Jewish Seminary In Israel: Gaza Border Reopens Following Deadly Hamas Terror Attack

A rabbinical seminary in southern Israel is open for business once again.

Prior to the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, the Max and Ruth Schwartz Hesder Yeshiva in Sderot was a home to roughly 300 college-age men, and a smaller female class, who were pursuing religious instruction. While there are many such schools throughout Israel, this school is a particular kind as it not only provides traditional Jewish learning, but time to fulfill one’s commitments to Israel’s military.

The yeshiva’s halls and dorms alike have been empty. It’s mirrored the emptiness of Sderot ever since the day of the attacks.

“I got to walk around a little bit more last week,” says Rabbi Ari Katz, the school’s public relations director, when speaking to the “FOX News Rundown – Evening Edition” podcast. “[It] used to be a city, which is a vibrant city that’s alive with 35 to 36,000 people.”

WASH BLOOD AWAY WITH BLOOD’

People and palm trees outside of Max and Ruth Schwartz Hesder Yeshiva
Max and Ruth Schwartz Hesder Yeshiva
The city is still quite vacant. A few grocery stores have reopened. But the bustle is missing, except for now the yeshiva students who are coming back to their studies. For the past two months, another school in another town hosted them. But now they’re returning, and the yeshiva hopes it might encourage the city’s other residents to return.

“Maybe that when they see that the yeshiva’s here, over 300 boys are here back now in the middle of the city, maybe that will have some type of ripple effect.”

Sderot’s western limits are just a couple of thousand feet from the northeast corner of the Gaza Strip. Beyond that border, it’s just a few miles to the now-infamous Jablalia where the IDF had been engaged in some of the bloodiest fighting of the now months-long war. While not as hard-struck as the kibbutz farms and the Nova music festival, Hamas terrorists were roaming Sderot’s boulevards looking for targets.

“One basic difference between the war now, and all the previous rounds of fighting the last 22 years or so, is that the city of Sderot, in a way, got used to living under rocket fire,” says Katz. “It’s very sad to say this, but they got used to the rocket fire. And what changed on Oct. 7 was the fact that in addition to the rocket fire, you had tens of terrorists that came into the city.”

That day was a Saturday, the Jewish sabbath, or Shabbat. It’s a weekly day for prayer and unwinding. It also coincided with another Jewish holy day called Simchat Torah, in which the cyclical reading of the Torah is concluded and restarted. The holy day brought a number of alumni to the campus that weekend – former students on active duty with the IDF, who happened to bring their weapons. Little did they know they would need them. Alumni and current students walked out from the safety of the yeshiva’s walls to confront enemies.

“They just took their guns if they had a gun,” marvels Katz. “If they didn’t even have guns, they just went down. They knew there was trouble. They went down.”

Katz can’t imagine how differently that day might have ended for them had the soldiers and students not been ready.