The story of Hayim Yeshurun Katsman, who left an immense void
In Kibbutz Holit, between the fields of the western Negev and his shelves packed with books, Hayim Yeshurun Katsman lived the full complexity of Israeli life. He studied and loved philosophy. He was a combat medic, a musician, a laborer in the kibbutz garage and a man who pursued justice with the same stubbornness with which he pursued knowledge.
On Oct. 7, 2023, at just 32, Hayim was killed in his home in Kibbutz Holit while physically shielding his neighbor, leaving behind an enormous void in which philosophical questions and an uncompromising yearning for peace still echo.
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The boy from Petah Tikva who was not afraid to challenge
Hayim was born and raised in Petah Tikva, in the heart of a religious Zionist environment. His mother, Hannah Katsman, describes a handsome, funny and charismatic boy who showed exceptional assertiveness from an early age. “He loved to argue,” she recalls with a pained smile.
One incident from his elementary school years illustrates the moral backbone that was already beginning to take shape. After a teacher deducted a point from one of his tests, which he believed was unjustified, 8-year-old Hayim refused to return to class. He did not make a scene. He simply stood outside a friend’s house and waited until the time indicated that the school day was over. For him, truth and justice were more important than obedience to the system.
His close friend Daniel Franco describes him as a smart child and a deeply loyal friend.
Katsman’s ‘order’: fixing what was crooked
Hanoch Gidron, known as Gidi, another friend, recalls a hitchhiking trip to the Sea of Galilee when they were 13. At a crowded and aggressive hitchhiking stop, as everyone tried to push forward to secure a ride, Hayim stopped them all. “Let’s put some order here,” he said, arranging a physical line, even though it placed him and his friend at the back. “That was part of who he was,” Gidi says. “To see something veering sideways, something crooked, and help straighten it out when human beings were involved.”
That need to understand the world in depth led Hayim to academia while he was still in high school, when he began studying for a bachelor’s degree in philosophy at the Open University. His mother says that even as a child he asked philosophical questions about God and the meaning of life. His friends say doubts and challenges to convention were second nature to him. He was not looking for immediate utility in his thoughts, but for pure truth.
A combat medic and future doctor
Despite his intellectual leanings, Hayim did not forgo meaningful military service. He enlisted as a combat medic and later attended a squad commanders’ course. His friends remember him as a highly motivated soldier in the best sense of the term, a person who took his missions with profound seriousness. Even when he returned home for short weekends, he insisted on going out for training runs.
At the same time, his free spirit did not disappear. He even managed to persuade the army to release him slightly early so he would not miss the start of the university semester.
His connection to Kibbutz Holit began immediately after his discharge. Together with a group of friends from Petah Tikva, most of them formerly religious like him, he came to Holit to establish a young communal group. Hayim did not shy away from hard work. He worked in the kibbutz garage, covered in grease, while continuing his academic studies.
Between academia and the kibbutz pub
Maor Mintz, who shared a house with him in Holit, recalls Hayim’s individualism. “He said, ‘I’d be happy to live here, but your communal life and nonsense, I’m not into that,’” Mintz remembers.
Despite those declarations, Hayim became one of the pillars of the community. He opened a pub on the kibbutz on Friday nights, became the local DJ and invested his time in communal life.
His academic peak came when he enrolled in a doctoral program at the University of Washington in Seattle. He researched religious Zionism and Israeli politics, but despite his success abroad and the opportunities that opened before him in America, his heart remained in Holit. He returned to the kibbutz, to the small safe room and the books, to the fields and the people. “He was a person who, at 32, knew how to live according to his principles,” his mother says.
Black Saturday: the final words
On the morning of Oct. 7, Hayim was at his home in Holit. He was a member of the community’s security squad, but in those fateful moments he found himself in an impossible situation. In a final WhatsApp exchange with a friend, he wrote: “There are terrorists in the kibbutz and they are trying to enter homes ... people are barricading themselves.”
Mintz called him at 8:30 a.m. “Listen, Mintz, I don’t know what’s happening. There was just gunfire in the neighborhood and shouting in Arabic. I’m in the safe room,” Hayim said. It was their final conversation.
Hayim took Avital, a neighbor who lived next door, into his home. When the terrorists tried to break into the safe room, the two hid inside a wardrobe. The terrorists fired bursts of gunfire through the safe room door and the wardrobe door. Hayim was hit and absorbed the bullets that were also meant for Avital. In his final act, he used his body to protect her life, and she survived.
Hayim, who spoke fluent Arabic and worked extensively to promote dialogue and peace, was killed by those who did not recognize the value of life. He was a man who sought complexity in a world of black and white.
“The most annoying thing about Katsman, as always, is how right he is,” Mintz says in pain. “That feeling of how I manage to become more than the thing Katsman tried to be in the world and how it is possible to hold a complex reality in which justice is not only mine.”
Master Sgt. Hayim Yeshurun Katzman leaves behind a loving family, friends who admired his moral stubbornness and a community that misses the sound of his music and the philosophical conversations deep into the night. He was a man of books and action, of the garage and academia, a person who lived and died according to the dictates of his conscience.
Master Sgt. Hayim Yeshurun Katsman of the Border Defense Corps fell on the 22nd of Tishrei 5784, Oct. 7, 2023. He was 32.
May his memory be a blessing.
Master Sergeant
Hayim Yeshurun Katsman