Yiftah Tweg, 27: LED lighting tech who loved sipping on tea
Murdered by Hamas terrorists at the Supernova music festival on October 7
Yiftah Dan Tweg, 27, from Azaria, was murdered by Hamas terrorists at the Supernova music festival on October 7.
Yiftah attended the rave with a group of four close childhood friends – Eden Moshe, Ben Binyamin Cohen, Tamar Gutman and Dor Toar — who were all slain in the attack that day.
When the rocket fire began, the friends split up, and Yiftah stayed at the site of the festival. At some point in the morning, after he was already wounded, he decided to hide inside a large dumpster along with a group of others, hoping to avoid detection.
He spoke to his family and told them that he was fine, and not to worry.
At 11:47 a.m., Hamas gunmen discovered those hiding inside the dumpster and opened fire. Yiftah and eight others were murdered there: Ilkin Nazarov, Inbar Shem Tov, Ron Yehudai, Hadar Prince, Amit Levy, David Newman, Maya Bitton and Eliran Mizrahi. Yiftah managed to protect two young women with his body who were wounded inside the dumpster but survived.
Yiftah was considered missing for more than a week until his family was informed on October 15 that his body had been identified.
The five childhood friends were buried side by side in the Gezer Regional Cemetery outside Modiin. Yiftah is survived by his parents, Shoshana and Meir, and his siblings Rami, Sivan and Keren.
Yiftah, the youngest in the family, grew up in Azaria, a small community near Ramle. He arrived as a surprise, when his mother was 43 years old, and his older siblings were 21, 19 and 16. In a way, his family said, Yiftah grew up with five parents always watching out for him.
He attended high school in Beit Hashmonai, and after graduating, he enlisted in the IDF and served as a combat soldier in the Armored Corps. Following his release, Yiftah began working in event production and specialized in LED lighting, and he planned to soon begin his studies.
Yiftah and his friends loved extreme sports, including ski trips, mountain biking and off-roading. He also loved and played soccer, and he was most known for his love of tea, and how he always liked to sit with friends and sip on a steaming cup of tea and talk about life. In his memory, Wissotzky issued a special line of tea called “Yiftah’s Magic.”
His sister, Keren, told the Ynet news site that “Yiftah was — as often is with the youngest — the prince of the house,” noting the large gaps between the siblings.
“We all raised him together,” she said. “He was connected to all of his siblings in a different way — if it was through cooking with my sister or studying Gemara with my brother. He knew how to reach everyone.”
Keren said that “Yiftah was an unusually smart guy. He was a big prankster, but anytime Mom would arrive at the school, they would say, ‘The genius’s mom is here.” Keren said that despite their 20-year age gap, “I wouldn’t take any step without seeking his advice and asking his opinion. He was always modest, helped others, we keep hearing more and more stories about him.”
Speaking to a local news site, his father, Meir, noted that he was close to 50 when Yiftah was born, “and I would take him to kindergarten or the playground, and I had to make myself fit in with all the other parents who were younger than me.”
In school, Meir said, his youngest son “was always smart. He learned everything himself. In the army, he was a combat soldier,” recalling attending his beret march “with great pride.”
At just age 27, he said, Yiftah “was a businessman, he worked in event production,” and he sought to take care of his parents: “He always helped, he didn’t want us to worry about him. He didn’t want to be a burden.”
The Times of Israel Community.