‘Wherever I am needed, that is where I’ll be’: The story of Lt. Nave Elazar Lax
In the last words he said to his girlfriend, Shani, as he was heading south into the inferno of October 7, Lt. Nave Elazar Lax summed up the essence of his life: “I don’t know where I’ll be. Wherever I am needed, that is where I will be.” That sentence, which has since become his legacy and is printed on stickers across the country, was not merely a fighter’s momentary promise, but a way of life for a 21-year-old who lived every moment with a sense of mission, meaning and love for others.
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Nave, an officer in an elite Military Intelligence unit who joined the fighting as part of a Sayeret Matkal force, fell in the heroic battle at Kibbutz Be’eri. He is survived by a loving family and friends who saw him as a moral and musical compass.
The boy who wanted to be grown up
From the beginning, Nave was a child in a hurry to live. “He was a very quick child,” she says. “At 2.5 months, he was already rolling over, at 4.5 months he was crawling, and by 6 months he was already standing. He was born and said, ‘I am big.’”
That maturity stayed with him throughout his life. His sister, Reshit, describes a protective and caring brother who was the first person she turned to for advice. “He knew how to make the person in front of him feel completely at ease,” she says. “I would come to him in an emotional storm, and he always knew how to give the simple answer I needed to hear to steady myself and move on.”
Between piano and navigation drills: The soul of an artist and a fighter
Nave’s character was a rare combination of deep seriousness and infectious mischief. Harel Milo, his friend, recalls the days of the COVID pandemic in the city of Lod, when Nave was the first to show up to distribute packages to the elderly and hang Israeli flags at intersections. “What drove him was a sense of purpose, the need to do something meaningful,” Harel says. “He did a lot of silly things, but he always knew how to explain why he was doing them. You would never catch him saying, ‘I wasn’t thinking.’”
Alongside his volunteer spirit, Nave was connected, with every fiber of his being, to the land and history of Israel. He shared with his father a love of hiking, plants and military heritage. His great love was music. Nave played clarinet in Lod’s municipal orchestra, taught himself harmonica and, at 16, was accepted to study piano at the Rimon School of Music. “He sat and played all day, went to the auditions and was accepted,” Reshit says. His mother adds that when he played, his whole body moved with the notes: “It was the place for his soul.”
The bridge between worlds
One of the special aspects of Nave’s character was the way he chose to shape his religious identity. Although he chose the path of a formerly religious lifestyle, he did so with deep respect and love for tradition and his family. “I wish everyone had a son like that,” his father would say. Whenever he came home, he looked for a kippah to honor his parents, joined Shabbat prayers and sat at the Shabbat table.
His sister recalls their Shabbats together: “He would sit and play Shabbat songs on the piano. He was moved by his freedom, but also by the songs. It was not mockery. He was simply connected to tradition in a way that suited him.” On the last Simchat Torah eve, he told his girlfriend, “I am religious on Simchat Torah,” and danced with Torah scrolls and members of Bnei Akiva in Lod. “Everyone who looked at him that evening noticed a special light on his face,” his mother says.
The final battle in Be’eri
On the morning of October 7, when the first sirens sounded, Nave immediately understood the magnitude of the moment. He contacted his commander and joined a force that set out in vehicles toward the Gaza border area. In Be’eri, because of his training as a medic, he was initially assigned to the wounded treatment point, but when he saw his team commander entering the fight, he refused to stay behind. He asked to be replaced and went inside, into the heart of the kibbutz.
At 1:20 p.m., as part of the first significant force to enter the kibbutz, Nave reached the western neighborhoods, Zeitim and Kerem. As he covered his comrades while they tried to move between the homes, heavy fire was opened at them from the Haran family home. Nave was severely wounded by four bullets. His teammates, who saw him as both a medical and leadership authority, did not give up on him. Under fire and with terrorists swarming around them, they evacuated him by hand to the evacuation vehicle, but at the treatment point he succumbed to his wounds.
A legacy of presence
“Nave did not need to die for people to follow his path,” his mother, Ofra, says with pain mixed with pride. “He was a child blessed with talents, and he used them so much for others.” Since his fall, the family has been flooded with stories, some about pranks and mischief, others about quiet acts of kindness, about the people he saw and reached out to when no one was watching.
Lt. Nave Elazar Lax lived his life as a bridge: between music and combat, between sacred and secular, between Lod and the Gaza border area. He was there for his sister in moments of emotional turmoil, for Lod’s elderly residents in quarantine, and for the residents of Be’eri in their hardest moments. He was always, as he promised, wherever he was needed.
Lt. Nave Elazar Lax, Military Intelligence, fell on October 7, 2023. He was 21.
May his memory be a blessing.
Lieutenant
Nave Elazar Lax