The Heroes of October 7th: Heroic Stories for children
By Hadassa Ben Ari, Illustrations by Tehila Bar-Hama
Yedioth Books
Tel Aviv, 2024
160 pages
Reviewed by Steve Lipman
Hadassa Ben Ari and her family were far away—about fifty miles—from the border of Gaza at her parents’ home in Jerusalem when Hamas terrorists swarmed into southern Israel on October 7, 2023, to commit unspeakable acts of murder, torture and kidnapping.
But the events of that Simchat Torah were not far from her mind.
She had gathered with her children in the family’s shelter; like any children, they wanted to know what had taken place in their country.
How would Ben Ari, a religious poet and editor on maternity leave, explain the hate-motivated pogrom to her seven children?
“If I don’t tell them what I know about the war, they will get their information from broken sources, from the Internet, from friends or from their imagination. How could I tell children the real story? How could I introduce them to the incredible heroes of our nation?” she asked herself.
Her answer: instead of focusing on the day’s bloodshed, she would tell her children about “acts of heroism and courage.” About the goodness that arose that day. About people who refused to be victims. About the selflessness that rose above the cruelty of Hamas. About the light that conquered the darkness. Her goal was to write “a story of heroism each day,” to tell “the Jewish story, the Israeli story.”
Soon after October 7, Ben Ari, who lives in the town of Pardes Hanna, began collecting stories of bravery and posting them online. As the collection grew, a team of volunteers translated the content into English.
The result is The Heroes of October 7th, written and edited in consultation with psychologists and trauma experts, omitting graphic details or gory background. While an estimated 170 books have emerged from the October 7 tragedy and its aftermath, Ben Ari’s is one of the few geared specifically to young readers, in both content and style.
The book’s goal is to “explain the horrors in a way that also protects our children, and to tell them about moments of grace and heroism from the war,” Ben Ari said in an interview with The Times of Israel.
Her writing “project” had a personal motivation, she explains in the book’s introduction: “to help my children connect to what was going on in the State of Israel.” Then she took her project national: “We were being warned from every possible source not to expose our children to the horror stories.”
What to tell? What not to tell? “What then would be ok to show them?”
Ben Ari decided to reach a balance—between the evil of the perpetrators, and the often-life-risking chesed of the people who fought back.
“The antisemitism which has reared its head in unexpected placers has served as a call to translate these heroic tales into other languages, to let Jewish children worldwide know that there is a tiny country where Jews can always stand proudly,” she writes.
The original Hebrew edition was aimed at children aged nine and up; child psychologists suggested that the English version be recommended for children aged eleven and over, and some passages were altered slightly, since “Americans are so sensitive with their children,” Ben-Ari said.
Yedioth Books, based in Tel Aviv, plans to publish another two volumes of the 200 stories it has received under Ben Ari’s direction. Profits from the book will be donated to “Brothers for Life” (Achim Le’Chaim), a non-profit organization that aids IDF soldiers injured while serving on active duty.
Each short chapter has a catchy title that captures the story’s essence: “My Brother the Hero.” “General Grandpa.” “I’ve Got a Little Girl at Home.” “Sagit Saves Kibbutz Erez.” “The 100-Year-Old Poet.”
The book’s goal is to “explain the horrors in a way that also protects our children, and to tell them about moments of grace and heroism from the war,” Ben Ari said in an interview with The Times of Israel. “I want people from all over the world to read these stories, use them in their schools and tell their grandchildren.”
“I want my children to have their own heroes, beyond Spider-Man and Captain America,” she writes in the introduction. “And I mean real people that overcame their personal needs in order to help others.” She emphasized “friendship, camaraderie, giving, love and the warm Israeli-ness which all came vibrantly to life during the war.”
Her heroes “had spent their lives working on their middot (their positive attributes), and had absorbed the education with which their parents had raised them,” she writes. “Heroes are not suddenly born out of nowhere, and I felt that this what I needed to tell my children.”
The book is honest—many of her heroes lost their lives while saving others’—and is meant to be read together with a grown-up; in the beginning are guidelines for parents who share the stories with their children. In the book’s illustrated pages, Ben Ari and other writers tell the stories of seventy-one men and women who earned the title with their quick thinking and instinctive actions.
Among the individuals profiled were civilians and soldiers, youngsters and Holocaust survivors, farmers and college students, religious and secular:
◊ Grandmother Rachel Edry, from Ofakim, who was taken hostage in her own home and kept the terrorists at bay for several hours by serving them food—notably, cookies. In the end, she was rescued.
◊ Fifteen-year-old Gali Ayalon, a computer whiz, who created a map that showed the army on WhatsApp the terrorists’ locations in Kibbutz Kfar Aza.
◊ Yehuda, a champion chess-player-turned-commander who used his skill at anticipating an opponent’s next move to take on terrorists at Kibbutz Nahal Oz.
◊ Aner Shapira, an aspiring rapper and IDF officer who defended a group of hiding partygoers at the Nova music festival by repeatedly throwing back the terrorists’ grenades.
◊ and Camille, a non-Jewish caregiver from the Philippines who faced down a group of terrorists to protect ninety-five-year-old Nitza.
The stories of people—including non-Jews such as a Bedouin, an Arab-Israeli, an emigrant from Eritrea, and a member of the army’s Canine unit—from various professions and parts of Israeli society, share a common trait: the willingness, and ability, to act, immediately and forcefully, without thought of the consequences to their own safety. The stories capture the heroes’ “strength, resilience, [sense of] national unity, and hope,” Ben Ari writes. “They teach the important value of helping others and rising above personal fears.”
Ping-Pong Shabbat: The true story of champion Estee Ackerman
By Ann Diament Koffsky, Art by Abigail Rajunov
Little Bee Books
New York, 2024
32 pages
Reviewed by Steve Lipman
This is an illustrated children’s book with very sophisticated themes, like conflicts, decision-making, dedication and self-sacrifice.
Ann Koffsky’s story tells about the early tween years of Estee Ackerman, who is now a college graduate and Navi teacher at a day school in suburban Long Island. Ackerman spent her pre-university year at a Jerusalem seminary. As a rising national star player in table tennis (serious competitors don’t call it ping-pong), she faced the dual challenges of participating in matches against fellow highly ranked players, and the choice of whether she would participate in crucial matches on Shabbat.
She always opted not to play on Shabbat—which earned her the reputation of “the Sandy Koufax of table tennis.”
Ackerman, who was raised in a Modern Orthodox family and had an extensive day school education, always picked observing Shabbat over competing (even if she could walk to events and technically not violate any halachot). Her choices negatively affected her national rankings and kept her out of important tournaments, though over the years she won several singles and doubles trophies.
“Estee Ackerman loved Ping-Pong more than anything else,” Koffsky writes in the introduction to her book. Estee was a natural. “She wanted to play anyone, anywhere, anytime! Except on Saturdays.”
On Shabbat, Estee would play informally with friends. As many Modern Orthodox families do.
But no tournaments.
Estee “loved and honored the Jewish tradition of the Sabbath,” Koffsky writes. “On Shabbat, Estee shared long meals with her family and friends. On Shabbat, Estee went to synagogue and connected with G-d. It was the day when she felt the most Jewish.”
Koffsky, a veteran author who lives in the Ackermans’ neighborhood, tells how young Estee was introduced to the sport in the basement of the family home by her father (he wanted his daughter and her older brother, Akiva, to get physical exercise and reduce their time on electronic devices).
The book shows Estee’s early potential in ping-pong—soon she was able to beat her ping-pong-proficient father and sibling.
“I think you’re ready to sign up for tournaments so you can win against people besides me and Akiva,” Estee’s father told her.
“Yes!” she cheered. She played and practiced all the time. But Shabbat was different. “For Estee, Shabbat wasn’t just an ordinary day like Tuesday or Wednesday. On Shabbat, Estee shared long meals with her family and friends. They’d laugh and tell stories.
“For Estee,” the book relates, “Shabbat was a day of calm, a break from the exciting pop, pop, ker-pops of the week.”
Weekdays meant more ping-pong. Koffsky tells how Estee trained; Estee gave up such activities as “shopping, hanging out with my friends” and began entering local competitions. “Estee won. A lot.” First, she checked tournament schedules in advance to ensure she would not have to play on Shabbat. “She became one of the best Ping-Pong players in the United States,” climbing in her age-group rankings. At one point, she was the third-ranked eleven-year-old female table tennis player in the country.
“As important as being a champion [is],” she said, “it’s more important that I represent the Jewish people.”
Her presence at out-of-town tournaments, in which she took part wearing a modest, loose-fitting T-shirt and long skirt, necessitated shlepping kosher food and often arranging for home hospitality with local Orthodox families. In time she became a known quantity and was asked to give speeches about her unique athletic success.
Though she set her sights on competing in the Olympics, she did not qualify in 2016 or 2020. She wasn’t in the 2024 Summer Games in Paris; the US qualifying tournament was held on Taanit Esther, and this Esther fasted, knowing she would not be at full strength for the day’s matches.
Now her sights are set on the 2025 Maccabiah Games in Israel.
Koffsky’s book focuses on one tournament, the US National Table Tennis Championships tournament that Estee entered at eleven years old, and on her play-or-pray decision.
In early rounds, she beat competitors of various ages and genders. She moved on. Until the tournament officials informed her that her next match would take place on Friday after sunset.
The book describes Estee’s reaction: “It’s on Shabbat! Could you please move the game?” she asked the officials. “I don’t play on Shabbat.”
The officials’ answer was “NO.”
“They never moved games,” Koffsky writes. “Not even for Shabbat.”
Estee asked her parents what to do, “It’s up to you,” they answered.
“Estee knew gold medal chances didn’t come every day . . . Estee thought hard . . . playing in a tournament on even one Shabbat felt like giving up a piece of herself.
“Estee made up her mind.” Shabbat won this match.
She forfeited the match, eliminating herself from the competition and from contention for winning the title.
“I had to choose my religion or the love of the sport,” she said then. Playing on Shabbat would not be “in the spirit” of the day. “This is not what Hashem would want me to do.
“As important as being a champion [is],” she said, “it’s more important that I represent the Jewish people.”
She spent Shabbat, Koffsky writes, “at the Shabbat table with her family.
“She knew she had made the choice that was right for her.”
Her pray-not-play decision earned her much favorable publicity. “People everywhere read the articles,” Koffsky writes. “A lot of them weren’t Jewish. But many of them were excited to hear about a young girl who had chosen her values over the gold medal.”
But that was not the end.
“The next year, Estee went back to the US Nationals,” Koffsky’s book reports. “After winning game after game, she again made the finals.
“This time, it was scheduled on a Monday. And this time, she won the GOLD MEDAL!”
Steve Lipman is a frequent contributor to Jewish Action.