Mira Stahl, 53: Special ed. teacher who touched countless lives
Murdered by Hamas terrorists in Kibbutz Kfar Aza on October 7
Mira Stahl, 53, from Kibbutz Kfar Aza, was murdered by Hamas terrorists in her home on October 7.
According to friends and family posts on Facebook, Stahl was shot at about 7:30 on the morning of the Hamas invasion, making her one of the first victims of the war.
She was buried two weeks later in the cemetery on Kibbutz Shfayim and is survived by her husband Noam and their three children, Rotem, Moran and Ella.
Stahl was a school counselor who specialized in treating children with special needs. For the last several years, she worked as a teacher for those training to become psychotherapists for disabled children.
“She helped traumatized families and children overcome their fears, and also our family, in many ways,” said her sister-in-law Ziv in an interview with Israeli media outlet Mekomit.
Stahl taught various anxiety-reducing exercises to her loved ones. This included breathing exercises and other physical grounding techniques. “As you said,” her son Rotem wrote on Facebook in a memorial post, “if we jump enough, everything will pass.”
מירה שליסופסוכות הגיע. מה זה הגיע?! באבו אבוה הגיע. ואתו סוף מסע החיים המשותף שלנו.לא חלמתי שתלכי ממני…יודע שהנשמה…
Posted by נעם שטהל on Monday, October 9, 2023
According to Ziv, the attendees of her funeral were asked to do this jumping exercise to calm anxiety at the beginning of the service.
She had an amazing connection with her students, noted an Israeli Education Ministry memorial post for Stahl on Facebook. She even helped one of her students to come out as gay over the course of three years, at the end of which he was able to talk about it openly with his peers.
Stahl also had an incredible passion for folk dance. Ziv explained that she came to Kibbutz Kfar Aza from Tel Aviv in the 1980s and taught folk dance classes to the girls on the kibbutz, including her future sister-in-law.
“We admired her because she was beautiful, she was nice, and she was a dancer.” It was there that she met Ziv’s brother, Noam Stahl, and eventually married him and started a family.
Posted by נעם שטהל on Monday, November 20, 2023
Although her career was in special education, Stahl did not give up on her love of dancing. For 20 years, she trained and competed with the Hora Shemesh dance troupe. She was beloved among her peers, and the group wrote on Facebook after her death that she “will forever be a part of the Hora Shemesh dance troupe and a part of our hearts. May her memory be a revolution.”
“I am proud to be the son of Mira Stahl,” her son Rotem wrote on Facebook. “I swear not to become a bitter person, and I swear I will dance like you, all the way to the grave.”