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When asked what she wanted to do in the army, she said that she had requested to either help bereaved families, having gone through the trauma of losing her son herself, or aid wounded soldiers.
By Batya Jerenberg
An ultra-Orthodox woman whose son was taken hostage on October 7th, 2023 and murdered in captivity recently completed her basic training in the IDF, after she enlisted in a special unit for Orthodox Jewish women, after deciding that this was the way to best honor her son, Ori.
In an interview with the Moreshet radio channel Tuesday, Einav Danino, 47, explained that Ori had “loved the army” during his time in service, which he spent as an information and communications technology non-commissioned officer in the 202nd Battalion of the Paratrooper Brigade.
He had “served Israel with courage and pride…. entirely devoted to his country,” and she wanted to “follow in Ori’s footsteps,” as she put it in a different interview.
Danino drafted into a “Level B,” army reserves group, which entails passing an abbreviated, two-week basic training course and then serving for four months, with reserve duty possible in the future as well.
As an ultra-Orthodox woman, she had not served in the IDF as a youth, she told Moreshet’s interviewer, Dov Eichler, taking the army exemption that most religious women do as a matter of course.
She had also at first not wanted her son to join the IDF, she added.
Danino described her training with the varied group of women as “wonderful.”
When asked what she wanted to do in the army, she said that she had requested to either help bereaved families, having gone through the trauma of losing her son herself, or aid wounded soldiers.
Ori Danino. (Twitter Screenshot)
Another woman directly affected by the war was also in Danino’s draft class.
Michal Berkowitz is the widow of Master Sgt. (res.) Eyal Meir Berkowitz, 28, who fell in battle in northern Gaza in December 2023.
She told Kan News that “Since Eyal was killed, I’ve felt that my life lost its meaning. I’ve been searching for a sense of purpose, something to give my life direction, to avoid falling apart. This sparked a flame in me; to carry on Eyal’s legacy and be part of something greater.”
Berkowitz was killed during an operation which led to the recovery of the bodies of two Hamas hostages, Sgt. Maj. Ziv Dado and Eden Zakaria.
Ori Danino, who was engaged to be married, had been dancing at the Nova music festival in the early morning hours of October 7, 2023.
The 24-year-old had already started his escape from the Hamas terrorists who overran the site at the start of their invasion of Israel, when he turned his car around to try to rescue three young people he had just met hours earlier – siblings Maya and Itay Regev and Omer Shem Tov.
He found them in the chaos and started driving away, but they were captured as they tried to flee.
The Regevs, who were under age 18, were released in the first hostage deal six weeks after the war began, when 81 captive Israeli minors and women were freed in exchange for Palestinian prisoners and increased humanitarian aid.
Shem Tov was among 33 hostages released in the second deal earlier this year after being held captive for 505 days.
Ori was one of a group of six hostages that included Hersh Goldberg-Polin who were murdered in a tunnel in Rafah in early September, 2024, when their Hamas captors heard IDF soldiers approaching their hiding place.
The IDF recovered all their bodies, and Danino noted that she had felt “very grateful” to the army for enabling the family to bury Ori and gain a sense of closure.
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