But days later, Doron’s body was found near the border with Gaza, and his family believes he got in a fight with a Hamas terrorist and was shot dead and his body dumped.

Doron was buried in Gan Hashomron on October 11. He is survived by his parents, Yehudit and Moshe, and his sisters Shay and Liran.

Born and raised in Gan Hashomron, a small town near Hadera in central Israel, Doron was the oldest in his family. As a kid he was an active ping pong player, even winning a national youth championship, according to a state eulogy.

Doron was a chef with a specialty in meats, and he would regularly run food stands at festivals and events around Israel, including the 2019 Eurovision in Tel Aviv. He opened his own smokeshop station at a horse farm in Kibbutz Ramot Menashe in the north and also worked at a restaurant in Holon. His longtime dream was to open his own food truck of smoked meats.

Izik Biton, who worked with Doron that day at the festival, wrote in testimony about realizing they were under attack from more than just rockets. He said, “I tell Doron that I’m getting out of here now and plead that he does the same, but because of his big heart, he insists on hitching the food truck, since he lent it from a close friend.”

“Doron Boldas, friend, chef, you who looked like a Viking but would never hurt the tip of a fly’s wing, with the purest heart and laugh and willingness to give, and our conversations,” he wrote. “Dear God, we had just slept outside together for three days, we worked together, laughed, had fun, I can’t breathe.”

To commemorate his memory, his sister, Shay, opened up a smoked meat food truck at the entrance to their hometown, called Meshek Boldas, which tells his life story and his dreams.

“My brother was a champion when it comes to meat and he dreamed of a smoked meat food truck for a long time,” Shay told the Haaretz newspaper. “He had even submitted an application for a license to the municipality, but it was rejected. Already during the shiva [mourning period] I said that there was no way I wasn’t going to open the food truck that he dreamed of. That there was no way I wasn’t passing along his love.”

Shay said Doron “was really worth of admiration, he loved to help people and was always full of optimism. I never encountered him crying or annoyed, he was always satisfied by life and everything he encountered. He had a sort of calm that you could never disrupt, a calm that I hope stayed with him until the end.”

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