His full name was Zev Chanoch Ehrlich, but everyone knew him as “Jabo.” And little did I know that night that he would soon pay with his life for his fiery, fighting spirit and unquenchable drive, at age 71 becoming the oldest IDF casualty of the current war, when he was killed by a sniper while analyzing an ancient fortress in Southern Lebanon.

In Beit Ummar, Jabo remained with the soldiers for the rest of that night. His age notwithstanding, he humbly made himself one of them, sharing fascinating discoveries and bits of trivia as well.

When the troops entered one of the houses in the village, Jabo was busy walking around the yard. “You want to see something interesting?” he asked me. And then he shined his flashlight on the impression of a lamp carved into one of the walls. He had discovered it two weeks earlier, when he had joined the forces on a previous visit to the village. At another house, he pointed out a tree that looked nondescript, but actually had a familiar backstory.

“This is a caper bush, ” he explained. “Look how it’s planted in a way that it blocks this broken wall, just like the Gemara relates in Maseches Shabbos (150b) about the caper bush that grew on Shabbat for the righteous man who didn’t transgress the holy day by mending his fence. A miracle happened and a caper bush, which is tough and thorny, grew in the open space, not only keeping the area fenced in but also providing a livelihood for the righteous man.”

Today, he explained, we only eat the caper buds once they’re pickled, but in ancient times they ate the flowers and perhaps even the leaves. The Gemara even talks about a capar, a person whose profession is harvesting and pickling capers.

“And you know,” he continued, “the Gemara compares the Jewish People to a caper bush — it will grow just about anywhere under the harshest conditions, and come back to life even if it’s been uprooted. It’s no wonder that the plants growing out of the Kotel are capers….”

And then, in the heart of the village, Jabo pointed to a headstone in the courtyard of the town’s main mosque, while the grave itself is in a cave below.

“There is an ancient tradition that this is the burial place of Amitai, father of Yonah Hanavi,” Jabo said, noting my surprise. While there is no source for Amitai’s life or burial, he’s generally believed to have been buried in the region of modern-day Iraq, which aligns with the site traditionally associated with his son Yonah’s burial — based on the belief that Yonah and possibly his family were buried in Nineveh (modern-day Mosul). But there is also a tradition that associates Amitai with this site in Beit Ummar, which has drawn both Jewish and Christian visitors over the centuries.

“While the historical and archaeological evidence to support this claim is limited, as it’s primarily based on oral traditions rather than documented history,” Jabo said. “The local tradition has been passed down for centuries. And it makes sense, too — why would Amitai have traveled all the way to Nineveh if the family was rooted in Eretz Yisrael?”

Zev Chanoch (Jabo) Ehrlich was born in 1953 to Hadassah and Yisrael Ehrlich. Reb Yisrael was Sochatchover chassid (and a relative of the previous Rebbe) and historian who specialized in the gedolim of Poland, and while Jabo studied at Yeshivat Hakotel and then earned higher degrees from both the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Touro College after serving in the IDF, he never lost his connection to the chassidus.

In 1977, Jabo helped establish Ofra, one of the first yishuvim in the liberated territories of Yehuda and Shomron, where he founded the Ofra Field School. He was an explorer, tour guide, and researcher, published extensively, taught history and geography of Eretz Yisrael in several institutes of higher learning, guided tours for soldiers and officers, and built close ties with senior military officers.

Jabo served for years as a career officer, working as an intelligence officer for the Hebron Brigade, during which time he was wounded by terrorist gunfire.

He was an expert at documenting archaeological sites in Arab villages in Eretz Yisrael’s heartland, and was granted access by the IDF to the most complex and hard-to-reach archaeological and historical sites. He trained soldiers in terrain expertise, and cofounded an IDF unit specializing in intelligence gathering, tracking, and terrain navigation.

His territorial knowledge became extremely important to IDF commanders in the field. For example, when terrorists in Shechem realized they couldn’t successfully face off with the IDF above ground, they began utilizing underground spaces beneath the Casba in Shechem to build bunkers for weapons caches and as a base from where they remotely detonated explosives against soldiers.

In order to fight against this new tactic, the IDF employed the assistance of Jabo Ehrlich. He was an expert in the city’s expansive underground water systems — he would say that Shechem was his favorite city after Jerusalem — and was therefore able to track the terrorist movement.

This past November, due to his expertise and his long history of helping the IDF in terrain analysis, he’d been invited by Golani brigade commander Yoav Yoram into the recently conquered western sector of southern Lebanon to examine an archaeological site — an ancient Crusader fortress in the village of Shima. At the beginning of that week, soldier Uri Nisanovitz Hy”d had been killed by terrorists hiding in the fortress, but because of its historical status, the structure wasn’t destroyed.

Jabo’s expertise in underground systems and his keen eye for noticing suspicious terrain and structural details was crucial for locating suspected terrorists at the site. The area had already been conquered, but the IDF knew there could be hideouts within the winding ancient structures. Who better than Jabo would be able to spot if there was any new building going on there or if stones were moved to create hideouts for terrorists, and be able to direct the IDF to clear out any danger?

But before he had a chance to map out the site, and despite the assumption that the area had been cleared, two Hezbollah terrorists who were hiding inside a tunnel under the fortress opened fire, killing 71-year-old Jabo — armed and in IDF uniform — and Seargeant Gur Kehati on the spot, and injuring Yoram. (Bearing technical responsibility for the killing of a noncombatant in an active war zone, Yoram requested to step down from his position.)

“Jabo was like a walking Tanach,” says Rabbi Yechiel Goldhaber, a former chavrusa of Rav Chaim Kanievsky from the time he was a bochur, an expert on Jerusalem’s Old Yishuv, and a widely-published researcher and historian. “He dedicated his life to really living the stories of the Tanach and locating where they all happened. He knew every corner and path in the country, driven by an intense desire to understand every aspect of the history of Eretz Yisrael. He would trek through the Shomron, the Galil, and the Judean Desert, following the footsteps of the Shoftim, the Kings of Yisrael, and the Neviim whose lives and adventures were intertwined with the Land.

“And there was no place he hadn’t gotten to. He would enter Arab villages, researching, photographing, collecting information invaluable to the army because he knew every corner.”

Rabbi Goldhaber, a Stolin-Karliner chassid, first met Jabo while taking a course for tour guides that Jabo was leading. “He was always happy to share his broad knowledge with me, and he always had explanations or insights of his own that were always enlightening. But our real bond was over our joint chassidic history, which always energized him,” Rabbi Goldhaber says.

Another partner to Jabo’s research was Yisrael Shapiro, a well-known Israeli lecturer and tour guide who recently wrote a book together with Jabo about Jewish history in Gaza.

“About six years ago, I was leading a group from Kollel Dorshei Tzion in Beitar on a tour of the Binyamin region, when we passed Bir Zeit University outside Ramallah. I wondered if the name of the place might be connected to one of the grandsons of Asher ben Yaakov — ‘Bnei Asher…Chever u’Malkiel hu avi Birzut.’ And who else to turn to but Jabo? He even forwarded me a study that supported my theory, based on findings that the members of Shevet Asher built towns near the border with Shevet Ephraim, as they desired to be close to Mishkan Shiloh. One of those settlements was called ‘Birzayit,’ in the same place as Bir Zeit today.”

“Whenever I’d meet Jabo,” says Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Charitan, a scholar and publisher of a newly released and annotated Sefer Hamaccabim, “he would always have some original and creative chassidic insight to share — it would usually go along with his trademark playful smile, but underneath was extremely profound and comprehensive knowledge.”

Despite Jabo’s extensive, encyclopedic knowledge, Rabbi Charitan says his most dominant trait was his modesty. “One time,” Rabbi Charitan relates, “a certain group that Jabo often guided reached out to me instead of him. It was for a tour of a site that was accessible only by passing through Yericho, which needed military approval. I wasn’t able to get the permit myself, and although I felt uncomfortable and a bit embarrassed, I had no choice but to call Jabo because he was very well-connected with the IDF. Of course, he obtained the permit, but he also asked if he could come along on the tour. I tried to tell him that I was afraid to speak in front of him — it would be like being moreh halachah lifnei rabbo, but he insisted and promised to come only as a listener. ‘I won’t make a sound,’ he assured me. And that’s what happened. Despite his tremendous knowledge, certainly more than my own, he had no problem learning something from someone else.”

Jabo’s loss was keenly felt and sadly mourned, not only by the military brass he so devotedly helped, but by lovers of Eretz Yisrael, scholars, and rebbes and rabbanim, too. The Sochatchover Rebbe shoveled the final mound of dirt on his kever, while the Karliner Rebbe sat with Jabo’s brothers during the shivah and was privy to some little-known information about this larger-than-life hero.

“You know, there was a lot of noise after Jabo was killed about what he was doing there, how a civilian was in a war zone, and so forth, but that was just throwing sand in the eyes of the real story,” one of Jabo’s brothers told the Karliner Rebbe. “It was natural for him to be there — this area is the tribal inheritance of Naftali and Zevulun. The historic cities of Tzor and Tzidon. You know, the border of Lebanon at Rosh Hanikrah is a pretty new thing — just 75 years — compared to our ancient history.

“Those who were busy asking why he was there were missing the point,” his brother continued. “Because if he found a lintel for a menorah in Kfar Sair or Kfar Akrabe, or if he discovered a Chashmonai fortress in another village, this proves that our connection to the land is ancient, and that we’re another link in the chain that goes all the way back — this is what bothers them.”

His last conversation with his brother was at 11 a.m., just four hours before Jabo was killed. “I asked him, ‘Zevi, it’s almost chatzos. What are you going to do about Minchah?’ He was totally in his element. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘there’s an ancient beit knesset in Barchamdoun, in Chatzbaya, in Dir El Kamar. There are some great places to daven here.’ I can’t imagine him being any happier with his last Minchah.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1045)