I walked into the Dan Panorama Hotel in Tel Aviv, not knowing what to expect, only that I was about to meet 18 young people who had all lost a twin in the current war and, in two cases, a triplet.
OneFamily is an Israeli organization founded by Marc and Chantal Belzberg during the 2001 Intifada to provide relief and comfort to families who had been devastated by terror or war, through programs, trips, workshops, and psychology sessions. It has long had special events for siblings.
The small hall filled with women and men, ranging in age from 21 to 38 (and one 40-year-old, I’ll call “Ilan,” whose twin fell in the Second Lebanon War), in jeans and backpacks, with kippot and without, women in slacks and skirts, one with a colorful head scarf and another in an auburn wig. In grief, there are no religious or political separations.
They came from settlements and cities, kibbutzim and development towns, from homes near the ocean and from the desert. The IDF is the great equalizer in Israel, and, sadly, so is bereavement. Anyone who is in mourning, seeking comfort, feels most comfortable with others who are sharing their experience.
I saw a lot of handshakes and hugs and backslapping.
And smiles.
How and when did the twins project begin?
THE ANSWER came from Merav Uziel, the dynamic 42-year-old who led the 25-hour retreat, which included sessions in self-awareness, nutrition, mindfulness, and – the evening’s sparkling gem – a cocktail workshop, accompanied by music and lots of laughter. With the exception of the talk on nutrition and the cocktail workshop, all of the sessions were led by Uziel, who has her own story of bereavement.
“I first came to OneFamily as a participant. My younger brother, a soldier in the Golani Brigade, fell in Jenin in September 2003 in an army operation against terrorists. He was 20 years old. I felt helpless, beside myself; I had just concluded my army service. It was a new world for me,” she said.
“OneFamily came to us quickly and invited my younger siblings, my parents, and myself to programs. I acquiesced to go on a three-day hike, and I cried. Then I cried when it ended. I felt that I didn’t need more friends. But it was the need to feel normal within this abnormality, because you are not alone. Eventually I became the coordinator of the 18-40 age group, and a workshop leader.”
A psychotherapist, Uziel has a BA in psychology and also trained in expressive therapies, trauma and bereavement therapy (CBT). She has studied under, and worked with, Prof. Mooli Lahad, a renowned Israeli psychologist and psychotrauma specialist.
I asked if she still thinks about her brother and misses him. “Every day and every hour,” she replied.
“The twins project grew organically,” the group coordinator said. “Before the war, there were three sets of twins, who came to the siblings program. Then, suddenly there were more and more... I called ‘Ilan,’ and he said, ‘Let’s start a WhatsApp group for twins.’”
Uziel and OneFamily, led by its co-founder and CEO Chantal Belzberg, realized that there was a unique connection between twins.
“We reached out through social media or when we got leads through the media,” the workshop leader said. “We arrived at 25 sets of twins who had lost their other half, either fighting in the war or through terror or at the Supernova music festival. Today, we have 38 sets of twins and four sets of triplets in our programs.”
THE FIRST people I met that day were a brother and sister, two-thirds of triplets, who also have two older brothers.
Ariel Malka is tall with lots of black curls, single, and came after spending half a year traveling around the world, including a month in Thailand. During the war, he had fought in the Shejaia area of Gaza. Shira Malka Elgrably is married, has two daughters, and lives in Lod. She has a degree in industrial engineering, and she works in Airport City for the Laline company.
Their triplet, Yehonatan (Yoni), was the first soldier to be killed in battle in Khan Yunis, on December 5, 2023. Two of his brothers were officers in paratrooper units, and he was a sergeant major in the Armored Corp. He had been wounded on Oct. 7, and his officers said he should not return to fight, but he insisted on going back.
I asked Shira what the triplets’ birth order was. “I’m the big sister,” she smiled. “And I was closest to Yoni.” They are the children of Ronit and Moshe Malka of Beersheba. In an interview with the Israeli website Ynet, their family revealed that Yoni loved nature, music, and song, and that he had a great love for the Land of Israel and for Torah.
Shira said he loved planting, landscaping, and working with animals. Ronit told Ynet, “We are people of faith, and we pray.” She described how, when they got the dreaded knock on the door, with three brothers fighting in the war, she asked, “Which one?” but fainted before hearing the answer.
“The connection to Yoni will never be filled by someone else,” his sister said. “He always wanted there to be shalom among everyone, and that everyone should be united… It’s also been a lesson in life for us, to learn how to strengthen the connection between all of the siblings… I feel it’s like a testament he left for us.”
Before the first session began, I met two young men, each of whom had a twin brother who fell in Gaza. It was the morning after the hostage-ceasefire deal had been announced. “How do you feel about it?” I asked. They both shrugged, and one of them said, “We already lost [someone], so…” His voice trailed off.
The other said, “After my brother was killed, they moved me to a non-combat job on the base.” He explained that, unlike in previous wars when parents who lost a child in battle had to sign that they agree for another child to be in a combat unit, the IDF had taken the decision out of the parents’ hands during the current war and removed the opportunity for them to sign. “It’s hard,” he said, “to train to be a combat soldier and then not do it.”
Another participant told me about the recent trip OneFamily had taken them on to the Secret Forest Wellness Retreat in Cyprus. “We learned how to cope and to enjoy ourselves, and that life goes on.”
One woman said, having lost her twin, “It’s as if I’m missing a rib.”
ZIV HALIVNI, who lives in Moshav Misgav Dov, has a camping company called Patina.
His twin brother, Yuval, was a captain in the elite Maglan commando reconnaissance unit. All three Halivni brothers were in elite combat units; when the sirens sounded on the morning of Oct. 7, they received WhatsApp messages telling them to report for duty.
Asaf, the younger brother (who is a twin with sister Michal), is a career officer and company commander in the Armored Corp who was off for the weekend and was called back to duty. Ziv is a reserves member of the Air Force Commando unit. Their mother, Nirit, told Maariv that every evening she waited to see each son send a heart to her via their family WhatsApp group.
On Monday evening, October 9, Nirit Halivni did not receive a heart from Yuval. Yuval was killed that morning while chasing a terrorist cell in Sderot. Ziv said at his funeral, “All my life I’ve been asked what it’s like to be a twin, and I say I don’t have a good answer because that’s all I know… My dear brother… I miss you and love you.”
CHAYA MUSHKA (Benveniste) Harel, eight months pregnant at the time of the Tel Aviv event, has more than one story of bereavement in her family. Born and raised in California to an Israeli mother and an American father, the family eventually became Torah-observant and close to Chabad. Her parents, who divorced, each returned to Israel with the children.
With a degree in medical management, Harel co-founded a company with her twin, Capt. Arnon Moshe Avraham Benveniste Vaspi. They eventually went their separate professional ways, and today she has a parlor in Tel Aviv where she removes tattoos, a service she says is greatly in demand since this war began.
Arnon, in an infantry unit, fell in battle in Gaza on November 20, 2023. Their grandmother, Sarah Vaspi, grieved once again. Her husband, Yoav, had fallen on the Golan Heights in the Yom Kippur War, fighting the Syrians. Her second husband’s son, Omri, fell in 1987 from a weapons accident at the base; Ori, the son of her twin brother, fell in 1988 in Lebanon in operational activity.
Sarah’s twin brother was killed in a traffic accident in Australia, and her son Arnon (for whom her grandson Arnon is named) fell in the First Lebanon War in 1982.
“There is life after it – and it’s possible to come out of the depths,” Sarah said in a Channel 13 interview. “To get up in the morning, and see flowers blooming, and the sun shining, and to take pleasure in what exists.” As I was completing the writing of this article, Sarah Vaspi passed away.
“The twins program gives me a place where I feel that I am understood even without words – that we all share a common ‘disaster,’” Harel said, “and it gives strength that we face it together and without judgment.”
I SPOKE with Inbal Dagan. She is part of a triplet constellation and bears an additional layer of pain. Her brother, Maj. Asaf Dagan, ended his life in October 2024, at the age of 38. “He suffered from serious PTSD following his discharge in 2020 and never received the proper therapy,” she said, in spite of their mother’s alarmed requests. (Dagan said that the army said he had to request the help, something that is difficult for PTSD sufferers to do.)
Asaf had been a navigator in the Air Force and continued to do extensive reserve duty, including serving in elite classified units. He ended his life when he was called up again, on his way to reserve duty at IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv.
The family, led by his sister, a lawyer by profession, fought to have him buried with full military honors in a military cemetery. The IDF claimed that it did not find documentation to prove that Asaf was on his way to reserve duty when he took his life, but the family brought proof that they believed showed that he was. In what Dagan calls “a major victory,” the army, in conjunction with the decision of the Supreme Court, gave him a full military funeral, but a burial in a civilian cemetery. It was attended by many senior Israel Air Force officers and government officials.
His bereaved sister said that the family “continues to ask for justice: that he be recognized as a fallen soldier.”
She noted, “I am grateful that OneFamily offers a place for bereavement, including for siblings. For me, it is a place where I feel I belong, and I receive support from others like me.”
Who am I? What is my dream?
In the opening session, Uziel had everyone walk around and stop to find someone else to share with them answers to questions like: Who am I? What is my dream? What helps me?
Later, they shared their answers to that last question: keeping to a routine, taking a walk outside, being in nature, work, the quiet of the ocean, being with other people, some (but not all) friends and family, though sometimes, they said, one needs to just be alone.
In one of the group sessions, Merav had the participants draw concentric circles, indicating whom they felt closer to, and who was farther away for them now. One woman said, “I have no expectations, so I am not disappointed. Some stayed away, and that’s okay. The ones who were not there for me, I feel they are not friends forever.”
Other comments were: “There may have been lots of people around me, but I felt alone, like no one really understands my difficulty.” “I feel I have to look after Abba and Ima [Father and Mother].” “I feel like my brother who was killed was the closest to me. I know what he would say, what he would do…”
A number of them said that the twins they had lost are in the circle closest to them.
“Nili” (not her real name) told me, “I knew my brother was going to be killed. I walked into his room that morning and saw his photo with his commander, and thought, ‘I am so proud of you,’ But what could I do? Go into Gaza and pull him out?”
Uziel told the group that “Sometimes we feel that someone who was close to us before is now farther away, and sometimes people who just came to visit to be polite became more meaningful… We try to protect our parents but because we don’t show feelings, rather than them being supportive, they become part of the farthest circle. One’s partner can grow closer or can become farther away.
“Sometimes it is difficult for us to ask for help from those who surround us.”
What helped them? “Twenty minutes of quiet, a hug, to go alone to drink coffee by the sea…”
Mindfulness
On Friday morning, Uziel led a session in mindfulness near the seashore. She said to the twins, “They and we owe it to ourselves to remember them, including at meaningful times, like when giving birth.” She explained the idea of grounding, and invited everyone to remove their shoes and lie down. “We are steadier when we are close to the ground.”
She taught the “butterfly exercise,” which is tapping the palms of one’s hands on the alternate upper arms, signaling to the right and left sides of the brain as a means of calming oneself down.
“One who cannot connect to the pain will not have the ability to feel joy,” the workshop leader said. “Tell yourself, ‘I deserve to remember, to love, to feel joy.’” She taught a breathing exercise: Four breaths in, hold two, and then six out.
Uziel spread out cards with pictures and sayings, and invited everyone to choose one that expressed how they would like to summarize how they feel after the last day.
Some of the responses: “Nili”: “It’s possible to see a bit of light as we are going through this together.” Ziv: “I feel now the freedom to feel…” Others: “Thank you for listening,” “Life forgives…” “To be significant in the world gives us resilience and joy.” “Ilan” chose a cactus, saying, “It reminds us that we are surviving, and maybe a hundred years from now we’ll be bigger, like a cactus grows…” The group burst out in laughter.
A young man, who most of the day before had seemed sad, now had a smile on his face.
Aluma, one of the OneFamily staff, chose a card with two birds.
Not far from where we sat, near the ocean waves, there were doves and ravens alighting, cuddling, seeking food perhaps among the picnickers.
We heard their chirping and cooing, and we watched as they took flight.