Three members of Dudu's family went to the Nova festival together to dance, listen to music and enjoy life. None of them returned home.
Three years after the October 7 massacre, Dudu Jerafi returns to the Nova festival site, where his son and two sisters spent their final hours before being murdered by Hamas terrorists. Jerafi lost his eldest son, Liel Jerafi, 18½, and his two sisters, Shoham, 29, and Shenhav Yaakov, 26.
“My son joined my two sisters on Simchat Torah. They wanted to come to the festival, dance, listen to music and enjoy life," he tells Israel National News - Arutz Sheva. “That’s exactly what they did here, until that morning, when the rockets started flying overhead."
When the rocket attack began, the three gathered their belongings and left the festival in search of a safe place. They reached a concrete shelter near the entrance to Kibbutz Re’im, where dozens of other young people had also taken refuge while trying to escape the attack.
They remained in the shelter until around 9 a.m., together with approximately 40 other people. But the place where they had sought safety became a massacre site.
“At around 9 o’clock, the terrorists arrived there too. They shot at them and threw grenades," Jerafi recalls.
According to Jerafi, 29 people were murdered inside the shelter, while others survived. Among those who were there was Omer Wenkert, who was abducted to Gaza and later released.
At the time, far from the shelter, Dudu still had no idea what had happened to his loved ones. The first reports reaching the family did not convey the scale of the disaster. As the hours passed and reports of terrorists infiltrating the area continued to emerge, the family began searching for a way to reach the south.
Jerafi joined the drive south, but near HaNasi Junction, before Ofakim, a police vehicle stopped them. The officers told them they could not continue because of the shooting and the presence of terrorists in the area.
“We got as far as HaNasi Junction. A police car stopped us: ‘Pull over. There’s no way through. There are rockets, there’s shooting, there are terrorists everywhere,’" he recalls.
They remained there alongside other parents who had set out to search for their children - people who had come from across Israel without knowing where their loved ones were or whether they had managed to escape.
By the afternoon, they were directed to Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, where many of the wounded from the attack had been evacuated. They waited there for two days, until they were told that no more civilian casualties were expected to arrive and that they should continue their search at hospitals elsewhere in the country.
“We were there for two days, until Sunday evening, when they told us that no more civilians were coming to Soroka, only soldiers, and that we should look for them at the other hospitals across the country," he says.
The search continued for almost a week. The family swung between hope and fear, waiting for every piece of information and desperately trying to discover what had happened to their three loved ones.
Then the news began to arrive.
A week later, the family was informed that their son had been identified through DNA testing. They brought him to burial on Sunday. But that same evening, two more devastating messages arrived: Dudu’s two sisters had also been identified among the victims.
Their funerals were held on Monday. Within a matter of days, the family had been forced to say goodbye to three loved ones after spending days not knowing what had happened to them.
Since then, Jerafi says, life at home has never been the same as it was before Simchat Torah 5784.
“The family never went back to being the same as it was before October 7," he says. “Holiday meals, family meals - they’re not the same as they were. Everything is missing."
That absence is felt not only on memorial days or at the site of the massacre. It is present at family meals, during the holidays and throughout the routine of daily life that continues even though three members of the family are gone.
Alongside their grief, Dudu and his wife continue raising the children who remain at home. Their struggle is not limited to their own personal pain. They must also care for the children, provide stability and help them navigate a family reality that has been permanently changed.
“Our struggle is in the day-to-day, including with the young children at home," he says.
Amid the difficulty, he points to the OneFamily organization, which has supported the family since the tragedy and has provided particular assistance to the children.
“They really came in and have helped us tremendously with them," he says. “You could say they saved our children."
But even with that support, there is no day when the struggle disappears.
“Every day is a unique challenge," Jerafi says.
Asked how it is possible to go on living after losing a son and two sisters, he returns to the faith with which he was raised and to something he told the mourners who came to his home during shiva.
“We come from a home of faith," he explains. “During the shiva, many people came to comfort me, and I had something I told everyone: The Holy One, blessed be He, does not give you a tragedy or challenge if you cannot handle it."
That faith has stayed with him ever since, even in moments when the pain seems greater than anything a person could bear.
“The Holy One, blessed be He, does not put you through a test if you cannot withstand it. We don’t know what our strengths are - He does. And I believe that’s why we are still standing."
Jerafi does not hide the difficulty, nor does he portray himself as having overcome his loss. Instead, he speaks of life continuing alongside the pain and of his responsibility to the family that remains.
“Of course we still have young children at home, and my wife, and we have our parents, and siblings," he says. “You have to get up and make sure everything keeps going, how should I put it, functioning."
And three years later, as he stands once again at the Nova festival site where he lost his son and two sisters, he returns to the words that have defined the family’s reality ever since that day:
“Every day is a new struggle."