Sgt. Ofir Testa, 21: Torah scholar who fought until his last breath

Sgt. Ofir Testa, 21, a soldier in the 7th Armored Brigade, from Jerusalem, was killed on October 7 battling the Hamas invasion of southern Israel.

Stationed on a base near the Gaza border where he had been assigned just three days earlier, Ofir and his comrades — Staff Sgt. Shay Levinson, Sgt. Ariel Eliyahu and Cpl. Ido Somech — were sent toward the site of the Supernova music festival in their tank, according to Channel 12 news. They battled a number of Hamas invaders near the border, before the tank was hit by a grenade and Ofir was seriously wounded, but took control of the tank and kept moving.

They spotted what they thought were IDF soldiers, but quickly realized were Hamas terrorists who had stolen a military vehicle. They kept moving and came across the site of the festival, where there were major firefights going on. Ofir got out of the tank and with his final strength, gave his weapon to a festival guard who was fighting the terrorists unarmed, his family said, saying he was too wounded to keep fighting. Ofir turned to head back to the tank and was shot dead.

Ariel and Shay were also both killed, while Ido was seriously wounded but survived, and managed to use the tank to save some of the fleeing partygoers. Shay’s body was kidnapped by Hamas into Gaza where it remains to this day; his death was only confirmed in January.

Ofir was buried on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem on October 10. He is survived by his parents, Betty and Tal and his siblings Shahar, Dvir and Shira.

Born and raised in the Pisgat Ze’ev neighborhood of Jerusalem, Ofir was the second of the four siblings, and attended religious schools in the capital. After graduating high school, Ofir studied first in a yeshiva in the Golan Heights and then in Mitzpe Ramon, before ultimately enlisting in the IDF at age 20.

Rabbi Yehudah Rosencrantz, the principal of the Boys Town Jerusalem, where Ofir went to high school, said that “over the six years that Ofir attended Boys Town Jerusalem, he always had a smile on his face. You couldn’t help but be happy when Ofir was there.”

His uncle, Shimon, told a local news outlet that “Ofir was a boy who loved the Torah and the land. He didn’t enlist until he had studied Gemara… when the IDF called him up, he said, ‘I need to learn a little bit more about loving the land in order to serve the country.’ He kept studying until he felt ready to enlist.”

“He was the salt of the earth, he wasn’t afraid of anything, he was a boy without fear,” his uncle added. “He always said, ‘This is my goal, to serve the country. This is a mitzvah.’ He was a modest kid, would do good in secret without anyone knowing, modestly, humbly.”

In an online eulogy, Ofir’s mother, Betty, noted that “unlike the way we raised your siblings, the path which we guided them to, you navigated your own path, when you understood how you wanted to develop, the direction you wanted to take.”

He was born in a rush, “you never had time, and just how you came into the world quickly, you wanted to get to everything,” she said. “At six months you were crawling to everywhere you could reach, at 10 months you were already running in the house. The first 4 years of your life you didn’t sleep and so neither did we — what you were so worried about, we never understood.”

Betty wrote that Ofir “grew up and understood life so quickly. You knew how to differentiate the wheat from the chaff, at parents’ night we were always so proud, your teachers were always satisfied, and your grades were always good. You never asked for help… everything came easily to you… Everywhere you went, you brought your light with you.”

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