In the midst of the first week after the week-long shiva mourning period for Tze’ela Gez, her mother-in-law, Naomi Gez, spoke with the Magazine. She was inspired to address the Jewish people “to give them chizuk [spiritual strength] – to show that we are very strong and we will not give up. We love this land – we love this country.
“As one of the second generation from the Holocaust, I was raised to never give up,” she said. “Yesh tikva – we have hope – and we are part of a very, very long story of Am Yisrael [the Jewish people] and all the prophecies about our nation and our land.”
Gez and her husband, Hanoch, live in Kochav Ya’acov, next to their oldest daughter, Rebbetzin Bat Chen Grossman, and her family. But for the past few weeks, she has spent most of her time in the Samarian town of Bruchin, at the home of her son Hananel, bereaved husband of Tze’ela, who was murdered nearby in a terrorist shooting attack on May 14. Ravid Chaim, their infant son who was born by emergency C-section, died of his wounds two weeks later.
Gez said that upon first meeting Tze’ela, “She was so natural, so real. She had a big smile. She was very authentic. I felt that she and Hananel looked alike. They had the same smile. They were so compatible. It was such a good feeling to see him with her.
“I immediately saw that she was very motivated. She loved to learn professionally. She built her emunah [faith in God]. She took all kinds of training and did an MA; she was very successful.”
Tze’ela had a background in dance therapy and later became a well-known therapist.
Despite her professional success, “Her family was first. She was a very dedicated wife and mother. She admired Hananel and praised him all the time. He did the same with her,” her bereaved mother-in-law said.
The tragedy, the aftermath
At 1:30 a.m. on May 14, Gez’s daughter Bat Chen went into her parents’ bedroom to tell them there had been a shooting attack and that Hananel had been wounded and Tze’ela had been murdered. The Gezes hurried to tell the extended family, including their son in New York, before the story was reported in the news.
Reflecting on the days immediately following the attack and the shiva period itself, Gez said that “We didn’t have time to feel that it was happening to [just] our family. It had such an impact on everybody. We were overwhelmed by the love and support of all the people who we had in our lives.”
She described the shiva as a review. “People came from all our [previous] communities to give us support and love and a hug. We saw so many friends and so much family, [even] friends from high school. We got letters from MKs, the police, and the army.” About all the support the family received, she gratefully declared, “Wow. Thank You, Hashem [God]!”
It immediately became clear that this wasn’t a private family matter: Tze’ela had become a public figure. “We understood that we had become a symbol. We had become shlichim [emissaries] for Hashem.
“Fifty thousand people in America saw the interview with Hananel” on the Inspiration for the Nation podcast (now 95,000 at the time of this writing). About the emunah expressed by her son since the murders, Gez said, “It’s a surprise for us. We didn’t know who Hananel was.”
Nevertheless, she recalled that, “Every time our children went to bed, on every picnic, my husband told them stories from the Tanach [Bible] and from the Gemara [Talmud].” In retrospect, she understands that “Everything we put into them came out now.”
Naomi Gez has a simple message for the Jewish people. “For me, life is very, very straight. Hashem is the king. We have to understand what that means deeply. It’s not just words.”
We don’t have any choice in what happens in our lives, she said. “Hashem is giving us all the events. When we really understand that we don’t control the events in our lives, we have free will only in our response. We only have the choice of how to react, how to behave, and how to think when we have a challenge in life.”
When your head is in the right place, you know what is your place in this world. “Hashem is the commander. Hashem decides when you’re born, who your parents are – everything.” What you can control is what your choice is, Gez said: to be good or bad, to be depressed or filled with light.
“We got a stone on our head from Hashem; we got a tragedy. I cannot bring Tze’ela back even if I want to. I don’t spend time thinking if...,” she said, her sentence incomplete.
“This is the reality: She’s not here. Hananel is here. He is wounded. We have three grandchildren. I have to see straight what Hashem wants from me,” she said.
‘What does God want from me?’
“I am the daughter of Hashem. What does Hashem want from me? [He is saying to me] ‘I chose you now to be the very close grandmother to the children who are orphans from their mother, to give love to children with the hole of not having a mother.’
“I feel that the koach [strength] I got from my grandmother is in my blood, and I know that as Jews we cannot give up. We are promised in the Torah and [the prophets] that Hashem will never give up. We have to educate our children that we are blessed,” she said.
“I have an army that killed [Tze’ela’s] murderer. I have a flag. We speak in Hebrew. We can be free Jews. I am not in a shtetl. If we will be sad and if we give in, it means that they won. I will not play into their hands. There is no way to raise children in misery. Life is still beautiful. We don’t go to the pits,” she urged.
“I was a teacher for four decades. I tell myself, ‘I have to show my students that I believe in what I taught for all the years. I am telling Hashem: ‘If I taught my children and my students about emunah, Torah, Tanach, and the prophets all my life, and now they will see that I don’t believe in what I taught because suddenly I feel like ‘Oy gevalt!’ – ‘Oh no!’ – so it’s like all my life I didn’t speak the truth.”
The fact that she taught all these generations of students encourages her, she said. “It gives me strength to say that ‘Yes, yes, yes, I believe in what I taught. I believe in the tefillah [prayers]; I believe in the Torah – I believe.’”
Gez said that on Shavuot, we read the story of another mother-in-law and daughter-in-law: Naomi and Ruth. About Tze’ela, she said, “I want to go in her way, in her steps. It’s the opposite of Megillat Ruth. I tell Tze’ela what Ruth told Naomi. She is my role model. I have a job now.
“I want to do the best I can with the job Hashem decided to give me,” she said, because she knows that there are no mistakes from God and believes that this is His plan. “My mother said, ‘Naomi, we are so little compared to Hashem.’ We have to be very humble to understand that Hashem is the king. We have to do what He is asking us to do.’
Faith is the savior of life because you don’t break your head, she said. “When you have emunah, it’s much easier. You don’t take the world on your shoulders; you take the role that Hashem gave you and do the best you can.
“I cannot change the facts. But I can make a sandwich for my grandchildren. I can cut an apple for them to bring to kindergarten.”
She said that she talks to Tze’ela all the time. “I tell her, ‘Tze’ela, don’t worry. Your children are happy. They are okay.”
Spiritual genetics
Naomi Gez comes from a somewhat exotic, international family. Her father was born in Morocco, and her mother was born in Paris. Her maternal grandmother was born in Baghdad and worked for the French Resistance; her maternal grandfather was a soldier in the French army and later a POW.
Her paternal grandfather was a Sephardi (cantor). From her father’s side of the family, she learned all about the Jews’ forced conversions in Spain and Portugal during the Inquisition and about Sephardi culture.
During the Holocaust, between the ages of four and 10, Gez’s mother was one of France’s hidden children. Under a false name, she was moved in hiding from place to place. She spent 18 months in a Christian orphanage, where she was required to pray to a statue of Jesus. “My mother was seven years old then, and she told Jesus, ‘You are a Jewish boy and I am a Jewish girl. Let’s pray together to Hashem,” Gez recounted.
Gez’s parents made aliyah from France in 1966, when she was four years old. After growing up in Netanya, marrying, and starting a family in Israel, she and her husband, who is a rabbi, took their first three children to bring the light of Torah to communities in the Diaspora.
“In my soul, it’s very engraved that we are Jewish people.” Although she described her extended family as “disconnected from Judaism,” her parents, who became observant after making aliyah, ingrained in her the message that “it’s very important to get married, build a Zionist home, and be ambassadors of Judaism.”
The Gez family served as emissaries in Caracas, Venezuela, where their fourth child was born. They also served in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Houston, and Detroit before settling in Brooklyn, New York living there for 25 years. “My husband and I were teachers at the Yeshiva of Flatbush, where classes are Ivrit b’Ivrit [Hebrew in Hebrew] – it’s a very Zionist school.”
Gez returned with her husband to Israel in 2023. How does she explain the decades she spent in the Diaspora?
“Outside of Israel, I felt I could save a generation. I can teach Hebrew because I love Hebrew. I can teach Torah because I love Torah, and I can teach Jewish identity. My role is to grab the Jews before they fall into the pit of assimilation,” she explained.
“Outside of Israel, we are lights. I was giving bitachon [trust in God] and emunah to the ladies; I felt that I had a very deep meaning.”
Even while living and serving in Jewish communities in the Diaspora, the Gez family spent every summer in Israel; three of their four children made aliyah long before their parents returned.
With spiritual genetics like that, it’s not surprising that Naomi Gez is a wellspring of emunah. The exact tragedies that have befallen her family bring with them an opportunity to share messages of faith and trust in God with the larger Jewish world.
The writer is a freelance journalist and expert on the non-Jewish awakening to Torah happening in our day. She is the editor of Ten From The Nations, Lighting Up The Nations, and Adrift Among The Nations.