The return of Ran Gvili was like a huge boulder lifted from the collective heart of Israel

Photo: Flash90

T

he recovery of the body of Ran Gvili Hy”d and his return to Israel for burial b’kever Yisrael was one of those moments that reminded me how fortunate I am to have built my life with my wife in Israel. There is no other country where one will ever find oneself rejoicing with eight million fellow Jews.

We are a long, long way from the level of k’ish echad b’lev echad that preceded Har Sinai. Still, the joy of the return of the final Israeli captive was shared by almost the entire Jewish population of Israel.

By the time Ran Gvili’s body was identified, 843 days had passed since October 7, during most of which hundreds of Jews were held captive by Hamas, some alive and some murdered. But it has been even longer since there were no Israelis held captive — since 2014, or 4,208 days to be precise.

The extraordinary efforts that went into securing Ran Gvili’s return reflect the importance the country attaches to returning captives, whether dead or alive. For weeks, much of the news has been focused on the search for Gvili and rumors about where he might have been buried. That information, it seems, was obtained from an Islamic Jihad operative, who was captured by Israeli forces with the intent of extracting the necessary information from him, and not from Hamas, which had committed to the return of all hostages as the first stage of President Trump’s Gaza deal.

A team of approximately 150 that included engineers, those with a specialty in forensic dentistry, lab technicians carrying portable X-ray machines, and members of the IDF rabbinate, was involved in Operation Courageous Heart.

And they were guarded by two IDF infantry units as they exhumed 800 bodies and sorted them into those requiring further checking and those that could not possibly have been Ran Gvili because of gender or age. They worked for nearly 24 hours straight, with much of the digging done by hand.

Gvili’s was approximately the 250th body to be examined. Lt. Col. Eliasaf Verman, the commander of the operation, related how the doctor on the site had told him, “ ‘Bring me one of the findings immediately.’ I saw her hands shaking over the instruments. As the examination went on, I saw her eyes redden and a tear fall. Then I looked at her and saw a smile.”

Ran Gvili was still wearing the uniform of the Yasam special police unit in which he had been killed on October 7. Once his body had been properly covered and draped with an Israeli flag, the soldiers, who had worked through the night, spontaneously started singing Ani Maamin.

The return of Ran Gvili was like a huge boulder lifted from the collective heart of Israel. Now, at last, the yellow ribbons adorning every street sign, fence, and telephone pole, as reminders of the captives, have been cut down. And the pins on every lapel have been removed — often ceremoniously. In one clip, a series of former captives can be seen taking off their pins, and in a number of cases reciting shehecheyanu as they do so. And finally, the huge clock in Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square can stop its relentless ticking.

Rachel Goldberg-Polin, mother of murdered hostage Hirsch Goldberg-Polin, wrote movingly in the Free Press of a daily ritual she had observed since day 26 of the Gaza War. At the beginning of each morning, she would write on masking tape with a black marker the number of days since the beginning of the war. Then she would tape that number just above her heart. At the end of the day, she would remove the number and tape it to a wall of her home to join all the pieces of tape that preceded it. “Today, we put down our markers. Our tape becomes tape again and not a badge of pain,” she writes.

But if the return of the last captive was the lifting of a huge weight, it was not like waking from a terrible nightmare. For all the tragedies of the last 843 days — the thousands killed, the tens of thousands wounded, both mentally and physically, many of whom will bear the scars forever, the trauma of wives and children left behind as their husbands went off to reserve duty, in some cases for 300 days a year — are real, and they cannot be removed. At best, we can pray that “those who sowed with tears will reap with joyous song” (Tehillim 126).

In many respects, Ran Gvili — “first in, last out,” in the words of his mother — serves as the perfect symbol of the courage and self-sacrifice with which so many of Israel’s finest young people fought over the last two years.

On the morning of October 7, he was at home with his parents awaiting surgery two days hence on a broken shoulder. Yet when he heard the news of the breach of the Gaza border, he rushed from the house in his police uniform, telling his father, “I cannot leave my comrades to fight alone.” After driving to police headquarters in Be’er Sheva to get armaments, he connected with Lt. Colonel Guy Madar, who had also headed south to join the fighting. Together they reached a gas station near Kibbutz Saad, where they were able to evacuate dozens of survivors of the Nova Festival massacre.

At that point, they returned to the ongoing battle with terrorist infiltrators into Kibbutz Alumim, but they were ambushed by the terrorists and came under heavy fire. Ran was badly wounded in two places but kept fighting and even managed to send SMS messages with their location to the IDF. After the IDF managed to clear the kibbutz of infiltrators, 14 dead terrorists were found in the area from which Ran Gvili had been shooting at them.

He is believed to have bled to death of his wounds after being dragged into Gaza, outside of Shefa Hospital, without having received any medical attention. (Lt. Col. Guy Madar was found wounded in a ditch together with a dozen dead terrorists. He had managed to tie a tourniquet around his leg, which was bleeding heavily, and was saved from being shot by IDF troops when one of the soldiers noticed his tzitzis under his civilian clothes.)

The return of the body of Ran Gvili to a hero’s levayah has a direct parallel in the week’s parshah, Beshalach, as noted by religious journalist Sivan Rahav-Meir. The parshah begins with Moshe Rabbeinu gathering the bones of Yosef (and the other brothers) as the final act before the redemption from Mitzrayim.

May the gathering of the bones of Ran Gvili and their being laid to rest in Eretz Yisrael similarly herald our own redemption. —

Answers from Beyond the Grave

As I have written numerous times, shivah houses often turn out to be fertile sources of insight. This week, my rav was sitting shivah for a son with special needs who passed away suddenly.

While I was there, he told the story of the daughter of a major posek and author of several seforim, who passed away at the age of 20 after a long illness. Shortly thereafter, she returned in a dream to a good friend of hers. In that dream, she told her friend that she had been one of the righteous women of the previous generation but had once accidentally eaten something unfit for her level of kashrus.

As a consequence of that slip, she had returned to earth for a tikkun. And that tikkun was to be raised in a home with the highest standards of kashrus of any in Israel.

After that revelation, she told her friend, “But if you go to my parents and relate what I have told you, my father will dismiss your words and tell you, ‘We have nothing to with words of ‘prophecy’ or ‘dreams.’ ”

Then she shared with her friend a story that only her father could know, and which would, she hoped, convince him of the truth of what she had relayed earlier.

“Recently,” she told her friend, still in the dream, “my father was at a bus stop waiting for the bus that would take him to yeshivah, when he remembered that he had forgotten something at home. He said to himself, ‘Gam zu l’tovah,’ and returned home to fetch the needed item. When he returned to the bus stop, he immediately received a tremp (ride) from a passing motorist and ended up arriving at the yeshivah before the bus he had missed, again saying, ‘Gam zu l’tovah.’ ”

The friend of the nifteres told the latter’s mother the entire dream. And when her husband arrived home, his wife questioned him as to whether such an event had actually taken place. He confirmed that it had.

The father called Rav Chaim Kanievsky ztz”l and asked him what he should do about the dream. Rav Chaim told him, “Mitzvah l’farseim (to publicize).”

So I am.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1098. Yonoson Rosenblum may be contacted directly at rosenblum@mishpacha.com)