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A bar mitzvah boy’s wartime exodus from Sderot to Efrat
By: Bruria Efune
Beniyah Bar-Chen of Sderot, Israel, had big plans for his bar mitzvah celebration. He had been looking forward to being called up to the Torah for months, and was expecting to celebrate the day with many friends and family.
Exactly one week before his big day, Beniyah woke up early on Shabbat morning, and left with his father and siblings at 6:20 a.m. to catch the early Simchat Torah minyan at their local synagogue. They were halfway there when Red Alert sirens began blaring. They quickly laid down in the safest spot they could find, with their arms covering their heads. But the sirens didn’t stop. Soon, the air filled with the sounds of explosions and machine gun fire. Beniyah and his siblings began shaking with panic. Their father, Yoel, shouted to them that they’d have to run to a friend’s house a few meters away. In a blur, they made it to safety.
It was chaos all around. As rockets rained down on Sderot, terrorists roamed the streets, killing dozens of men, women and children in cold blood.
Meanwhile, Beniyah’s mother, Yifat, was home alone with the baby, terrified for her children and husband. By noon, Beniyah’s father told the kids that they needed to get back home to their mother. They ran between the Red Alerts and arrived home, not realizing that they had snuck past a squad of terrorists with machine guns still on the loose.
The Bar-Chen home had lost power almost immediately after the sirens began, and except for a few minutes here and there, they had no phone reception either. The family put a folding table blocking the door to their bomb shelter, and huddling in the dark for nearly three days, listening to sirens, explosions and shelling—and praying that the terrorists wouldn’t find them.
When their phones did manage to receive messages, they learned about friends and family who were murdered in Sderot and the small communities closest to Gaza. In between the tears, they realized what a miracle it was that the children had made it home alive.
No Choice but to Run
The Western Negev city of Sderot is home to more than 80,000 Israelis. It’s a beautiful working-class city with a family feel, founded in 1951 primarily by Jewish refugees from Kurdistan and Iran. Since the start of the Second Intifada in 2000, Sderot has been the target of tens of thousands of rockets and mortars fired from terrorist factions in Gaza—located a mere 840 meters (2,760 feet) away.
On the Tuesday after the war began, it became clear to the Bar-Chen family that they had no choice but to flee Sderot.
“The kids were sitting in the dark, with nothing they could do,” Yifat Bar-Chen told Chabad.org. “They couldn’t even read. Just listen to the terrifying sounds and shake in fear. Our friends and family were begging us to leave, and soon we would run out of food.”
Beniyah’s parents instructed him and his siblings to stay put in the bomb shelter, while they would quickly pack up their bags and load the car. They got their suitcases into the car as quickly as they could, all while the sirens blared with missile alerts and terrorist alerts.
They were about to call the children into the car when another Red Alert went off. The family bundled into the bomb shelter, and then heard an extremely loud explosion. When they stepped out, they found their living room in shambles. The windows were shattered, and glass lay all over the floor. The apartment filled with black smoke. They stepped outside and found that a rocket had landed right next to their car, which was destroyed.
“It was another miracle,” says Yifat Bar-Chen. “We only had a seven second warning, if we were one minute too slow, G‑d forbid, we would have been too late. The rocket struck exactly where we had been standing.”
Refuge in a Bomb Shelter in Efrat
Yoel Bar-Chen called a group that has been helping Sderot residents escape safely and they soon came with two armed vehicles and drove the family to Beniyah’s grandmother’s home in Beersheva. From there, they chose to go somewhere with less rockets and caught a ride to the Judean town of Efrat.
Even in the safety of Efrat, Beniyah didn’t want to leave the bomb shelter. He stayed curled up in the farthest corner from the door, so that he would be able to hide in case terrorists came. He jumped at every sound, wouldn’t talk louder than a whisper, and his mind kept returning to the trembling moment when he lay with his father and siblings on the streets of Sderot.
His parents didn’t want him to miss out on his bar mitzvah. It was clear that he’d no longer have his huge celebration with all his friends and family, but at least he could read the Torah in the synagogue.
“We brought Beniyah to the nearest synagogue, and asked if he could be called up to the Torah,” recalls Yifat.
A Community Turns Out to Celebrate
Efrat resident Itzik Yanuka overheard that it was Beniyah’s Bar Mitzvah and suggested making the customary big party for him. Shimon and Yehudis Leiter sponsored the celebration and did a lot of the organizing.
At Chabad-Lubavitch of Efrat, Rabbi Shlomie and Kiki Newman swung into action along with Rabbi Nissan and Sara Nachshon. They alerted the community that a special bar mitzvah would be held in the Efrat Chabad House, and asked everyone to come together to make it happen.
“Suddenly I received an invitation to Beniyah’s bar mitzvah,” says Yifat. “I was told that everything was being prepared by the community. Vendors were volunteering all their services, makeup, catering, music—everything.”
After confirming that the celebration would be held in a bomb shelter, Beniyah smiled for the first time since the war broke out. He even let himself grow a little excited.
At night after Shabbat, Beniyah and his family arrived and found a packed room full of guests eager to celebrate with him. It wasn’t only live music; there was a dessert table, cotton candy, a photographer printing magnet souvenirs, gifts—far more than he could imagine!
The guests carried Beniyah on their shoulders, and danced with unforgettable energy.
“The community all came together in one day,” says Kiki Halpern of Chabad of Efrat. “It was the most moving thing. Everyone brought what they could, everyone danced, and the kids all showered love on Beniyah and invited him for playdates.”
“It’s funny,” commented Yifat. “I used to see these posts on social media about a child with no friends who showed up to their birthday or bar mitzvah, and then many strangers come… and I wondered, why would the child be happy with strangers? But now I understand! These people lifted my son out of the darkness! They felt like family and friends that we knew forever.”
“We were originally planning to go to Mitzpeh because that’s where many of our friends went,” says Yifat. “But now we have so many new friends here, we don’t need to pack up again. My children are happy to stay here.”
