YERUCHAM, Israel — Peering over tightly packed rows of books in the great hall of the white-brick seminary, the students pause their study of the Torah and Talmud each day for afternoon prayers, chanting the same words that Jews have been recited for centuries.
But these days, as the young men rock back and forth gently in worship, they add a new prayer.
“May the one who blessed our forefathers bless our soldiers standing guard from the Lebanese border to Egypt, from the sea, air and land,” they pray in Hebrew. “God will look after and save our soldiers from the enemy.”
Yet not all are saved.
At Yeshivat Hesder Yerucham, a seminary for young men in Israel’s Negev desert, eight students have already been killed in the Israel-Hamas war. The eighth died just last week.
It’s a crushing loss for the community of some 300 students, aged from around 19 to their early 20s.
Gilad Palmer, a teacher at the yeshiva, told NBC News last week that members have been “going from funeral to funeral.”
“Judaism is a religion that believes in life,” Palmer said. “We celebrate the life and not the death. But we also know that sometimes we have to pay the ultimate price for our people, our nation.”
Recalling the first of his students to die in the war, Palmer said Ariel Eliyahu, 19, was “always smiling” and “always searching to volunteer” within the school. He died when his tank was struck by Hamas fighters on Oct. 7, Palmer added, the day the militant group launched multipronged attacks on Israel that killed 1,200 and saw 240 kidnapped.
That so many students join Israel’s military is a point of pride for this yeshiva, where roughly 95% of the student body is ultimately drafted into combat units, the school said. Palmer said while it may seem counterintuitive for a religious institution to prize military service, it fits neatly into the ideals of selflessness and caring for others that the school strives to promote.
“It comes from the same values that you…
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