Stories of courage from October 7, to read with children. Story one.
In the town of Ofakim, in southern Israel, lived a grandmother named Rachel Edri. She was 65. She lived in a small ground-floor apartment with her husband, David. They had been married for many years. Their children were grown, and the grandchildren came to visit on Shabbat and on holidays. Every time they came, Savta Rachel had something ready for them to eat. That was who she was. Nobody left her house hungry.
Saturday, October 7, 2023, was Simchat Torah in Israel. Early in the morning, before the sun was fully up, the sirens began. Rockets were falling on southern Israel. Rachel and David had heard sirens many times in their lives. They did what they always did and waited for it to pass.
But this time the sirens did not stop. Then came another sound. Gunfire. In the street. Close to the house.
Rachel looked out the window. Armed men were running through the streets of Ofakim. They were not Israeli soldiers. They were terrorists who had broken through the Gaza fence and driven all the way to Ofakim. Some were running toward her building.
Someone pounded on the door. A voice shouted in Hebrew: “Police! Open the door!”
David opened it. It was not the police.
Five men pushed their way in. They had rifles and grenades. They were shouting. They shut the door behind them. Rachel and David were now prisoners in their own home.
Rachel’s heart was pounding. She was sure these were the last minutes of her life. But in the middle of the fear, an idea came to her, clear and simple: These men are on edge. They are shouting, they are scared, and they might shoot. If I can calm them down, maybe, just maybe, with God’s help, David and I will survive. I need to keep them busy until our army comes to rescue us.
So Savta Rachel did something no one would expect at a moment like that, something she had done countless times with her guests. She did what she did best. She looked at the five terrorists standing in her living room and asked if they would like something to drink.
They stared at her. Then one of them said yes.
She went to the kitchen and brought water and Coca-Cola. She made coffee. She took out a plate of the cookies she had baked before the holiday and set it on the table. “Eat,” she told them. “You must be hungry.”
They ate.
Rachel sat down with them. She talked. She asked where they were from. She told them about her family. When one of them pointed his rifle at her, she calmly asked him to lower it. It made her nervous, she said, and she couldn’t serve coffee properly with a gun in her face. He lowered it.
Rachel knew a few Arabic songs from her childhood. She sang them. The men listened. One even sang along. Rachel smiled. Inside, she was terrified. But she never let it show. Not for a second.
Outside, the street had filled with police and soldiers. They surrounded the building. Among the police was a young officer named Evyatar Edri. He was Rachel’s son! He knew his parents were inside with five terrorists. He knew every room in that apartment, every door, every window. He drew the whole layout for the commanders of the special unit, so they would know exactly where to go when the time came.
The hours passed, and night fell. Rachel kept making coffee. She kept bringing cookies. She kept talking. At one point, when the terrorists weren’t looking, she raised her hand near the window and held up five fingers, so the police outside would know how many men were inside. They saw. They understood.
The terrorists grew tired. Rachel did not. Or if she did, nobody noticed.
At 2:30 in the morning, the police special unit stormed the apartment. It was over in seconds. Rachel and David, Baruch HaShem, walked out unharmed, straight into their son’s arms.
When the story got out in Israel, people could hardly believe it. A grandmother with a plate of cookies had held off five armed men for hours and saved her own life and her husband’s. Reporters asked her how she did it. Rachel shrugged. “I gave them cookies,” she said. “What else could I do?”
But everyone understood what she had really done. When fear filled the house, she did not freeze or panic. She thought. She stayed calm so the others would stay calm. She looked for every chance to help the people coming to save her. And never, not for one moment, did she stop believing they would come.
