Ariel Zohar celebrating his bar mitzvah with a pair of tefillin that was passed on by his Holocaust surviving grandfather and rescued from wrekced home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz on Dec. 6. Photo by by ZAKA and screenshot/Chabad Terror Victims Project

By Jacob Kornbluh December 7, 2023

Ariel Zohar lost his entire family on Oct. 7 when Hamas terrorists attacked the kibbutz where they lived. On Thursday, he celebrated his bar mitzvah while wearing the same tefillin his paternal grandfather, a Holocaust survivor, received from his own father when he was 13. A year later the Nazis murdered both Ariel’s grandfather’s parents.

Ariel survived the Hamas attack on Kibbutz Nahal Oz, near the Israel-Gaza border, because he chose to go out for a run that morning. His father Yaniv, who freelanced as a videographer for The Associated Press, and his mother Yasmin, were murdered with their two teenage daughters, Tehelet and Keshet. His maternal grandfather, Haim Livne, was also killed in the attack.

Ariel, who turned 13 this week, moved many to tears as he stood at their graves and recited the mourner’s kaddish at their funeral, which was attended by an estimated 1,000 people. His parents had bought him his own tefillin for his bar mitzvah, according to the news outlet Israel21c. But his first request to ZAKA, a group of search-and-rescue volunteers, was to find his grandfather’s tefillin, which had been passed down to his father — in the wreckage of the family’s home.

Ariel’s grandfather, Marco Zohar, is 90 and lives in Israel.

Chaim Otmazgin, a ZAKA volunteer, wrote in a Facebook post that the group, after a brief search, found the dark blue velvet bag containing the tefillin and a prayer shawl.

“When I handed the tefillin to young Ariel that evening, he burst into tears of emotion that they had been found so that he could wear them for his bar mitzvah,” Otmazgin told Israel21c. 

A group of professional NBA and NFL players recorded a special birthday video message for Ariel. My prayers are with you,” Tyler Herro of the Miami Heat basketball team said. “I hope you keep your head high and enjoy this amazing day when you turn 13.”

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