Judih Weinstein and Gadi Haggai, 70 & 72: US-Israeli ‘power couple’

Judih Weinstein Haggai, 70, and her husband, Gadi Haggai, 72, were murdered by terrorists near Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7 and their bodies kidnapped to Gaza.

The couple set out early every morning for their daily walk, and that Saturday was no exception. They were last spotted on security camera footage exiting the kibbutz gate.

When the air raid sirens began, Judih sent a video in a WhatsApp group showing the rockets streaking across the sky. The family later recovered a recording of a phone call Judih made to the Magen David Adom ambulance service, where she said they had both been wounded.

“My husband, I think he’s dead and I was hit in the face. Please help us!” she said. “Everything is covered with blood… We were lying down and they shot us.” That was the last anyone heard from the couple.

In December 2023, within the span of a week, their family was informed that the couple had both been killed in the onslaught and their bodies kidnapped. In June 2025, the IDF announced that it had recovered both of their bodies from the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.

The couple was laid to rest in Kibbutz Ein Hashofet on June 11, 2025. They are survived by their four children, Iris, Ahl, Rahm and Zohar, and seven grandchildren, as well as their siblings.

Judih was born in New York and moved to Toronto with her family at age 3, where she grew up. Gadi was born and raised in Ein Hashofet, a kibbutz in the north.

Gadi was musical from a young age, playing a number of instruments and serving in the IDF orchestra during his mandatory military service.

After graduating from the University of Toronto in 1974, Judih moved to Israel, arriving first as a volunteer at Ein Hashofet, where she met Gadi, who had recently returned from a period living in the US and playing the saxophone. Judih maintained US, Canadian and Israeli citizenship, while Gadi was a dual US-Israeli citizen.

Gadi worked as a musician for many years, and Judih was an English teacher. In 1994, the couple and their kids moved to Nir Oz, where Gadi became the kibbutz’s head cook – choosing a more stable career than music.

Judih continued to teach, incorporating puppetry into her lessons. She also wrote poetry, including a daily haiku, and in later years practiced Reiki therapy and taught mindfulness classes, focusing on providing tools to children living near the Gaza border who had suffered from years of rocket attacks.

The couple’s friend, Adele Raemer, shared in a Times of Israel blog post the eulogy she read at the funeral for the “power couple.”

“Gadi was a character. He was born with a flute in his mouth, they say. He was a talented musician on so many instruments, a proud father of 4, grandfather of 7, a professional kibbutz cook for years on Kibbutz Nir Oz to where they moved in the 90s. He had a wicked wit and stalwart opinions,” she wrote.

Judih, her close friend, “lit up my life, as you did the lives of so many. Your mother-earth wisdom, your old-time hippy-style spiced with modern-day techno savviness. Your laughter and your sense of humor never failed to lift my spirits and encourage me to step out of my comfort zone to achieve that for which I strived.”

Their daughter, Iris, told a Canadian Jewish newspaper that her parents “were both people who were all about justice and equality, and a two-state solution. They were the ones to be the first in line to advocate for peace.”

Her parents were her “moral compass,” Iris said, and loved the life they built in Nir Oz, serving and guiding others.”

Her mom, Iris said, “was a reader. She always loved books,” lamenting that terrorists broke into her parents’ home and “stole almost everything… the books and the albums, they tore [them up]… and that hurt me to the core, because every book that we had, my mom chose. They were her best friends from childhood.”

Iris told a Canadian newspaper that “my dad was a jazz musician. He started playing flute when he was three years old. He just taught himself, and he was just like her, just this fighter for justice. They just fell in love. They were both just hippies in spirit.”

Her mother, she said, “was a poet. She wrote a haiku every morning and she was all about mindfulness. She and my dad were just a symbol for unity and they’re very missed.”

Read more Those We Have Lost stories here.