Fifteen months after the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel’s South, Dubi Weissenstern, CEO of ZAKA, the volunteer search and rescue organization, still finds it hard to escape the searing memories of that difficult period. In the course of a recent Zoom interview with this writer, Weissenstern was frequently brought to tears as he recounted what he witnessed during the days and weeks following that unspeakable day.
The awful sights and sounds that he encountered cannot be erased. However, if there is anything that can provide a balm for his soul, he said, it is singing. “Singing heals our souls,” he declared. It is for that reason that our interview also included Avraham Tal, the singer, songwriter, and producer, who was the lead singer and songwriter in the band Shotei Hanevuah until the group broke up in 2007.
At first glance, there would seem to be little in common between Weissenstern, a haredi Jew, and Tal, the Israeli rock star. But from the moment they met, said Weissenstern, they felt an instant connection. Since then, Tal has devoted much of his time and energy to performing for ZAKA volunteers, easing their pain and providing them with inspiration and hope.
Weissenstern recalled his journey to Israel’s South on Saturday evening, Oct. 7. “An hour and a half after the chag ended (that day was both Shabbat and Simchat Torah), I was in Sderot, and we began to fill the wagons with the bodies of those who were murdered.”
He contrasted the mass tragedy that he encountered in the South with the events in Meron in April 2021, when 45 people were crushed to death on Lag Ba’omer. Then, ZAKA volunteers on the scene were able to arrange the dead neatly and respectfully in rows.
In Sderot and other locations in the South, due to the emergency conditions and the large number of casualties, the ZAKA volunteers did not have that luxury. On that fateful evening in Sderot, said Weissenstern, the bodies of those who had been murdered there were arranged in the town square near the southern exit of the city.
Amid the constant shelling and red alerts, Weissenstern realized that battles with terrorists were ongoing nearby. He and the ZAKA team loaded the dead bodies inside the wagon carefully, as is their practice. He then asked a police officer nearby if they could take the bodies that they had loaded and go on their way.
The officer replied that if the ZAKA volunteers were to leave some of the bodies behind, they would then have to divert several police officers from the battle with the terrorists to guard the bodies that remained. Weissenstern ordered the truck to stop and turn around.
“From that point on,” he recalled, “I said, ‘Any dead body that you see should be loaded onto the truck, even if there will be hundreds piled in the truck.’ And that is what we did.” Weissenstern and the ZAKA volunteers filled the wagon with as many bodies as possible.
The following evening, Weissenstern visited the forensic center at the Shura military base near Ramle. “I remember the terrible sight when they opened the back doors of the truck holding the bodies of those who had been murdered,” he said, his voice breaking. “It was the most difficult thing I have ever seen in my life, and it evoked the pictures from the Holocaust when bodies were loaded onto horse-drawn wagons. Seeing a truck filled with 50 or 70 bodies was unreal,” he said.
‘We were in hell... but we were in Israel’
Weissenstern and other ZAKA volunteers then worked for hours on Route 232, the road that connects the Gaza border kibbutzim, gathering the bodies of those who were murdered by Hamas terrorists on that road. Later that evening, the ZAKA dispatcher requested that all ZAKA volunteers in the South go to Re’im, where the music festival massacre had taken place.
The dispatcher also informed them that Re’im was where the most terrible deaths had occurred. Initially, Weissenstern found the description given by the dispatcher to be somewhat difficult to comprehend. They had seen death and destruction throughout the South. How could the deaths at Re’im be worse than what they had already seen?
“I remember the cries and screams I heard on the walkie-talkie when we arrived. Anyone who had experienced their own version of hell that night realized that what had occurred in Re’im was even worse,” he said. Weissenstern describes how, for the volunteers in Re’im, the place had become a foreign land. “We were in hell.
We urged the drivers of each wagon that was carrying bodies, ‘Go and return to Israel!’ But we were in Israel.” On that night, he recalled, sirens were sounding, along with shooting from terrorists. “It was a war zone. We had no helmets or flak jackets, but we fought for each body and victim.”
Several days later, ZAKA volunteers entered the kibbutzim that had been devastated, beginning with Kibbutz Be’eri. ZAKA worked in the kibbutzim for months afterward, working around the clock to locate victims and clean the area. Recently, at a seminar intended to boost the resilience of ZAKA volunteers who had been there, a volunteer whose wife had given birth to a girl while he was in Be’eri told Weissenstern that he did not have the same feelings of love for his newborn daughter as he had for his two sons.
“I asked him why that was so,” said Weissenstern. The volunteer replied that when he was in Be’eri, he had climbed through the window of a home and found an entire family that had been murdered by Hamas terrorists. The first thing he saw in the room was the crib of a baby girl who had been murdered.
The association that he made between the birth of his daughter and the murdered infant in Be’ri had affected his relationship with his newborn child. At the end of the resilience session, Weissenstern said, the volunteer reported that this was the first time that he had been able to speak of what he had seen there. “What we did during that time was a great sanctification of the name of God [kiddush Hashem],” said Weissenstern.
“We had a tremendous responsibility on our shoulders.” He recalled that a Holocaust survivor contacted him during the first weeks of the war. “He said to me, ‘During the Holocaust, we had no hope, but what you did has given us hope.’ At that point, I began to understand the significance of what we did,” he stated with great emotion.
Weissenstern compared the emotional toll of the work of ZAKA volunteers with others who have been involved in dangerous situations. “A soldier’s job is to take control of an area and advance, but their ultimate goal is not to kill. They don’t always encounter death. The entire principle of ZAKA is to care for the dead – again and again.”
It is for this reason, he said, that ZAKA, in the wake of the events of the war, is working to establish a branch that will deal with the mental and emotional resilience of its volunteers. In addition, the organization has appointed a full-time mental health specialist to deal with the emotional and mental health of ZAKA workers.
Even in “normal” times, said Weissenstern, singing plays an essential role in the mental health of ZAKA volunteers. Shortly after the war began, Weissenstern and Tal met in Tal’s home and instantly connected. Tal expressed deep admiration for ZAKA’s volunteers and said, “I didn’t fight with them shoulder to shoulder in the field, but our hearts are close to each other’s.
“ZAKA goes to battle with its vehicles, and I go with my guitar,” he said. “My job is making music and songs. In Israel, one is not just a musician. Being a musician here is being connected to what is happening in the country. Musicians meet with those who have been wounded in battle, with families of evacuees, with families of hostages, and with hostages who have been freed.
“We are on the front lines in all the country deals with. Our job is to sing, make people happy, and connect people. It is not just entertainment. In English, we say ‘to play music.’ A nigun [Jewish spiritual tune] is much deeper than that.”
Tal, who was raised in Neveh Ativ in the Golan Heights, was permitted to enter Har Dov to sing and lift the spirits of the soldiers serving in the area. “Since Oct. 7, I have had a greater understanding of what music can do. It raises spirits to connect people to their feelings and open emotional blockages. Many times when I begin to sing, people start to cry,” he said.IN DECEMBER, Tal participated in the Jerusalem Post Summit Conference in Miami, together with Weissenstern. He recorded a video version of the song “Shema Yisrael,” which he composed in the first days of the war, with David Broza and Mika Ben-Shaul, together with ZAKA volunteers.
“Life is strong, and we must concentrate on the good things,” he said. “Who am I compared to what Dubi and the ZAKA volunteers experienced? I admire the people of ZAKA and support them as best as I can.” Weissenstern has ambitious plans to expand and increase the emotional resilience of ZAKA volunteers.
The organization has increased its annual budget for dealing with trauma from NIS 2 million to NIS 5m. It also provides resilience training to the families of ZAKA volunteers, as well as the volunteers themselves. He hopes to establish resilience centers throughout Israel for ZAKA volunteers where they can recharge and replenish their energies. “Resilience is the future of ZAKA,” he declared.
Perhaps the English translation of the lyrics of Tal’s “Shema Yisrael” expresses this idea best: “From the depths of this pain, we will shine. My soul is tied to your soul.” To join ZAKA’s crowdfunding campaigns to make a life-saving difference, visit give.zakaworld.org.
This article was written in cooperation with ZAKA.