We know how we entered this event, but we had no idea how we’d come out of it. Things pop up when we return home. You open the refrigerator and smell the refrigerator of the bodies; you see your son lying down and remember the sights from ‘work.’”
Aviel (name changed), a reservist in the IDF Rabbinate, is the source of this chilling statement. On Oct. 7 he was rushed to the Valley of Death, otherwise known as Shura Base. Fallen soldiers are prepared for burial by the IDF Rabbinate, and Oct. 7 thrust them into circumstances that no training could adequately prepare them for.
The military rabbinate will release a victim for burial only if the identification is 100% verified. Needless to say, Hamas’ barbarism — burnt victims, mutilated victims and sexually abused victims — presented devastating and unique challenges. The complexity of these cases meant the identification unit was working overtime for months on end.
The world knows by now — or ought to know by now — the unspeakable cruelty suffered by Hamas’ victims on Oct. 7. As a rabbi and a psychologist, I wondered about the mental well-being of those who came face-to-face with those horrors for months on end. How were they affected?
How are they holding up two years later?
As we approach the second anniversary of Hamas’ brutal massacre, here is a lens into the sacred work of the IDF Rabbinate’s Identification and Burial Unit.
The hour is late on a gloomy January evening, early in 2024. In view of the area where truckloads of murdered victims were unloaded one after another, IDF Rabbinate reservists who have seen everything — really, everything — sit together. Facing them is the commander of the IDF Rabbinate’s resilience unit, Major (res.) Yehuda Sabo. For months, Sabo and his team — clinical social workers by training — accompanied, hugged and listened to the soldiers engaged in this holy work. Now, as the identification of the Oct. 7 casualties was nearing completion, Sabo gathered the rabbinate’s identification team for a processing session.
Each identification unit member had a horrifying moment of truth, a moment when reality taught them that even the devil is capable of outdoing itself. Remember, we’re talking about professionals with significant experience: military rabbinate identification personnel, police investigators responsible for identifying civilian victims, and pathologists.
Zohar (name changed) shares the moment he broke down. “It was where the initial identification of the deceased is conducted,” he offers, his voice quivering. “One badly charred body turned out to be two victims — a mother and a baby bound together in a deep embrace. I couldn’t stay there for another minute.”
“What did you do?” Sabo inquires softly.
“I ran outside and started crying. And I’m a person who usually doesn’t cry,” qualifies Zohar. “But this I couldn’t bear. When I got home that night, I woke up my wife and children and hugged them. That’s what gives me strength.”
Reservists of the IDF Rabbinate have been bound together on a silent battlefield, one without fire, but with death. A lot of death.
One of the guiding principles, explains Sabo, is that any reaction to an abnormal event is normal.
“One of the reservists went home for the first time and went to the supermarket. His wife asked him to buy chicken — and that immediately brought up a flashback of things he had seen. A different woman told me that after seeing certain ghastly sights, she couldn’t eat rice. These are completely normal reactions.
“What’s vital is that both of them decided to face these anxieties head-on. The soldier who debated whether to put the chicken back in the fridge, and said to himself, ‘If I don’t take control now, it will accompany me for the rest of my life.’ And the female reservist who didn’t eat rice went back to eating it the next day, even though it was hard for her.”
Some soldiers couldn’t handle this excruciating mission and asked for a transfer. They, too, were hugged. Their commanding officer assured them that it’s eminently human and doesn’t indicate weakness. After a closing conversation with Sabo, they were transferred to other units.
One question Sabo asked each participant during the session is what helps them overcome the sights, smells and horrors.
For some, it’s physical touch.
“Before I entered Shura, I wanted a hug because I didn’t know how I’d handle it,” says Kobi (name changed). My brother drove me here, we hugged outside and I went in. But it wasn’t enough. I approached Rabbi Itai (Lt. Col. Rabbi Itai Bar Nitzan, head of the identification dept.) and said to him: ‘Give me a hug.’ Even though I didn’t know him yet. We hugged, and then I went inside.”
For others, it’s crying.
“Since I’ve been here, I’ve cried my heart out four or five times,” says Joshua (name changed). “That’s how I took care of myself. People outside can’t really understand us . . . it’s like an experience of brothers in arms. A comrade who was with you under fire, a stranger won’t understand that. And you don’t really need them to understand. You just need someone to vent to. And that includes jokes bordering on bad taste . . . ”
“Bordering on bad smell,” someone deadpans, referencing the stench that accompanies them while handling the corpses.
Sabo points out that dark humor is also part of coping. “Everyone works with utmost respect for the sanctity of the deceased. After a shift or between shifts, though, dark humor functions as a defense mechanism of sorts; it’s definitely an important tool.”
For all the support and listening characteristic of mental health professionals, sometimes the commanders needed to wield their authority, surprisingly enough. “At first, people wouldn’t even agree to take a 10-minute break,” says Sabo. “They didn’t want to eat. They said, ‘If I take a 10-minute break, that’s another 10 minutes a family will wait for identification.’ We had to force people to rest.”
It’s important to note that Sabo and fellow members of the resilience unit were themselves exposed to all the horrors of the Shura facility.
“We try very hard to be with them during the shifts. We wear orange vests to signal our presence, so that if someone encounters difficulty, they know where to turn in the moment. Sometimes these are passing conversations, but other times a two-minute interaction during the shift morphs into an hour long talk after the shift ends.”
So who takes care of the caretaker?” I wonder.
“Our team supports each other deeply,” Sabo reassures me. “We meet once a week. Each of us has our own resilience resources, be it home, family or good friends. I’ve cried on multiple occasions.
“Crying is not falling apart,” Sabo is quick to clarify. “It’s processing. Grounding. An electrical current that needs to be discharged, leaving a sense of serenity in its wake. It’s a rinsing of the soul.”
Sabo’s presence was just one component of the seriousness with which mental health was treated. National health providers reached out individually to each member of the identification unit, to see if they needed help coping or needed focused interventions.
The IDF later set up a treatment team of veteran psychologists which did interventions for the soldiers on a daily basis.
All these efforts in the field were intended to minimize the likelihood that the identification teams would develop PTSD. Concurrently, though, plans were made to provide extra support to those who needed it. Those who developed PTSD or experienced functional impairment upon returning home are offered trauma-focused therapies such as EMDR.
Tragically, the shock of directly encountering indescribable evil claimed its own lives: a bus driver who evacuated the survivors and a volunteer who worked in the field took their lives after their hearts were broken with grief. An IDF casualties officer suffered a heart attack.
When all is said and done, more than anything else, it is a sense of mission that keeps these righteous people going in the face of such spine-chilling work.
“If someone said to me — ‘I’ll give you a million dollars for an hour of work here’ — I’m not selling it to him,” says Kobi. “The Alm-ghty gave me a unique privilege: to dignify the holy people who were killed protecting the Jewish people.”
Another element of this sense of mission is a responsibility to the families of those murdered.
“For a person who handled the identification of a casualty to then see his or her picture and read about the funeral in the media, it gives meaning to their efforts,” says Rabbi Major Arik Horowitz, one of the commanders of the military casualty unit.
“I tell them to think about two things: the murdered individual and their family. The victim needs to be buried, and their family needs closure.”
The holiness of the mission is summed up poignantly by Sabo: “A reservist told me that this work is a corrective experience for the Holocaust. Perplexed, I asked how, and he replied: ‘In the Holocaust they turned people into numbers. We turn numbers into people.’”
© IJN 2025