At 6:29 a.m. on October 7, 2023, Gil Ta’asa had seconds to make a choice that would define the meaning of fatherhood forever.
Newly released footage from Netiv Ha’asara shows the 46-year-old Israeli firefighter rushing his two young sons, still in their underwear, to their outdoor bomb shelter as Hamas terrorists pursued them. Gil grabbed his personal weapon and fired at the attackers until his ammunition ran out. Then came the grenade. In that instant, this man who had spent his career running toward danger to save others made his final rescue: he threw himself on the explosive to shield Koren (12) and Shai (8). He absorbed the blast and was killed; his boys survived, though Shai would lose sight in one eye from the shrapnel, and both would carry wounds far deeper than the physical.
Gil’s eldest son, Or (17), was murdered by Hamas terrorists at Zikim Beach that same morning, where he had gone early to surf with friends. A fourth son, Zohar (15), survived with his mother Sabine, Gil’s ex-wife, hiding in their safe room next door. In total, 21 residents of this community of 900 were massacred that day. But the depravity didn’t end with murder. After the explosion, one of the militants was caught on camera casually drinking a Coca-Cola from the family’s refrigerator while the bloodied, traumatized boys stood nearby. In footage that would later horrify the world, Koren used Google Translate on his phone to plead with the terrorists: “Kill me, not my mother, and please leave my brother alone.” Israel announced that it killed that militant, Ahmed Fawzi Wadiyya, in a September 2024 airstrike.
Some tragedies defy language. They leave us grasping for words, caught between horror and awe. Yet amid such barbarity, Gil Ta’asa’s final act revealed something transcendent: the deepest form of human devotion – a father’s love, covenantal and unbreakable. It is not enough to say that he died heroically. His death illuminates a truth about love, faith, and responsibility that Jewish theology has preserved for millennia, and it compels us to rethink what manliness and fatherhood should mean in our fractured age.
In an era of confused conversations about “toxic masculinity,” Gil Ta’asa showed us what sacred masculinity looks like.
Jewish thought has always recognized that the love of a parent for a child is more than instinct. It is covenantal, echoing the relationship between God and Israel. The Talmud emphasizes the sacred obligations that bind parents and children; famously through the story of Dama ben Netina, who sacrificed profit rather than wake his sleeping father, earning eternal renown for honoring him. This was no act of sentiment but of costly fidelity. Isaiah deepens the claim with a divine analogy: “Can a woman forget her nursing child? … Even if these may forget, I will not forget you” (Isaiah 49:15).
The Midrash underscores the point, teaching that just as a father cannot truly hate his child, so too God cannot abandon Israel. The parent – child bond, in other words, is a mirror of divine love itself: not transactional, not conditional, but enduring.
In shielding his sons, Gil fulfilled that covenant in its most radical form. He enacted what our tradition insists: that love is not a passive feeling but active fidelity, an act of will and sacrifice. Abraham, commanded to bring Isaac to the altar, dramatized the readiness to surrender what was most beloved in obedience to God. David, mourning Absalom despite betrayal, cried out, “Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!” (2 Samuel 18:33).
Gil lived what David could only lament – he did die instead of his children. His act was a Kiddush Hashem, a sanctification of God’s name through ultimate sacrifice. Rabbinic teaching affirms that those who give their lives for others merit the highest honor in olam ha-ba, the World to Come. In that world, the righteous dwell close to the Divine Presence; surely a father who gave himself wholly for his children has earned a place of eternal honor.
Gil’s story also compels us to ask what manliness really means.
So much contemporary culture caricatures masculinity either as toxic aggression or as hollow consumerist posturing. We are awash in shallow displays of strength, wealth, and swagger, even as young men drift in confusion and despair.
Jewish tradition’s measure is different: gevurah, strength, defined not as dominance but as self-mastery and moral courage. “Who is mighty? He who conquers his inclination,” teaches (Pirkei Avot 4:1:3)
Gil’s final act was gevurah without spectacle. A senior firefighter at the Ashkelon fire station, he had long chosen a life of running toward danger for the sake of others. His final rescue was the ultimate expression of his life’s calling. In his own home, faced with unthinkable evil, he gave everything. That is masculinity at its best: not bravado, but devotion; not conquest, but covenant.
Our own society is living through a crisis of fatherhood. Too many children grow up without a devoted father present. Too many young men drift without mentors, guidance, or clear models of what manhood demands. The results are visible: a loneliness epidemic, rising nihilism, civic disengagement, and anger spilling into the public square. Jewish wisdom speaks directly to this contemporary crisis: the covenant between parent and child is not merely a private matter but the foundation of communal strength. The example of Gil Ta’asa is not merely private grief; it is a moral summons.
Fatherhood is not ornamental or optional. It is central to human flourishing. To be a father is to take responsibility, to put others ahead of oneself, and to anchor children in a covenant of belonging.
Policy discussions about men and boys, framed too often only in terms of economics or schooling, cannot overlook the moral dimension. Men need to be called back to their proper role as protectors and guides – not in a spirit of domination, but in the spirit of covenantal devotion. Strength without love is brutality. Love without strength is sentimentality. The union of love and strength is what true fatherhood – and true manliness – requires.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks understood this clearly. He argued that strong families and morally formed fathers are not marginal but foundational to social order. In his ”Covenant & Conversation” commentary on Vayera, he noted that fatherhood must be reinforced by communal moral codes, because without them families fragment and the most vulnerable suffer most. The lesson is not merely sociological but covenantal: civic health rests on reliable loves, and the first of these is the love within the home. That is precisely what we are witnessing across the West: the erosion of family structures, the fraying of communities, and a deep hunger for responsibility and belonging. Yet moments like Gil’s remind us that covenantal love remains possible, and that it is the most powerful antidote to fragmentation.
Sabine Ta’asa, who traveled the world to share their story and ensure the world understands what happened, said something profound: ”When you have an enemy next to you, you cannot sleep soundly at night. You cannot know when he will attack.” Yet she also demonstrates that even in the face of such evil, dignity and truth-telling remain possible. She stands as witness not just to horror, but to the love that preceded it – the love of a father who, when evil came to his door, responded with the ultimate act of protection.
Gil Ta’asa’s story is unbearably tragic. But if we stop at tragedy, we miss the greater truth. He did not choose his circumstances; he chose how to respond. He chose to be faithful to his role as a father, even in to his death. The Jewish tradition insists that such love is not forgotten. It is written into eternity. Zecher tzaddik livracha: the memory of the righteous is a blessing. Gil has secured his place among the righteous, and rightly so.
This tragic arc should be more than an occasion for grief. It should be a summons to recover what fatherhood and manhood mean. It should call us back to covenantal love, to responsibility, and to the courage that sustains both communities and nations.
October 7 exposed evil at its most brazen. But it also revealed, in one father’s final act, the very best of humanity. That act deserves to be remembered not only as a moment of horror, but as a testament to what love, manhood, and covenant look like when fully lived. In a world that has forgotten what heroes look like, Gil Ta’asa – firefighter, father, protector – showed us. His was a love carved in fire, and it will burn eternal.
