New children’s book in English brings to life heroic tales of October 7
‘The Heroes of October 7,’ crafted under the guidence of child trauma experts and edited by Hadassah Ben-Ari, aims to teach ‘moments of grace and heroism from the war’ to kids
Gavriel Fiske is a reporter at The Times of Israel
On October 8, 2023, just a day after the Israel-Hamas war had begun with the deadly and shocking Hamas incursion into southern Israel, Hadassah Ben-Ari, 35, was at home with her seven children trying to process Israel’s new reality.
In their town of Pardes Hannah, far from both Gaza and the northern Lebanon border, where rocket fire into Israel had already begun from Hezbollah-controlled areas, it was deceptively quiet, with no alarms. Children still played in the streets.
Seeing that her kids didn’t fully understand the gravity of the situation, and mindful of the experts who were already warning about children’s exposure to graphic images, Ben-Ari nonetheless realized, “If I don’t tell them what I know about the war, they will get their information from broken sources, from the internet, from friends or from their imagination.”
That need to help her children understand what was happening in Israel was the spark that launched a new project, “The Heroes of October 7,” an effort to compile, in a format suitable for children, the many stories of heroism that occurred on that fateful day, and after.
One result is a new English-language book, also entitled “The Heroes of October 7,” published last month by the venerable Yediot Books in Tel Aviv, their first English-language children’s book.
The illustrated, hardcover volume contains 71 true stories of heroic acts by both military and civilian figures on or around October 7, a day that saw thousands of Hamas-led terrorists break into southern Israel in an early-morning surprise assault, eventually killing some 1,200 and kidnapping 251 back to Gaza.
Ben-Ari, better known in Israeli society as the recently and amicably divorced ex-wife of popular religious crossover singer Hannan Ben-Ari, is the editor and producer of the project, which includes social media channels and a website with some 200 stories in Hebrew, English and French. A hardback Hebrew version of “The Heroes of October 7” was published in April.
Proceeds from the “The Heroes of October 7” project are donated to Brothers for Life, an organization dedicated to rehabilitating IDF soldiers injured in the line of duty.
Heroes of all kinds
The stories, written by a variety of Israeli authors including Ben-Ari herself, are an effort to “explain the horrors in a way that also protects our children, and to tell them about moments of grace and heroism from the war,” Ben-Ari said, greeting The Times of Israel in her living room.
In many cases, the children’s versions of the heroic tales were originally written and published on the internet in Hebrew around the same time that the stories were coming out in the Hebrew media, in conjunction with the families involved, who “were very happy” to participate, Ben-Ari explained.
The tales chosen for the English version include well-known stories that instantly entered the Israeli zeitgeist, like “Rachel’s Cookies,” which describes how Rachel Ederi of Ofakim famously stalled a group of terrorists in her house by pretending to be sick and then giving them cookies.
Another selection is “General Grandpa,” about IDF general Noam Tibon, who on October 7 left his home in central Israel for the south, saving lives and joining soldiers in their battles on the way, until he was able to reach his son and his family in Nahal Oz.
Other selections feature less well-known episodes, like “Inbal Saves Kibbutz Nir Am,” which relates the story of Inbal Rabin-Lieberman, whose quick thinking and decisiveness in organizing the Kibbutz Nir Am security squad on the morning of October 7 was instrumental in repelling the dozens of terrorists who tried to enter the community.
Some stories speak about the fallen, like “The Officer Who Touched the Sky,” in which we learn about Sahar Saudien, an Iron Dome operator who, after helping repel hundreds of rockets from Gaza, was killed while reloading the device.
Another story, “The Bravery of Aner Shapira,” tells how Shapira, an IDF officer and aspiring rapper, on leave at the terrorist-overrun Supernova festival on October 7, defended a group of hiding partygoers by repeatedly throwing back grenades, until one finally exploded.
There was a special effort to include stories about the acts of men and women from different sectors of Israeli society, Ben-Ari said, including cases where Arab-Israelis and Bedouins leaped into action to save people. “We have so much to learn from them. They are part of our Israeli story,” she said.
Modern musar
Because the stories are for young readers, the focus is on values of “friendship, camaraderie, giving, love and the warm Israeli-ness which all came vibrantly to life during the war,” Ben-Ari wrote in her introduction. The stories don’t contain real descriptions of fighting or death, and don’t contain deep background about the events depicted.
Crafted under the guidance of a team of psychologists, “The Heroes of October 7” is meant to be a learning tool to be read in the presence of an adult one story at a time, not read like a young adult novel, she stressed.
In Israel, the Hebrew edition was aimed at children aged 9 and up, but after consulting with American child psychologists, the new English version is recommended for children aged 11 and up, and some passages were altered slightly, since “Americans are so sensitive with their children,” Ben-Ari said.
“The Heroes of October 7” is one of many new books in Israel about the war – the National Library of Israel recently put out a notice that 169 publications on the subject have been released over the last year – but “only a handful of these” are for children, Ben-Ari said.
“I want people from all over the world to read those stories, use them in their schools and tell their grandchildren and everything,” Ben-Ari said. “A lot of it is everyday people suddenly confronted with this incredible, difficult thing that they never imagined.”
The stories were crafted as a kind of musar, a genre of traditional Jewish text that teaches about ethics and character. The dream, Ben-Ari said, was that “children could read, learn about themselves and the qualities of a hero, and then find the hero inside themselves.”
The episodes depicted in the book are already “part of the Israeli narrative” and the heroes depicted should be right up there with “Captain America and Spider-Man,” she said.
Contrary to how Israel is sometimes depicted abroad, Israelis “don’t like war,” Ben-Ari insisted. “We love the heroes, and we want to do better and eliminate evil from the Earth. We want peace. Shalom [peace] is one of the names of Elohim,” she said, using one of the many Hebrew names for God.
Ben-Ari may get a chance to present her viewpoint in person, as she plans to arrange a short book tour in North America “before Hanukkah,” but first, she laughed, she has to coordinate with her famous ex-husband, who is also planning some upcoming performances in the States.
Someone has to be around for their children, “the most important thing in the world. We’ll find a way to do it,” she said.
