Continuing in His Path

Eich Livnot Chaim — How to Build a Life: Studying Mesillat Yesharim with Hadar Goldin (Maggid Books, 2018)

For the last two years, visitors to the National Library of Israel were greeted by a haunting installation: rows of empty chairs, each bearing a book and a poster with the name and picture of the 251 hostages taken from Israel on October 7. The books reflected something of each person — a favorite novel, a children’s story, a volume of poetry — standing in for the lives paused in captivity. As hostages were released or their remains returned for burial, the chairs were removed one by one, leaving spaces that spoke as loudly as the display itself.

For a place that measures its mission in growth — in ever-expanding shelves and stories — this was the rare collection the NLI wished would disappear. Each missing chair marked a prayer answered, each book returned closed a chapter of longing and fear.

A chair that was just recently removed belonged to one of the longest-held hostages in Israeli history, Hadar Goldin Hashem yikom damo, whose body was returned after 11 years in captivity, allowing him to make his final journey to kever Yisrael. The book that sat on his chair for the last two years reflects Hadar’s personal journey — and was published after his death to inspire Jews to walk in the path of uprightness that he sought and found during his short life.

June 2014. Hamas sends nearly 250 rockets into Israel in three weeks. The IDF begins Operation Tzuk Eitan (Protective Edge), to restore quiet to Israel’s southern communities.

August 1, 2014. Hamas and Israel agree to an immediate ceasefire. Two hours later, Hamas terrorists brutally break the ceasefire, ambushing three soldiers. Two are killed immediately. Hadar Goldin, a young Givati Brigade officer, is wounded and dragged by the murderers into their terror tunnel system.

August 3, 2014. Based on evidence, Hadar Goldin’s death is confirmed; he could not have survived his wounds. Bits of DNA found at the site of the attack are buried, but his body remains captive.

October 2023. The National Library, in its newly opened building, creates its special hostage chair display. In addition to the hundreds of hostages kidnapped on October 7, the installation includes those who were captured, alive or dead, in the years before. Though Hadar was murdered almost a decade before October 7, his final fate is now linked to that of the hostages.

And so Hadar Goldin is given a chair, its black ribbon signifying a captive no longer alive. His family chooses the book that characterizes him — a book he never meant for publication: Hadar’s commentary on Mesillas Yesharim.

Mesillas Yesharim, written by Rav Moshe Chaim Luzzato (Ramchal) in the early 1700s, is a classic work of mussar, a step-by-step guide for improving one’s middos. Hadar Goldin was introduced to the sefer in his pre-army yeshivah studies, and wrote notes in his personal copy of the book based on shiurim from Rav Eliezer Kashtiel. He also included his own personal comments, notes in which he applied Ramchal’s ideas about introspection and self-improvement to his own life.

In his introduction to the text, Hadar’s father, Professor Simcha Goldin, describes how the small book followed Hadar throughout his army career, from new recruit to trained soldier, from officer school to combat. His fellow officers recall how he would read — and write his personal comments into — the book in hiatuses between operations and battles. Days after Hadar fell, his twin brother Tzur found the book.

In the years that followed, the Goldin family devoted themselves to recovering Hadar’s body, traveling the world to rally leaders to pressure Hamas, and keeping the memory of their missing son alive in Israeli society.

At the same time, they were keeping his spirit alive as well, through the publication of a unique version of Mesillas Yesharim. On each page, under Ramchal’s original text, they published Hadar’s notes from the shiur, as well as his personal comments, in a font that mirrored his handwriting. The sefer is titled Eich L’ivnot Chaim — Chavruta B’Mesillat Yesharim im Hadar Goldin: How to Build a Life — Studying Mesillat Yesharim with Hadar Goldin. 

One can spend a lifetime learning Mesillas Yesharim. In the introduction, Ramchal tells us that the book contains no chiddushim; rather, he’s telling us things we already know, but need to be reminded of over and over again.

Reading the text along with Hadar though, does bring new insights, both into Hadar’s inner life and into our own journeys. Some examples (loosely translated): When the Ramchal quotes Tehillim, Hadar writes that everyone should have a personal character to emulate. Hadar saw in Dovid Hamelech such a character: “A poet full of spiritual longing.” Who would you choose?

About the words “Avinu Malkeinu,” Hadar wrote, “Our Father, nachat and love; our King, royalty and awe,” adding that “fear of Heaven means standing before greatness; to get up each morning and remember the greatness in the world. A person who thinks like that builds his own greatness…. Hashem is infinite greatness, I have to connect to the greatness, the royalty within me, by putting the desire of the King at the center of my own identity.” He speaks, too, about moving from fear to love of Hashem: “How do you get close to the great King? Go in his ways, make his ways yours….”

In an especially poignant note, Hadar suggests that everyone write for himself a sefer mussar, focusing on things he would fix in himself. In a sense, Hadar himself did exactly that in his notes applying Mesillas Yesharim to his own life.

In fighting — and giving his life — for Hashem’s people and His land, Hadar Goldin surely connected with Hashem’s greatness. But his own greatness shines just as strongly in his spiritual heroism: in the sefer mussar he wrote for himself and, after his death, left for us all, urging us to seek our own paths to greatness. As Hadar wrote: “Don’t be satisfied with small truths. Reach for great emunah, for greatness in life.”

Neither death nor captivity could end the greatness in life Hadar described, as readers continue learning “in chavrusa” with Hadar. Though his journey has ended, and he has finally returned after so many years to the land he fought and died for, the light of his learning continues to illuminate our paths.

A Sefer Goes to War

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housands of soldiers brought their seforim to the war. Between Daf Yomi masechtos specially printed for soldiers, Chumashim to keep up shnayim mikra v’echad Targum, Mishnayos — a whole bookshelf of sifrei kodesh marched off to war.

Elisha Loewenstern, a father of six who volunteered to join his reserve unit, brought his Rambam Yomi to war. This picture shows him learning from it in an Arab house in Khan Yunis.

Tragically, Elisha did not return from Gaza. Less than two hours after the picture was taken, on the seventh night of Chanukah, 2023, he was killed in his tank by an anti-tank missile fired on him as he was on a mission to rescue soldiers.

Hashem yikom damo.

Finding Her Strength

Pamphlet based on B’Chayil u’v’Ruach — With Might and Spirit by Rav Chaim Drukman, printed in Hebrew and English by the Israel Destiny Foundation, 2025

It’s a text we all recognize, an iconic message written with a black marker on a small whiteboard, carried by a young woman whose face reflects great joy and great pain. “B’derech emunah bacharti, b’derech emunah shavti — I chose the path of emunah, and I’m returning in the path of emunah.” With words that echo David Hamelech’s longest song of praise to Hashem, Tehillim 119, Agam Berger returned to her family after spending 482 days as a hostage in Gaza.

But another text stands behind Agam’s heroic story of faith in the face of Hamas horror. Rav Chaim Drukman ztz”l was one of the great leaders of the dati-leumi community in Israel. As an educator and spiritual leader who also served as a Knesset member, deputy minister of religious affairs, and head of the Conversion Authority, his influence on religious matters in Israel was immeasurable.

Due to his many positions and initiatives, for years Rav Drukman did not have the time to write seforim. When Yeshivat Or Etzion, which Rav Drukman founded, celebrated its 35th anniversary, the director of the yeshivah prepared a sefer based on the Rav’s shiurim. The Rav reviewed the book — and thus literally opened a new chapter in his life, going on to author over 20 books in the last 11 years of his life.

B’Chayil u’v’Ruach, With Might and Spirit, was Rav Drukman’s last book. A year before he was niftar, his students began collecting material from his shiurim and written responsa about matters concerning war. Though every few years the IDF had to operate in Gaza and Lebanon, keeping the peace through occasional military incursions — known in Israeli military circles as “mowing the lawn” — nobody imagined that within a year, Israel would face its longest, most brutal war. But though the topic didn’t seem especially pressing at the time, the Rav, despite his failing health, pushed hard to prepare the book about war for publication.

Sadly, Rav Drukman didn’t live to see the book in print. It was finally published early in 2023, on the shloshim of his petirah at age 90.

Less than a year later, on October 7, his words took on heightened relevance. A shortened pamphlet based on the book was printed and distributed to thousands of soldiers, becoming part of their basic gear alongside guns and armor. In rare quiet moments, they turned to Rav Drukman’s words on the mitzvah of defending Klal Yisrael and Eretz Yisrael, and on the ultimate vision of a war that would sanctify Hashem’s name and bring peace to the world.

In addition to the brave soldiers in their battle-stained uniforms, one other Jew read and was inspired by the pamphlet:

Agam Berger.

Agam was kidnapped from her post in Nir Oz on October 7, just two days into her job as a tatzpitanit, a lookout. Her family was traditional, and before her kidnapping, was beginning to consider taking on some mitzvos.

And then came October 7, with final frightened phone calls to her parents, then silence. A video showed Agam bloodied, being dragged into Gaza. And from the horror arose a new commitment, both by her family and even by Agam in Gaza, to keeping mitzvos, despite — or rather because of — her captivity. “B’derech emunah bacharti.”

To the extent possible, Agam kept Shabbos, kashrus, and Pesach in captivity, even fasting on Yom Kippur and Tishah B’Av. She would braid the hair of young girls who were captured, both to keep them from getting lice and to keep up their spirits. Later, she gently braided the hair of her fellow tatzpitaniyot as they were released — until she was left alone, the last woman to come home.

When she was finally released, Agam told the extraordinary story of her encounter with Rav Drukman’s book. One of her captors found and gave her the printed pamphlet, presumably left behind by an Israeli soldier. Once he was convinced that it didn’t contain any specifically military material, he let her keep it.

The cover of the pamphlet labeled it a special publication for Milchemet Charavot Barzel, the Swords of Iron War. That was when Agam and her fellow prisoners learned the name of the war being fought to free them.

At the time she got the book, 14 months into her captivity and imprisoned in a tunnel, Agam, determined not to eat treif, was almost starving. Her fellow captives urged her to eat whatever food the terrorists offered, even the canned sausage they occasionally gave them. Agam refused, saying she would need to ask a rabbi what to do.

Her life was in danger… until she read Rav Drukman’s words, where he explains that pikuach nefesh overrides other mitzvos. Her question answered, she began to eat in order to live. In an interview, she described crying the first time she ate the sausage.

The words of Rav Drukman helped sustain her physically — and of course, reading his words gave her a spiritual boost as well.

By Chanukah 2024, Agam had been in captivity for over a year. She and the other captives asked their guards for candles, and they were given one. In the darkness of the tunnels, Agam lit that single flame — no menorah, no home, only light pulled stubbornly from shadow. Motzi la’or. A book, a soul, a nation still bringing light into the dark.

Notes of Eyal Meir Berkowitz on the Six Orders of the Mishnah, published by Mishnah Sdurah, 5767

Spreading Light

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srael’s National Library’s Rare Book Collection includes tens of thousands of textual treasures: ancient, illustrated works written on parchment, early works from the first years of printing, and revised manuscripts of famous texts by well-known authors.

Recently, a surprising new acquisition was added to the collection: the Mishnah Sdurah. First printed in the 1990s, it’s hardly ancient and is widely used, not rare at all. Its popularity comes from its student- and reader-friendly design, featuring a clear line-by-line format, illustrations and tables, and wide margins for notes, all meant to make the Mishnah more accessible.

While all this accounts for the Mishnah Sdurah’s popularity, it doesn’t explain why it’s on the shelves in the Rare Book room, which include more than several thousand ancient, handwritten copies of the Mishnah alone. But this specific volume of the contemporary Mishnah Sdurah stands out. Now known as Mishnat Eyal, it’s a rare text that belonged to a rare soul — a budding talmid chacham, a first-year medical student, and a young husband, who used his personal copy of Mishnah Sdurah to create a handwritten commentary that is informal, sometimes funny, always insightful.

Eyal Meir Berkowitz, Hashem yikom damo, had been married less than a year on October 7. His elite combat reserve unit was immediately called up, and for two months he fought fierce battles in Gaza. In Kislev, he and his wife Michal marked their first anniversary, planning to celebrate together when he returned home.

Tragically, they never got their chance. On December 7, a day before Chanukah, Eyal was killed in action. He died alongside a fellow soldier, Gal Meir Eisenkot, son of former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, as their unit was trying to rescue the bodies of Eden Zachariah and Ziv Dado, Hashem yikom damam, two Israelis who were killed and kidnapped on October 7. Ultimately, their remains were found and buried in Israel.

Two soldiers who shared the middle name Meir, “bringing light,” died al kiddush Hashem just hours before Am Yisrael would light the first Chanukah candle.

When Eyal was in yeshivah in Eli, he joined a group of young men who memorized and learned Mishnayos. He had a small copy of the Mishnah Sdurah in which he wrote comments and illustrations. After his death, his family took his personal volume and donated it to the Rare Book Room of the National Library.

On the cover page of his copy of the Mishnah, under his name and phone number, Eyal wrote a well-known pasuk from sefer Yeshayahu (33:6) that speaks of “emunas itecha,” the faith of your times,” which should be “the strength of salvation, wisdom, and knowledge.” The Gemara (Shabbos 31a) parallels the six words of the pasuk to the Shishah Sidrei Mishnah.

The beginning of the chapter that includes that quote connects chillingly to the war that took the life of this young man. Yeshayahu, speaking to enemies of his time — and of all times — blasts those who “spoil, though you were not spoiled; deal treacherously, though they (Israel) didn’t deal treacherously with you….” It is a promise of Hashem’s revenge against those who attacked Jews for no reason, be they Sancheriv, the king of Ashur in Yeshayahu’s time, or Sinwar, head of Hamas, in ours.

Eyal’s entire volume of the Mishnah Sdurah, complete with his handwritten notes and illustrations, is available online on the National Library website, and his family hopes to publish it in full in the future. In the meantime, they have released a free pamphlet featuring his work on three Tishrei tractates — Rosh Hashanah, Yoma, and Succah, with an introduction by Rav Eliyahu Chaim Dordek, publisher of Mishnah Sdurah, explaining that the goal is to give readers a taste of Eyal’s unique style and to inspire them to follow in his footsteps by deepening their own learning of Mishnayos.

The second perek of Rosh Hashanah describes the details of Kiddush Hachodesh, the sanctification of the new moon that once determined the Jewish calendar. Witnesses would come to the Sanhedrin in Yerushalayim to testify that they had seen the new moon. If their testimony was accepted, the news was spread by torches lit from mountaintop to mountaintop, beginning on Har Hazeisim and reaching as far as Bavel.

Eyal Meir Berkowitz brought that ancient system to life with a simple sketch. In just a few lines, he drew a small map of Eretz Yisrael — the land he loved and died for. In his sketch, a few dots of ink mark the mountains aflame with torches. The final line in the Mishnah describes the light moving from place to place — in Eyal’s illustration, from dot to dot — until one could see all the Diaspora lit up like a flaming torch.

Eyal Meir was killed right before Chanukah, but the light he kindled did not go out with him. The small pages of his pocket Mishnayos — with his succinct notes and gentle illustrations — are like the light of torches shining from mountaintop to mountaintop, illuminating our world.

Eyal left behind a legacy of joyful, attentive learning. Together with the other sifrei kodesh born of this war, his pages testify that even in a time of swords, words of Torah continue to be written; that even in tunnels and on battlefields, ancient words are still being brought to light.

And perhaps that is the truest Chanukah miracle of all — while the darkness exists, the light of Torah quietly and steadfastly keeps chasing it away.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1091)