Every morning the roar of the artillery cannons echoes around the northern town of Ma'alot-Tarshiha. From time to time, it provides a somber reminder of the war that is being waged on a daily basis along Israel's northern border. A metal barrier partially blocks the entrance to the alleyway, hinting to those coming to comfort the mourners to park their car in another street and to approach the house on foot. The family is just getting up from the 'shiva' or week-long family mourning period.
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The photos of Sergeant First Class Urija Bayer are still pasted on the barrier. He was a combat soldier in the elite Maglan commando unit, who was severely wounded on December 14 during a battle in the southern Gaza Strip. He was only 20 years old when he died of his wounds. A handwritten sign is draped at the entrance to the street: "Beloved soldiers, we hope and pray for your safety." It is adorned with a red heart and Stars of David, and Israeli flags wave in the wind all down the street.
Tarabin, a representative of the Ministry of Defense's Department of Families and Commemoration, sits opposite Nelly and Gideon, Urija's parents. He explains their rights to the newly bereaved family. Leika, a black, trained dog, lies on a handwoven carpet, the work of Nelly. Yonah, a black and white kitten, which their eldest daughter, Rachel, brought this week, is playing with a ping-pong ball underneath the guests' legs. The lounge is brimming with wreaths, most of which are bright orange star flowers that match the orange curtains. Gideon, Urija's father, repeats the sentence that he has uttered to so many visitors coming to comfort the mourners during the seven-day 'shiva' mourning period. "God makes no mistakes, it's just that we don't always understand him." He asks the MOD representative if there are any expectations of them as bereaved parents on Memorial Day. The representative, Tarabin, a Druze, recounts that only in recent years have people in his own village begun to visit the grave of the fallen: "That depends on you."
The mother, Nelly, a delicate and pretty woman, says that she wants a simple grave. "Just like in the village where I grew up in Germany. With many beautiful flowers. It was so beautiful, that as kids we used to love to play there, in the cemetery." Gideon adds: "I prefer to wait as long as it takes so that the headstone will be of good quality, not something that will crumble and fall apart."
Nelly and Gideon consult with each other in German. This German Christian couple is receiving advice from a Druze IDF representative regarding the grave of their soldier son, a fighter in an elite IDF unit. Gideon speaks Hebrew without the hint of an accent and spiced with up-do-date slang. He came to Israel at the age of two with his parents, Yochanan and Kristal, who were sent here on behalf of the German-Christian organization "Tsedaka" (charity) in 1972.
The organization's objective was to establish a holiday village for Holocaust survivors in the Shavei Zion Moshav near the northern coastal resort of Nahariya. The group then went on to establish the Beit Eliezer senior living community in Ma'alot Tarshiha, where the extended family works as a team with Christian volunteers from Germany and provides high quality service for the Holocaust survivors. The alley is like a small kibbutz, where the family lives alongside the retirement home. The elderly residents, the Holocaust survivors, pay according to their financial ability. The family members receive a small budget for their work, like all the volunteers. The activity is funded by the organization back in Germany.
"The fly with a broken leg"
Three and a half years ago, following the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, I interviewed the family. Then, they protected the Holocaust survivors from the pandemic and locked themselves in the old age facility together with them. I now return to them after they have just lost their most precious treasure. Urija, the fourth of their five children, was killed in the war in Gaza. Throughout the interview, Nelly and Gideon lean on each other, and from time to time they hug each other too. They draw comfort from each other, clinging to their family humor and shedding tears.
They love to live in modesty and far away from the spotlights but agreed to be interviewed as part of their overall calling. "Comfort, oh comfort My people, Says your God," the verse in the Book of Isaiah states, which underscores for them their fundamental mission of comforting the People of Israel, even at its most difficult times. They genuinely hope that this interview will grant even a little hope.
Urija was a mother's boy, Nelly tells and sends her husband to change into an orange shirt. "You should be handsome, just as I like you. Orange is my color. At our wedding too I had an orange bouquet of flowers. When Odelia and Rachel joined the IDF Palchatz unit (acronym for the Rescue & Safety Company; HTA), that was the color of their service beret. When I found his orange shirt, we laughed, and said that we too are Rescue & Safety."
Urija was quiet by nature, and they had to ensure that he got his fair share of the attention. A cute boy, who used to bring his mother yellow flowers, wood sorrel, and on the wedding anniversary of his older sister, Rachel, he presented her with a gigantic bouquet of the pretty yellow flowers.
"He had a delicate soul. About four months ago, I began to arrange a garden in the yard, and when he phoned me from the army he would ask how the garden was coming along. He promised, 'When I come home on leave from the army, I will help you.' He didn't manage to do so," Nelly says. She wears his dog tags over her flowery dress. "In kindergarten, he didn't speak for a whole year, just smiled and played. They wanted to send him to Haifa for a hearing test. I told them that he understands everything and that Gideon will carry out a hearing test at home."
"It was extremely simple," Gideon explains, "I would open a bar of chocolate, he would then hear the rustling of the paper and then immediately come to get a cube of chocolate," they laugh. Nelly continues: "They insisted on the hearing test. I said, 'Okay, we will do it for you,' but it was clear that everything was in order."
Video: The Hamas attack on Zikim Beach on Oct. 7, 2023 / Credit: Usage under Israeli Intellectual Property Law, Section 27a
One day, the little Urija was sitting on the balcony and reading: "Mommy, mommy, I am helping a fly, its leg is broken." Nelly recalls how his father came to help out the fly. Just like his brothers and cousins, Urija grew up with the residents of the retirement home. He knew all of them, and they would eat all the meals together in the dining room. On Fridays, they would make kiddush together and sing songs in Hebrew.
One day, when he was helping his parents, Urija noticed a column of ants making its way up the path at the entrance to the retirement home. He insisted on helping the ants, "who were working extremely hard," as one small ant was carrying a heavy stick, and he just had to help it. When he grew up he loved being at home. "Just like Ya'akov who used to dwell in tents." He would go out with friends, but not with the same intensity as his brothers. He did not like reading and studying, but all the same, he managed to get through school with his charming smile. And all that time he dreamed about serving in the elite undercover Duvdevan counter-terrorist unit.
The residents too have lost a grandson
Nelly arrived at Beit Eliezer as a volunteer. "After only six months, I already knew that I would marry Gideon. I must have been full of belief that this was whom God had sent me," she says. When they married they did not initially decide to stay in Israel. Gideon explains that they wanted to be sure that they had arrived at the place where God had sent them. Eventually, they set up a home in Israel and spoke with their children in German until the age of kindergarten. Once they started kindergarten they began to learn Hebrew, but to this day, Nelly speaks German to them.
The older girls found it difficult to get used to speaking in two languages at first. It was much easier for the younger children as they learned from each other. "We didn't want Germany to be something strange for them. They used to fly to Germany for a visit once every two years, Urija too."
Q: The children never sought to go and live somewhere else?
Nelly: "From an early age, they knew that this is the place for us, as ordained by God, this was patently clear to them."
Gideon: "In our family, we speak freely about everything. You can ask all the questions and get the relevant answers. It was perfectly clear to them why we are here."
Why? What did you tell the kids?
Nelly: "We help the elderly. They lived and experienced this too."
Gideon remembers how Urija once arrived from elementary school after he had heard about the Holocaust, and he was extremely torn up about it. "I asked him: 'Tell me, do you want to meet Holocaust survivors?' He said 'yes'. I said to him: 'All our residents are Holocaust survivors.' He asked about this grandma and that grandpa, and then the penny dropped about the Holocaust. They were like a family to him."
Nelly: "During the shiva, two of the residents came to comfort us."
Gideon: "One of them had a birthday on the following day, and she said that she would not be able to celebrate or have people sing to her. The residents felt as though they too had lost a grandson."
"Before joining the army he went to a pre-army military academy. 'Hitzim' (arrows) is a pre-army military academy with a three-month course that belongs to the Messianic Jews in Israel, and there he really began to flourish," Gideon says. "Suddenly, he discovered that he is capable of doing something, and this led to the change."
Nelly: "He assumed responsibility and took on various functions."
Gideon: "He flourished. He received a summons for the gibbush (rigorous selection process for elite IDF units) for the paratroopers, he wanted Duvdevan, and suddenly when he was accepted by Maglan he was satisfied. He was awarded a citation for excellence on two occasions. Everyone was surprised and we were happy that he had finally found his place."
The children are on reserve duty
On the morning of the Black Sabbath of October 7, Urija woke his mother at 7:15 am and asked her to drop him off in Nahariya. "Neither I nor Urija are the most talkative of people in the morning," she smiles, "I wanted to continue sleeping, I asked him to ask his father, and he replied that dad has already gone out riding his bike. 'Okay, then,' I replied, 'If dad is not at home then I'll take you.' I had no idea what was going on. Everything appeared quiet and peaceful. I was calm."
Within a matter of only a few hours, Zuriel was also called up, he is currently on his regular national service in an elite unit, the girls, Odelia and Rachel were also called up for reserve service, and the Bayer couple found itself with four children called up to serve in combat roles. They were forced to get the retirement home residents to go down to the basement level – the protected space, and the reservists stayed on the top floor. "I prayed and I prayed. Suddenly I was no longer able to work and I wanted to make a sign for the soldiers, the one currently hanging in the street – my idea, carried out by the German volunteers," says Nelly.
From the moment they were called up how did you manage to stay in contact?
Gideon: "It was sporadic. They were almost without phones."
Nelly: "He gave me a neck chain with the Maglan emblem and it broke. During our first phone conversation, I told him, and he calmed me down, he said he would buy a new chain. Once, the button on his uniform fell off. We have a collection of old buttons in the laundry and we decided to replace it with a special button in place of the army-issue one. In another phone conversation, he told me that whenever he thinks of me he holds that special button."
A cloud passes by Nelly and Gideon, tears roll down their cheeks. At 12:30 on December 14, they received a phone call telling them that Urija had been severely wounded. A taxi was sent to collect them and take them on the 3-hour drive to the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba. "The army treated us as family. Not 'like' but 'as' family, Nelly stresses.
The last question I asked Micha Bayer, Gideon's brother, in an interview three and a half years ago, was if his young children would go into the army. "Certainly," he replied, "my nephews have very significant positions in the army."
The nephews belong to the children of the older brother Shlomo, who lives with his family in Shavei Zion. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Nelly and Gideon's family remained outside the retirement home so that they could bring supplies to the 'besieged facility' during lockdown. The older children were already in the army and thus presented a danger of infection.
"It was clear to the kids that they would go into the army, to their parents it was slightly less clear, to their mother not at all," Gideon smiles. "In my generation, there were no meaningful positions for us in the army. I am the only one in the family who received a call-up. There was a process – and they released me. I understood that I would be of greater significance at the retirement home than simply taking on an unimportant role in the army. We do not restrict the children nor control them. We engage in open dialogue. It is the child's right to decide something different from the opinion of his parents, and he will still remain an extremely loved individual at home."
Nelly: "The eldest daughter, Rachel, wanted to serve as a medic in the army and she served in Air Defense. Hagnash. Slowly, slowly I have begun to learn."
Gideon: "After three months she wanted a combat position, and she faced opposition from everybody, even from the community abroad. I said: 'There is no problem with you going into a combat unit, I am just not prepared for girls who want to be like boys. You should give what you can but not copy boys.' Because of this opposition, she was unsure. I told her: 'Submit an application and then let God decide. If God wants you to go to a combat unit, then you will go. And if not – then not.' She submitted an application, and they wanted to take her immediately. I know that God arranged this. I just don't know how. I know that this is the path that God chose for her. Only He knows why this is good, my vision is much more limited. I don't know why a-b-c happens. It doesn't mean that I have to understand it. I just believe that this is the correct way. As parents, I don't know that we would have let anybody go and do anything."
Nelly: "When Yonatan, Shmuel's son, joined up, and then Yair, and then Rachel, I found it all very difficult. I found it very hard to come to terms with all of it. I come from a family of Germans of Russian extract. Originally, we were on the border of Crimea, and there Catherine the Great granted my family a dispensation from serving – as long as they remained to work the land in faith and loyalty. I was brought up to do only good, not to make war. Gradually, I came to understand that the verse from the Ten Commandments 'Thou shalt not murder' is translated into German as 'Thou shalt not kill', and there is a considerable difference between the two. In Hebrew it is written: Thou shalt not murder. 'Thou shalt not kill' – that is the need to defend yourself and not 'Thou shalt not murder.'
"I also found the swearing-in ceremony in the army to be a difficult experience, but when I came to Rachel's swearing-in ceremony, it was a really uplifting experience, and that gave me a sign. There were 500 people in the crowd and you could hear a pin drop, and the Rabbi read out from the Book of Joshua, 'This is your land.' I felt as though I had received a message from God and I said to him, 'God, the children are yours.'"
How did your family in Germany react?
"Wow, wow, wow," both of them sigh, "they took it very badly." Gideon explains: "They were overcome by pacifism from the past and they also reacted due to their ignorance. But the more they saw what the girls were doing, and that they were not going around killing people, on the contrary – they were helping people, they changed their opinion. Odelia took part in a movie on women in the army and this helped them understand. They saw that she had not given up her faith and her mission. On the contrary.
"When we used to sit in the lounge, I would explain to friends from the community that it is okay that you are against weapons, against the army, I have no problem with that. Come and sit with me in the lounge and we will talk. If the army were to move from the border, then there would be no question of whether or not they would butcher us, just when they would come to do it. That was all in theory though, before October 7. Following the terrible massacre, after nobody had provoked them, there really were no more excuses. That was unequivocally what happened there. The fact that they experienced their children serving in the army gave them a completely different perspective. We received many responses in the community that they are very proud of Urija.
"As far as my belief is concerned, I cannot fathom how anybody can say that he loves God but does not love the People of Israel. I don't want anybody to love the People of Israel because they are a perfect people who never make mistakes, but because God loves them," says Gideon staunchly.
According to the verse
Q: I am curious to know, why did you decide to sit 'shiva'?
Nelly: "We were at grandma's funeral in Germany and we had an extremely unpleasant experience."
Gideon: "I am familiar with funerals and shiva from the retirement home, but here they lowered the coffin into the ground and did not cover it over with earth. They left the workers to cover it. I explained to them that I come from a country where it is a genuine honor to take part in the act of covering the coffin with earth. I remained behind to aid in covering the coffin and they simply didn't understand us. They then went home and everybody went their own separate way. It was over and done, just like that. It was clear to us that the custom of the shiva is beneficial to all parties – both for those who have lost their dearest and also for the other surrounding people too." Nelly: "During the shiva, religious women came in, they were hesitant. I didn't know them so I approached them. They came to tell us that a baby had been born at the same time that our Urija was killed and that the parents had decided to name the baby 'Urija Israel'. That was extremely moving.
"I was taken aback by the number of people who came to mourn with me. We experience this even more profoundly with our friends in Germany. They don't have a shoulder to cry on. We will probably go to Germany for an additional week, to have an additional 'shiva' for them."
Q: How would you define your community?
"We are not part of a Messianic community," Gideon tries to define something that he doesn't really wish to define, "We do not belong to any specific group. We believe in the Bible (Tanakh) and in the New Testament."
Their communities are located in Germany and Canada, and it is from here that the volunteers come. At their swearing-in ceremony, the boys, Zuriel and Urija, received a Tanakh bound together with a New Testament in one book, written in English. They were extremely proud of it.
"We did not come here to atone for what the Germans did as this is not something that can be atoned for. We came out of love for the People of Israel. I do not come as a neutral individual – I come as a German, whose nation caused tremendous hurt and suffering to the Jews," Gideon adds. In recent months, he has been working on expanding the retirement home to accommodate 72 beds according to the German standard of one bed per room, "And the Ministry of Health has approved this for us," he states with immense pride.
Why wouldn't they approve it? I ask. Nelly laughs as though I am not at all familiar with the cumbersome bureaucratic approach of the government authorities, and then she winks at Gideon: "What, that means that we won't be together in the same room?"
Q: Why Holocaust survivors of all people?
"The idea of the organization is to try and make things slightly better for the survivors, like the Good Samaritan from the New Testament, to pour oil on their wounds, to bandage them and to soothe those people who have endured such suffering."
Q: What will you do when there are no longer any Holocaust survivors?
"We work according to the verse 'Comfort, oh comfort My people Says your God.' I would be more than happy if once the generation of the Holocaust has come to an end there would be nobody else to comfort among the People of Israel. However, that simply is not how things are. We will have to see which group we can comfort more. Perhaps second-generation Holocaust survivors, or victims of terrorism and wars in Israel. We haven't decided yet. We will make these decisions together as an entire family."
The 84-year-old grandfather, Yochanan Bayer, joins in: "What can we say to the People of Israel? What is going on today is extremely painful. Nobody knows what the outcome of this awful mess will be. But one thing I do know: The People of Israel are God's people, and God's eyes are on the People of Israel the whole year round."
Q: So why did the October 7 massacre take place?
"We don't always get answers. To ask what he wanted by this, what message he was trying to convey to us. I think that we simply need to walk in the path of God, that is how I see things. We need to pray and to adhere to what God says. Pick up the Book of Psalms, it gives you a tremendous amount of strength."
The family, by the way, is no great lover of beer or soccer. Urija was the only one who liked to drink beer and his friends made beers for him with his illustration – "King Beer", and Rachel set up an entire shelf with beers in the lounge for his Israeli friends.
"I have always regarded myself as being Israeli," concludes Urija's sister Rachel, who has just been released from IDF reserve duty. She also finished pre-med studies at the University of Ariel. "This is our home," she says, 'looking for herself' just as the rest of her peers do. Her older sister, who was on a trip to Latin America, was also called up for reserve duty and released.
Just before we are about to leave, a friend from Maglan, Neta, currently attending the IDF Officers Course, who was wounded at the beginning of the week, enters on crutches. He heard on the radio what happened to Urija, and the first thing he wanted to do when he was discharged from the hospital was to go and meet the parents of his good friend, to share with them common memories.
