Inner and Outer Strength

Even though her words are alarming, Jen exudes positivity, warmth, and a calming inner strength. She says that her son Binyamin had that quality, too.

“He had physical strength. He was a paratrooper. But Binyamin’s physical strength was nothing compared to his inner strength. He really personified the idea of ‘Eizehu gibor? Hakovesh et yitzro — Who is strong? He who conquers his urges.’

“He had a lot of energy, and when he was a younger teen, he couldn’t sit still in school and was always on the go, looking for action, for, as they say in Hebrew, ‘chavayot.’ He had a lot of them.

“At age sixteen, when Covid shut everything down, he couldn’t stay locked in the house, so he somehow got in touch with some guys volunteering on a farm in the Binyamin region. From then on, he spent all his vacations and army breaks working there, shepherding cows, doing guard duty, and building infrastructure. He even built his own shack to live in while he was there.”

Jen laughs. “When I describe a farm to people, they picture rolling green hills, a white picket fence, a red-roofed barn. These farms in the Yehudah, Shomron, and Binyamin regions are literally caravans and animal pens plunked onto a rocky mountainside, sometimes without running water or electricity. They have to build everything from scratch.

“But Binyamin wasn’t afraid of working hard and doing that. He wasn’t afraid of anything. He wasn’t afraid when he went out to the Shomron, even though those outposts are potentially dangerous. They’re the first line of defense between Arab villages and Jewish yishuvim. They’re remote and at risk of attack from terrorists and armed thieves who steal the livestock. Binyamin lived with the belief that taking care of the land and its people is more important and that miracles can and will happen. And from the stories he told us, it’s clear he lived counting on them.

“An agricultural outpost called Chavat Meir la’Aretz in the Binyamin region was recently established in Binyamin’s memory,” Jen says, “and a family with four young children have moved there.”

She waves toward the stone-paved street below the adjacent mirpesset. “Binyamin was a doer. I remember one time, he and I drove around the neighborhood delivering Tomchei Shabbos packages. I drove, and he got out at each house and brought the boxes to the front door. At one point, Binyamin turned to me and said, ‘Mom, why don’t you go home and take care of making Shabbos, and I’ll do the deliveries on my own?’

“ ‘Isn’t it easier if I do it with you?’ I said. But no, he didn’t care that it would be more of a hassle to do it by himself. He wanted me to be able to maximize my time.”

Jen points to a framed picture of Binyamin on the coffee table, a handsome brown-eyed, blond-haired young man with the sweetest smile and a red paratrooper’s beret on his head. “He had a huge love for Torah, Judaism, for Eretz Yisrael, for the mitzvah of yishuv ha’Aretz. He believed in kedushat ha’Aretz and kedushat ha’am. He was planning on growing long peyot, told me he’d hide them under his helmet until they grew in properly. That was the spiritual direction he was taking.

“He was so makpid about shmirat einayim that he got rid of his smartphone at the age of sixteen. This is very unusual for a boy in his circles. He was also very conscious about lashon hara, about not saying negative things about other people. If a conversation veered toward talking about other people, he changed the topic or left the room.

“Binyamin was also so nonmaterialistic. He didn’t have a need to buy things. When he got his stipend from the army, he’d take some of the cash in his pocket and offered the rest to us. He used his money to build on the farm, and ultimately to plant a vineyard, which he did Erev Succot of the war.”

A Shabbos Morning Visit

The Airleys, Mancunian Robert and Florida-born Jen, along with six-year-old Sara, four-year-old Binyamin, and two-year-old Yehudah, made aliyah from New York to Ramat Beit Shemesh in 2006. Their next three children were born in Israel.

After a tumultuous high school experience, in which Binyamin moved from school to school until he found his place in Yeshivat Tzvia in Eilat, he joined a Hesder yeshivah in Tzfat.

“We got through those years by joining Rav Dov Brezak’s parenting classes,” says Jen. “We realized when raising Binyamin that he didn’t have to change, rather we as parents needed to do the work. Rav Brezak taught us how to be better parents and our parenting today is entirely different from how we parented when our children were young. We stopped using punishment as an educational tool and started talking and explaining, using positive reinforcement to build our children. The whole atmosphere in our home changed for the better.”

Hesder programs are usually up to two years learning, a year-and-a-half army service, and then another year learning. When the war broke out on Simchas Torah, Binyamin was doing the army part, and his unit was sent down south, to kibbutz Nir Am, to clear the area of Hamas terrorists. After a few days, they were sent for intensive training in preparation for combat in Gaza. Two-and-a-half weeks after going into Gaza, on the Shabbos morning of 5 Kislev, November 18, 2023, Binyamin and two other soldiers from another unit, Shachar Friedman and Jamal Abbas, were shot and killed while clearing a house of terrorists.

“I was in shul, and I started to feel uncomfortable and antsy, so I decided to go home to cry and say Tehillim,” recalls Jen. “When my husband came home, we had the Shabbos seudah as usual, and I went for a nap afterward. My husband woke me in the middle of my nap. When I saw his face, I realized something was very wrong. ‘It’s one of the kids, right?’ I asked him.

“ ‘Just come downstairs quickly,’ he said. I thought someone had gotten hurt and listened for the sound of ambulance sirens, but heard none. When I opened my door, I saw soldiers standing there by the stairs, and realized that something had happened — not to one of the kids at home, but to Binyamin.”

Because of his magnetic personality and the numerous schools he attended, Binyamin knew many people from all walks of life, from yeshivah bochurim to mitnachalim to chilonim. The line to get into the Airleys’ shivah snaked down their normally quiet and secluded cul-de-sac. Binyamin was also killed just six weeks after October 7, at a time when Jews from all over the world were coming on solidarity missions. As the Airleys are English speakers, many of those missions stopped by their shivah house to be menachem avel.

In the months that followed, some of these organizations asked Jen to come and speak, which eventually led to invitations to go on speaking tours across Israel, the US, Canada, South Africa, and England, something she does now regularly.

“I was always interested in giving shiurim, and at one point considered doing a public speaking course,” explains Jen. “I never got around to doing it, but I did give a parshah shiur to teens in my house during the week.

“Even though I’m a personal trainer and fitness instructor, I’ve I always loved Torah, always been excited by Torah. Now, when we’ve gone through tragedy, if there’s anything that’s held me up, it’s been Torah. Torah has been my lifeline. When I want to feel that Hashem is talking to me, I read His Torah, and I feel He’s with me. And that gives me great comfort. Now, when I speak, I share Torah, I share our love for the land and for Am Yisrael, share with people how I see Hashem holding us through our tragedy, and that while challenging, the most unbelievable and glorious times are unfolding in front of our eyes.

A House of Healing

Jen also uses these speaking tours as an opportunity to raise funds for and awareness about Beit Binyamin, a retreat center for anyone affected by the war, which she and her husband founded in Binyamin’s memory.

“About three-and-a-half years ago, my husband and I decided to go up north for the day. I was searching for some new fun activities and hikes when I came across a post for this quaint house in the Old City of Tzfat for sale. I showed the ad to my husband and he said, ‘Let’s take a look at it when we’re up there.’

“We went to see it and when we did, we just knew we had to buy it. We fell in love with the old stone walls and arched doorways with a gorgeous view of Har Meron. There was a special energy we both felt. By the time we left Tzfat, the owner had already accepted our offer.

“On the drive home, we looked at each other and thought, ‘What have we done? What were we thinking?’ We didn’t have the kind of money needed to buy another house. And the place was so old and rundown, it needed to be gutted and renovated to be livable. Our only option was to borrow money to turn it into a guesthouse so we could cover the cost of buying it. Which we did. It was supposed to be ready in August of 2023, but of course, by October 2023 we were still only halfway through construction.

“Not long after Binyamin was killed, I was standing in the kitchen with my husband on Shabbos morning. I suddenly said, ‘I want to do something in Binyamin’s memory. I want to start a yeshivah in Tel Aviv for nonreligious soldiers so they understand what they’ve been experiencing while at war — the charged feeling that’s been driving them as a Yid, the faith they’d been inhaling on the battlefield, the laws and meaning of the tzitzit and tefillin so many of them began donning since October 7.

“Rob said, ‘I don’t think the soldiers coming out of Gaza will have koach to attend yeshivah. They first need to recover and heal.’ ”

“ ‘Perfect,’ I said. ‘We’ll start offering retreats for them. We’ll give them therapy, good food, spa treatments in Tel Aviv.’

“Tel Aviv is a convenient and central location for secular Israelis,” Jen explains. “But then I thought, a healing retreat needs to take place up north, where it’s green and beautiful, secluded, not in the city. I said that to Rob and he whispered, ‘Maybe that’s why we were meant to have the house in Tzfat. We can use that as a retreat center.’ And bingo, we just knew that this was what we were supposed to be doing.

“Beit Binyamin’s motto is ‘healing the nation one retreat at a time.’ We provide free vacations for people affected by the war — soldiers, miluim families, displaced families, bereaved families, ZAKA and MDA members as well as Nova survivors. We have four units, eight rooms with 22 beds altogether, and offer different activities like spa treatments, therapies, art classes. It can be four different families at a time, or when we have a larger group, we combine the units. Sometimes, when the groups are larger, we rent other local apartments for sleeping and then everyone eats together in the main Beit Binyamin house. We hired a director and a manager to run it, and we’re full, every week and Shabbos. There’s even a waiting list.

“We also try to use the services of local businesses in Tzfat to help their economy, because the tourism industry took a massive beating during the war. Across the road from the house is a winery, and we’ve done wine tastings there for the guests.”

Jen breaks into a smile. “We went up to Tzfat for Succot, and there was a group of young adults, secular, who had come to the winery, but it was closed. We invited them into our succah, they bentshed lulav and etrog with us for the first time in their life, and drank wine with us. It was such Hashgachah pratit, because the winery is never closed. They were what we call ‘shivilistim,’ people who go on hikes along every trail in the country, and they promised they’d get in touch when they came to the Beit Shemesh region.

“Just this morning I went on a hike with them in the Beit Guvrin area, where there are ruins from the time of the Second Beit Hamikdash. We walked and talked about life, about Torah. The view was so beautiful. You can see all the way to Chevron there.”

Jen pulls out her phone to show the photo she took of an ancient stone wall with a small square opening like a window in the middle, dark green hills visible through the opening. She points to them on the screen. “That’s Chevron over there.”

“Hashem must love Beit Binyamin,” Jen says thoughtfully. “He keeps making amazing things happen with it. We’re not usually involved with the day-to-day running of it, but we go up occasionally during the week or to spend Shabbos with particular retreats and stay low-key. Most people don’t realize it’s in memory of our son, they just think we’re another bereaved family visiting.

“One time, there were two separate miluim families there, and one of them recognized us from a family picture. ‘You’re the Airleys. You’re Binyamin’s parents,’ he told us. Then he said, ‘I was there. I’m a rabbi in the army and I was at Machaneh Shura when Binyamin’s body was brought there. I dealt with his body.’ That was a very special moment, a kind of closing of a circle for him and for us.”

Again, Jen pulls out her phone and plays a voice note from the director, telling her of an amazing incident they’d had that past Shabbos. A bereaved family had come for the weekend, after discovering Beit Binyamin when they googled “vacations for bereaved families.”

They were so moved that the Airleys, bereaved like them, had been able to get back on their feet after their loss and open up a retreat center. They said that since their child had been killed, they had trouble getting up every day, had hardly left the house, felt they couldn’t function. But now they felt that their “shivah” was finally over, and that if another family in their situation could getup in the morning and give, they could, too.

“Because truly, giving is the greatest gift of healing,” says Jen.

Jen Airley can be contacted through Mishpacha

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 971)