The short, heroic life of Moaz Morell
Parents of fallen IDF soldier describe a selfless overachiever
In the more than 10 months since October 7, we have heard about way too many deaths. When we hear about so many at once, it can be hard to remember that each person is an individual, and every loss is devastating.
Staff Sgt. Maoz Morell was critically wounded on February 15 while fighting in Gaza. He died on February 19, just a few weeks shy of his 22nd birthday. Maoz’s parents, Varda and Eitan Morell, recently spoke about Maoz at a local synagogue, Bais Medrash of Bergenfield.
The two have talked about Maoz many times since he died. They spoke with Rabbis Efrem Goldberg and Josh Broide of the Boca Raton Synagogue on the shul’s Behind the Bima podcast — a series that explores contemporary issues — a few days after shiva ended. And during their recent trip to the United States, they spoke in communities in New Jersey, New York, and around the country.
Maoz grew up in Israel but Varda and Eitan both are from the United States.
Varda Linzer Morell is from Silver Spring, Maryland. When she was in 11th grade, she participated in the March of the Living. “Being in Poland, being in Auschwitz, for Yom HaShoah, and then in Israel for Yom HaZikaron and Yom Ha’Atzmaut, that’s when I really connected ideologically to the land of Israel,” she said. She went to Israel for a gap year after high school and decided to stay.
Ms. Morell described her aliyah as the continuation of a journey that began almost 80 years ago. “My mother and her sister were little girls living in Belgium when the war broke out,” she said. Her grandfather was taken to a labor camp, and “my grandmother had a lot of foresight. She was able to understand that this war was not going to end well for the Jews.” With help from the underground, her grandmother was able to find a Christian family to hide her young daughters. They were “hidden in public” and “had a very good life during the war.” The family “took good care of them, they dressed them beautifully and loved them very much.”
Ms. Morell’s grandparents were murdered at Birkenau.
After the war, the Christian family wanted to adopt the girls, Ms. Morell continued, but their priest advised them to return them to the Jewish people, so they reluctantly brought them to a Jewish orphanage. The orphanage was moving to Israel and everyone got on a train that would take them to the boat. “Suddenly the train stops and soldiers come on the train and call out my mother’s and my aunt’s names and take them with them,” because a couple in the United States had arranged to adopt them.
When Ms. Morell made aliyah, she felt like she was “finally completing that trip.”
Mr. Morell grew up in a Zionist home in Binghamton, N.Y. His father was a Judaic studies professor and “every seven years he would get a sabbatical, and we would come to Israel,” he said.
Mr. Morell learned in a yeshiva in Israel for two years after high school and then joined the IDF. “I knew that I wanted to live in Israel,” he said. “I felt that if I wanted to be fully a part of Israeli society, to understand the nuances, to feel that I was equal to everyone in Israeli society, I knew serving in the army was one of the crucial things to make that happen. And looking back now, I know that was 100% correct.”
At the time, about 30 years ago, it was unusual for American students to join the IDF, Mr. Morell added. He wound up joining with four friends. “We were five of us together,” he said, “so that helped. The five of us are still very close — they’re like my family in Israel.”
The Morells don’t have second thoughts even now about their decision to raise their family in Israel. They were the parents of six — five sons, Dov, Eliezer, Shachar, Maoz, and Elkana, and the boys’ younger sister, Channa.
“Our son was killed as a hero for all of Am Yisrael, making sure the rest of us can live, that Jews all over the world and in Israel can live as Jews, so I don’t think that’s something we regret,” Ms. Morell said. “But obviously it’s a personal tragedy.”
“In many ways I think I’m comforted that Maoz died in the way that he died,” Mr. Morell added. “It was a very heroic life and death that he had, and those things comfort us. Obviously, on a personal level, we are very pained and saddened, but we also understand the bigger picture. The bigger picture gives us comfort. And I don’t think we would change anything.”
Maoz was drafted into an elite paratroopers unit in April 2022. On October 7, he was on leave for Simchat Torah and was spending the holiday with friends. He heard about the attack early in the morning and realized his unit would be called in, so he went home to pick up what he needed and drove to his base. His unit was transported by helicopter to Re’im, the site of the Nova festival, “and from then until the day he fell, he was home once for 72 hours,” Mr. Morell said.
During the weeks before the ground invasion, Maoz’s unit was training, and “we actually did see him two times, but he wasn’t home,” Mr. Morell continued. Once Maoz entered Gaza, “we didn’t see him for the next seven weeks.” During that time, he was able to call home only once. “And one other time we got a recorded voicemail. Maoz was not a big talker; we got an 11-second message. He said ‘Mommy, Abba, ani sababa,’ — I’m fine, I’m great — ‘you’ve been notified.’ That’s all that was necessary to say. Maoz is not a man of many words. He’s more a man of deeds.”
After seven weeks in Gaza, Maoz was able to come home for a few days. Before he left, “I gave him a hug and a bracha, and that was the last time we saw him. That was about two months before he fell.”
Over the next eight weeks, Maoz was able to call home more often — about once a week. He was in Gaza for almost 100 days; during that time, his unit fought some very serious battles in Khan Yunis.
On the morning of February 15, a grenade was thrown into a house in Khan Yunis where Maoz and other soldiers were staying. Maoz was sleeping in another room, but there were about 12 soldiers in the room where the grenade landed. “It was always difficult to wake him up,” Mr. Morell said. “Here he jumped up and ran into the room.
“They had a medic and a paramedic but it wasn’t enough — everyone needed medical attention at the same time.” So Maoz started helping. “People who were there said he was like a machine, going from soldier to soldier.”
“He wasn’t a medic,” Ms. Morell said. “But his commander felt that it was very important for everyone to learn everybody else’s job. So he went in and right away started treating the wounded.”
His commander was very seriously wounded, hit in a major artery near his neck. Because the unit had learned the medic’s job, Maoz was able to use a technique called packing to stop the bleeding. “It’s usually a procedure that medics do,” Mr. Morell said. “Regular soldiers aren’t really well versed in this. But he had to do it, and he did it, and that saved his commander’s life. They told us he would have bled out for sure.
“It wasn’t a random throwing of a grenade,” Mr. Morell continued. “This was a sophisticated planned attack on the house, and the grenade was just the opening gambit. The idea was to draw the soldiers out. So there was a whole battle going on outside the house with other soldiers, and Maoz was busy tending to the wounded together with the paramedic and the medic.
“Then they had to evacuate the wounded.”
Soldiers carried their colleagues out of the house and put them into armored personnel carriers, which transported them to helicopters. “At the shiva, we were told by a soldier who had watched this whole thing unfold from the rooftop of another house that you could see Maoz come down with a wounded guy, go back up, come down with another wounded guy, until everyone was tended to and everyone was taken away.” Throughout, there was “shooting all around.”
When Maoz was in the hospital, one of the soldiers, who had been lightly wounded, went to his room. After the grenade landed, he had felt moisture across his back and he thought he was seriously wounded. “Maoz rips off his shirt and saw that his water pack had been ruptured, and said, ‘you got shrapnel to your water pack,’” Mr. Morell said. “It’s just water.” That soldier held Maoz’s hand in the hospital. “It was very moving. He was crying and said, ‘Thank you so much for taking care of me.’
“At the funeral, another guy came up to me in a wheelchair, and he said, ‘Maoz carried me down the stairs to evacuate me. Maoz was very strong, and thank you so much for that.’ Obviously we’re moved by all those things.”
After the wounded were evacuated, Maoz “ran to his mag — a very big, very heavy machine gun that gives cover fire. That was his weapon.” Every team has one person who uses that type of weapon. “Whoever carries the mag has to be very strong. It’s the type of thing nobody wants to do it, and that was his job from Day One in the army.
“So he runs with his mag up to the roof,” where another soldier was using a regular gun to give cover fire. “This soldier’s parents came to the shiva. The way it was described to us, Maoz shows up with his mag, and he had a big smile on his face, and he says to the guy, ‘like step back with your toy gun’”— because compared to a mag, a regular M16 is like a toy. A mag is a heavy, strong weapon, so he’s like, ‘let me take care of this.’”
Maoz’s cover fire trapped two attacking terrorists in a nearby house. “A tank then shot at the building and the building crumbled, killing the terrorists.” But Maoz was very close to the building and “a piece of debris went into his eye, and into his brain, and he fell like that with the mag.
“Basically, the last hour of his life was spent tending to the wounded, one of which we know for sure he saved his life, and keeping the terrorists at bay, and making it possible for the tank to kill them.”
Thirty-eight minutes later, Maoz was in the hospital.
At about 12:30 that afternoon, the family got a phone call. They said Maoz was seriously wounded — patzua kashe — and that in 10 minutes, someone was coming to take them to the hospital. “They purposely don’t knock on the door when a soldier is wounded,” Ms. Morell said. Army representatives do come directly to the door when a soldier has been killed.
During the hour and a half ride, the Morells did not know anything about Maoz’s injuries. “The person driving you has no idea what his condition is,” Mr. Morell said. “I think that’s done intentionally.”
When they got to the hospital, Maoz’s parents were “whisked into the ICU,” where they saw Maoz “lying there unconscious, hooked up to stuff” but still had no idea how serious the situation was. “Then the doctor takes us to his office, he sits us down, and he tells us very sensitively, but very clearly, that he is patzua anush, which means, I guess, terminal,” Mr. Morell said. “He has irreversible brain damage and there’s nothing to do. But he’s alive still and we expect him to progress to brain death in hours or days.
“We walked out of that room obviously broken. An officer in charge of liaising between the army and families of wounded soldiers tells us, ‘Look, I’ve been doing this for 10 years, and I will tell you that, even though it doesn’t look like it right now, you’ve been given a gift. Because most parents get a knock on the door, and then a funeral. But you have an opportunity that most people don’t have to say goodbye.’
“So that’s what we did. Not just us — all of Maoz’s friends. He had a lot of friends, a lot of close friends, and his friends from all the different circles, our community where we live, and from his high school, and from his yeshiva, and different rebbes, and people that were in his life, they all started streaming into the hospital. On Saturday night, a lot of friends were home from the army, and Maoz had 25 to 30 people in his room. So everyone in his life came to that room and parted with him.
“By Sunday, everyone important in Maoz’s life had said goodbye except for one important link in the chain of his life — his army unit, his team, who he had been with for two years, and spent almost 100 days fighting in Gaza with. He was incredibly close with these guys. He was in an elite unit. A regular paratrooper spends seven months in training; for Maoz’s unit, it’s 14 months, it’s double training, double the skills, so they were together for a very long time.”
The unit was scheduled to leave Gaza on Sunday morning. Then they spent a day on base and were sent home on Monday morning. The soldiers had not been home in two months, “but they didn’t go home, they went directly to Soroka hospital in Be’er Sheva to visit Maoz.”
Later that day, “we decided to do a special tefilla of just our family — Maoz’s siblings and us — in Maoz’s room. We had all been in and out of his room many times, but we didn’t ever have the whole family and just the family. So we got everyone together, and we sat in the room with him, and we sang, and we said some tefillot. It was very short, less than 10 minutes. So we’re all in there, we’re singing, it was very intense, and all of a sudden we see the numbers on the monitors he’s hooked up to start going crazy, then they start diving down. We look at each other and we realize, as we’re in there, this is it. All of our family, together, we all said Shema Yisrael.
“After we finished, Maoz died.
“We felt that he was waiting to say goodbye to his army unit. Once he had that, and then we came in and did a more official goodbye, that allowed his neshama” — his soul — “to leave.
“We understand it’s not a common thing that people have that kind of chance to say goodbye, and we definitely feel that it was a big zechut — privilege — that Maoz had and that we had.”
Maoz’s parents also talked about his life before October 7.
Maoz means a fortress, a place of strength. After Maoz was born, his father called his brother and sister-in-law in the United States to share the good news. “That was in the afternoon in Israel, and the morning in America,” Mr. Morell said. “Later that afternoon in America, unexpectedly, out of nowhere, my sister-in-law dropped dead from an aneurysm.” His brother had two young children. Mr. Morell flew to America to be with his brother at the shiva and came back just in time to get to the bris. They chose the name Maoz because “we felt a need to name our child something that expressed what was going on,” he said. “And we felt that at that time in our life, because of this tragedy, we needed to get strength, so we named him Maoz, that he would be a source of strength for us. And he was, his entire life.”
Maoz was physically strong. “He was always very athletic,” Ms. Morell said. “He loved sports.” And he enjoyed kung fu. “He’d come in first place in kung fu competitions year after year.” He loved tiyulim — hiking — and enjoyed gardening.
“Maoz was not a man of many words, but he was always very positive, and everything was always sababa.”
Maoz was not only an exceptional fighter throughout his army service, “he was a fighter his entire life,” she said.
From a young age, Maoz had a very hard time in school. “He had certain learning disabilities, and learning how to read was very difficult for him,” Mr. Morell said. “And throughout all the years in school, school was hard for him.”
But he “did not take the easy road,” Ms. Morell added. When something was important to him, he worked hard to make it happen. “Maoz had a long bar mitzvah parsha, and he wasn’t a great reader, but he wanted to read the whole thing,” she said. So he started studying with his father a full two years in advance, and he was able to read the entire parsha.
“Maoz would set goals for himself and then make himself lists with doable steps in order to reach those goals.” And he would ask teachers or friends for help when he did not understand something.
Maoz had a hard time in high school, but he was able to graduate with a bagrut certificate. “It wasn’t easy for him,” his father said. “He worked very hard.”
Maoz went to a hesder yeshiva before he was drafted into the army. His gemara skills were weak, and when he got there, he asked for help, and he studied with stronger students. “I heard at the shiva, from multiple people, that his chavrutas” — his study partners — “would read a line in the gemara and explain it to him and Maoz would be like ‘ani lo mayveen’ — I don’t get it,” Mr. Morell said. “And the chavruta would explain it a second time, and a third time, again and again until he understood.
“Every day he would go into the beit midrash and he would be working very hard to learn Torah. He fought in order to understand the gemara.”
Ms. Morell suggested five things people can do in Maoz’s memory: ask for help when you need it; when you don’t understand something, say so and ask a teacher, friend, parent, or colleague to explain it again; when someone tells you they don’t understand you, take a deep breath and explain it again in a different way; plant some flowers, garden, or just spend some time alone touching the ground and making one little corner of this earth a better place; and set a goal and decide on small daily steps that will help you reach it.
The Morells tell Maoz’s story with the hope that others will learn from his strength, and the way he fought to achieve his goals, Ms. Morell said. In that way, they hope Maoz’s legacy will live on.
comments