One week after his tank overturns on the northern border, Rabbi Naaran Eshchar, a Rabbi at Yeshivat Shadmot Mehola, dies of his wounds.
Rabbi Na'aran Eshhar donated a kidney to a man he did not know only four months ago, and because of this, he should not have been recruited into the war reserves. But he insisted.
The community of Shadmot Mehola has suffered a heavy and painful blow since the beginning of the war: Major Yehuda Natan Cohen, company commander in Givati, was killed in Gaza; Rabbi Na’aran Eshhar, the reservist who died after sustaining severe injuries when his tank overturned on the northern border; Elhanan Klein, who grew up in the community and was killed in a shooting attack in Samaria on Thursday, and Shuval Ya'akov, from the nearby village of Mechola, who was murdered at the music festival in Re'im.
Last week, his wife Tsuf Eshhar asked to pray for her husband and said: "When I think about all the wonderful and amazing things that people are doing, which we feel in our heart since they heard about Na’aran's serious injury, I just want us to hold on to these thoughts. We can never make excuses about it. We just have to be spiritual like Na’aran. Over the past year, during the demonstrations [about the judicial reform], I was getting very upset, and Na’aran was very calm. He learned this from his rabbis," said his wife in tears.
Rabbi Eshhar was injured when his tank overturned, killing Sergeant Major (res.) Yinon Fleishman. Yinon was the son-in-law of the veteran educator and head of the Himmelfarb High School in Jerusalem, Rabbi Jeremy Stavisky.
His family paid tribute to him: "Yinon was an educated and intelligent person. He was smart, gentle, and gracious. He was working on a doctorate in history at the Hebrew University after receiving an honors scholarship for his master's thesis. He taught history at Hartman High School and, after one year, became the head of the department. Over the years, he taught boys and girls with dedication and love at the school in Tekoa. These were children who adored him, and they each felt a personal connection to him. He served in the IDF reserves from the first day of the war and was a man of peace and love for others."