While I hadn't heard of Yehuda Katz prior to starting yeshivah, incredibly, he had been mentioned in one of my first lessons of the year.
As part of orientation, Rabbi Shlomo Friedman told his class to have extra focus on saying Tehilim at the end of davening each day. He explained to us that past students of the yeshivah, like Yehuda Katz, remained missing in action or injured.
When the news came through the next day about the miraculous return of Yehuda's remains after nearly half a century, I couldn't believe the circumstances in which I had begun my life in KBY.
Kerem B'Yavneh Yeshivah, where Yehuda Katz studiedPhoto: Yosef Chaim Borochov
The entire yeshivah tried to balance the simultaneously existing feelings of joy and relief at Yehuda's return, and pain and anger at the final confirmation of his death.
At the Mount of Olives, Yehuda's older brother, Avi Katz, told hundreds of mourners, “For me, Yehuda died this very week!”
On that Friday on which Yehuda was finally brought to rest, I heard numerous stories from many of Yehuda's friends and family members about the young man's incredible kindness and devoted nature.
Rabbi Baruch Weider, the Rosh Yeshivah of Hakotel, told a story about Yehuda's immense spirituality. Yehuda had come off the bus taking him up to the First Lebanon War to use the toilet. Instead of reboarding straight away he first walked into the Beit Hamidrash (Study Hall). When asked why, he explained that a Jew goes to war from the Beit Hamidrash, not the toilet.
Rabbi Shlomo Friedman was in the year below Yehuda and studied with him in KBY.
I had the chance to speak to him about his friend. “Yehuda was a very holy fellow with a quiet smile. You wouldn't know he was so smart,” Rabbi Friedman explained.
“He had the aura of a very special person, so much so that people were afraid of making jokes in his presence.”
Rabbi Friedman elaborated on Yehuda's humble character and focus on Torah.
“Yehuda would study Torah whenever he could. He was always late to the dining room and ate whatever was left without making a fuss.
“Yehuda would sing and dance before battle and often stay up learning the Talmud while the rest of his unit slept.”
Rabbi Friedman told me how Yehuda Katz's father continued to pay his son's tuition fees to the yeshivah for years after he went MIA, in the hope he would resume learning Torah immediately on his return.
Rabbi Friedman added that his younger brother stayed in Yehuda's dorm in the 1990s, and only had half the regular wardrobe space as the missing soldier's belongings remained there.
Yehuda's legacy in KBY continues to inspire students to this day.
A section of the library is dedicated to Yehuda and includes his personal notebooks. One quote he wrote to himself regarding the Yom Kippur war ironically resonates with his own story more than he may have imagined:
“The closest people to Hashem are the holy ones killed in a sanctification of Hashem's name.”
Born in London, Ahron Asher Moss is currently attending Yeshivat Kerem B'Yavneh in Israel
