A Canadian-Israeli planned to marry. He died saving fiancée from Hamas

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Tel Aviv — The plan was to get married in the village they both loved over the Passover holidays, April 24 in Kibbutz Kfar Aza. The privatized kibbutz of 900 people in Israel’s Negev Desert is a bit more than an hour’s drive south of Tel Aviv  — but a world away from the country’s hightech centre. Despite kids running barefoot much of the time — as Netta Epstein, 21, did growing up — it wasn’t going to be a casual wedding. Family was coming in from Montreal: they were a family of Canadians and Israelis, some with dual nationalities who traveled in both directions to share weddings, Jewish ceremonies, and summer holidays.

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Epstein, a dual Canadian and Israeli citizen and Irene Shavit, 21, his Israeli-Italian fiancée, were planning a year of travel to Canada to reunite with his extended family in Montreal after the wedding.

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But on October 7, a Saturday morning, those dreams died when terrorists threw a live grenade into their safe room. Epstein jumped onto it to save Shavit.

The couple had been sheltering in their bedroom, doubling as a safe room built into the modest two-room bungalow owned by the kibbutz. The cement nest, designed to protect them from Palestinian-fired rockets out of the Gaza Strip, was a useless cover during a ground invasion. They couldn’t have known Palestinian terrorists had broken the border fence between the Gaza Strip and Israel and were armed with AK47s, knives, homemade weapons and grenades. The two snuggled back under the covers after the air raid sirens started wailing at 6:30 a.m.

Netta’s life will not be taken in vain

By 8 a.m. the kibbutz issued an alert: “Enter lockdown, suspicion of infiltration, hide.”

By the time the terrorists broke into his house around 11:30, Epstein knew his grandmother was killed. His uncle too.

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In fight mode, the just-released Paratrooper Brigade soldier jumped on the grenade they hurled into his bedroom, as second nature. That’s what men in the Israeli army are trained to do. Then the terrorists finished him off with a round of bullets.

Shavit, hiding from the terrorists behind Epstein’s body, said that her mother’s gentle voice knocked her out of panic and into survival mode. “Netta’s life will not be taken in vain,” Shavit’s mother told her. “You have to stay alive.”

Shavit positioned herself where she could stay concealed, a pair of eyes watching and ears alert, hidden behind Epstein’s lifeless body for five hours. During this time — not making a peep — terrorists stormed the community and came in and out of her home. The army came around 4 p.m.

Kfar Aza lost 62 people that day. Another 19 were taken hostage.

Six months after the ordeal, Shavit tells the National Post that “my mind was empty” those hours until the army came. She didn’t speak with Epstein’s body, there were no prayers to God in the sky, she didn’t text her parents: “At one point there was no signal anyway — either Hamas or the army turned off the cell tower.

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“But I felt Netta protecting me. Then, and still.”

She has no memory of what the grenade did to the man she loved so much.

Looking back at Epstein’s sensitivity and genial nature, perhaps uniquely his, she credits it as Canadian: “He was so proud of his Canadian heritage,” Shavit says. “He was always interested in speaking with people on the street, he was always polite and said sorry at every chance. Politically correct. I felt like he was from a different world.”

She knows that Epstein spoke weekly with his Great Uncle Bobby in Montreal, Dr. Robert Lubarsky, 76, the family anchor and the one who introduced Epstein to the wonders of Canada’s unbounded nature: “The lakes, all the water,” she said. “He loved it all.”

The last six months have changed Shavit in many ways. She is stronger, more independent than before October 7: “Netta always told me, ‘I want you to love yourself as much as I love you.’

“Now that I am alone, I am taking his advice and loving myself.”

Six months ago, she pondered having Epstein’s baby, with his parents’ consent. Posthumous sperm retrieval is not uncommon in Israel, where too many soldiers die at the start of their adult lives.

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Doctors and lawyers worked with the family around the clock to get access to Epstein’s body stuck in Kfar Aza. But by Wednesday when they could go in, the doctor said there was “no life left,” according to Netta’s mother, Ayelet Shachar-Epstein, 50.

“We tried right away but the fighting went on until Wednesday morning. We had lawyers and doctors helping us. But after his body being there for 96 hours, the doctor said there is nothing there that is alive. There is no hope. But they tried.”

Six months changes a person, though.

“It was my idea then, but now looking back I think it was too much,” says Shavit. “Then, just after it happened, I wanted every part of him. Now I understand it wouldn’t be fair to a child to live in that shadow,” she says.

Six months have also changed her mind about how to mark what would have been her wedding day, April 24: “The plan was to go to him in the cemetery in my wedding dress.

“In the end I am going to go with my girlfriends to Thailand.”

Shavit keeps busy in Bitzaron working with teenagers in an agriculture and dairy farming village of about 1,200 outside the city of Ashdod where she grew up. It was once on the front lines during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War against the Egyptian army.

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But if she gets the chance she will move to Kfar Aza when it rebuilds. The director of the kibbutz already announced that they will move nearby this fall, and return to the kibbutz in 2025.

Kfar Aza is only 5 km from the Gaza border and one of the worst-hit communities during the October 7 attack. Shavit also lost a close friend who was killed at the Nova dance festival, Mayan Kalishman.

Around 1,200 Israelis and foreigners were killed in the attack by Palestinian gunmen belonging to the Hamas terror group, the Islamic Jihad and others seeking terror on October 7, according to Israeli authorities.

But Kfar Aza was peaceful, quiet and pastoral when Netta’s Canadian-born grandmother, Susan Shachar, chose it as a place to raise her young family with her chemical engineer husband.

The Montrealer, born in 1948, immigrated to Israel in 1969 as a nurse, and a few years later chose Kfar Aza because it was among the few kibbutzim that let kids stay at home with their parents. Back then kibbutz kids were handed over to the communal children’s home and saw their parents only two or three hours a day.

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Susan Shachar’s father — Netta’s great-grandfather, Issie “Zaide” Lubarsky — was born into a family that immigrated to Montreal in the 1920s from Russia. “Europe didn’t feel safe for Jews then,” says Shachar-Epstein.

He worked for a Canadian company, the Investors Group, helping people create pension plans, and raised his two kids, Susan and Robert, in Côte Saint-Luc, a predominantly Jewish neighbourhood of Montreal, with Ruth “Granny” Lubarsky (Muchmacher) who was born in Montreal into a family from Poland. The Lubarskys and the Muchmachers met at the port in Montreal on arrival, and with Yiddish in common, found their first family friends.

Susan Shachar attended Zionist camps and youth groups in Montreal and Toronto and decided to move to Israel. She used her nursing skills to become a midwife at Soroka Medical Center, a hospital in Beersheva where she birthed thousands of babies, including “many Bedouin children,” says Shachar-Epstein.

When Shachar-Epstein was pregnant with Netta, her mom was living with the effects of an “evil” form of brain cancer. “Although she couldn’t be his midwife she arranged VIP treatment at the hospital for Netta’s birth,” says Shachar-Epstein, who grew up in a bilingual home in Kfar Aza, with three siblings.

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While it was Shachar-Epstein’s mom’s dream to be the midwife to her first-born, Netta, ”she delivered the babies of so many of my friends that by the time I was in labour with Netta she had trouble with her speech and was not doing well cognitively.

“Our midwife was my mom’s best friend, Adrienne Neta, an American who was also murdered on October 7 at Kibbutz Be’eri.”

Her Montreal family are giving them a lifeline now, and Shachar-Epstein and her sister are both visiting in 2024. “My Canadian grandparents were very significant grandparents to me,” she recalls. And while the kibbutz arrangement only allowed them to travel once in four years to Canada, Zaide and Granny would come to Israel with suitcases of stuff every ‘70s girl in Canada would remember: “rubber erasers with different scents and a whole set of Strawberry Shortcake dolls. I would have the most beautiful things that no one had in Israel at the time.”

Epstein himself spent extensive holidays in Canada: He went with his mom and dad to Canada in diapers, traveling from Vancouver through the Rockies to Calgary in an RV. Other trips to eastern Canada would follow as the family expanded. Epstein enjoyed his mom’s cousins and their children over the years. “We had a lot of summertime holidays in Canada and for Netta and Irene, it was one of the possibilities of their future together — of living there,” says Shachar-Epstein.

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“My son grew up in the Negev Desert, with very warm weather, being outside, barefooted, in shorts and T-shirts. For Shabbat dinners, maybe a white T-shirt. This was the freestyle way of his.

“Playing soccer, laughing his heart out. He loved water, he was like a fish and was a happy, confident child who went to the local schools nearby. Then at 13 he got a life-changing scholarship to join Herzl Camp in Minnesota, where Israeli kids can get to know young Americans. He passed the interviews, and luckily his first year he was away for two and a half months, during the 2014 war with Gaza.

“In 2014, a mortar from Gaza hit a kibbutz member and he died. It was the first time I realized that the situation is not great at Kfar Aza, but Netta felt it was the best place in the world.

When the rocket attacks got progressively worse, “In Grade 12 Netta led a five-day, 50-km protest march to Jerusalem with the slogan, Let Us Grow in Quiet, “so the government would understand our situation, that we are neglected and are living with missiles.”

He was interviewed in a small online Jewish magazine, Jewfolk, in Minneapolis about it in 2018: “Since I was born, since everyone on this trip was born, we have rockets,” said Epstein: “Last year, we got the (incendiary) kites. And like, this is our life, this is how we live. And it’s really not okay. This has to change right now.”

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“That’s what all of my childhood is built from. I have the bomb shelters, and I have the alarms, and I have all of that.”

That’s what all of my childhood is built from. I have the bomb shelters, and I have the alarms, and I have all of that

Before his mandatory army service, Epstein volunteered at a youth hostel for kids with special needs for a year in 2020: “Kids with broken homes,” says his mom. “I felt like I sent a child and got back a man. Then the army — I hated every second when he was in the army, especially the last six months. I have to send my child fighting for leaders I don’t believe in. I had nightmares and sleeping problems.

“But Netta was a Zionist, just like my mom. He wanted to fight for our country, to do what it takes.”

Epstein was released in August 2023, and had a last family trip, hiking Mont Blanc with his parents and two younger sisters in September. He was considering a professional soccer coaching career, or social work, but in the interim was landscaping at the kibbutz.

“After mornings at the kibbutz, he was a soccer coach for kids, studying FIFA guidelines for coaching, and worked with special needs kids nearby. He found that rewarding.”

Epstein had played soccer in the Israeli Premier League with Hapoel Be’er Sheva for two years.

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“One Canadian thing about Netta was his good manners,” says Shachar-Epstein. “He was always very patient with older kibbutz members — the grandmoms. He was truly participating and enjoying interactions with them.”

Great Uncle Bobby — Dr. Robert Lubarsky — says he had been close to Netta his whole life. “There was always that strong Canadian connection between us,” with trips back and forth.

“When he’d come to visit us he was always busy with my grandchildren. We took him to the Laurentians, Mont-Tremblant. He likes Beaver Tails and poutine.

Lubarsky, his son and Issie Lubarsky went to Epstein’s brit (circumcision) in Israel. Then Epstein’s bar mitzvah:  “We were looking forward to attending his wedding.”

Lubarsky says he broke down in tears when he heard Netta was dead. “My second thought was that he did not die in vain. He saved a life.”

My second thought was that he did not die in vain. He saved a life

After October 7 , Shachar-Epstein felt compelled to reach out to the Canadian Embassy through a friend. The Canadian ambassador to Israel, Lisa Stadelbauer, came to Epstein’s shiva, the seven-day mourning period in Judaism, “and then later asked if I would come for a visit to Kfar Aza with Canada’s Foreign Minister Melanie Joly.

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“I read a bit about her and understood she is not pro-Israel but I tried my best to show her my side. I felt her empathy when we met but two days later I heard her speech at the House of Commons, and was disappointed. About how terrible Israel is in Gaza.

“For me it is absurd balancing the two sides like that,” says Shachar-Epstein, who wears two watches — one is her son’s that she doesn’t take off.

In Montreal, the question of Zionism is a loaded one, says Lubarsky, because the pro-Palestinian voice is very strong: “There is misery. I have a neighbour who removed their mezuzah from the door. The government seems to be pro-Palestinian and ultimately they are motivated by what gets them votes,” he says.

“The past motion which was pro-Palestinian — that Hamas has the right to exist. It’s very disheartening but Joly has to toe the line. The motion, generally worded, distilled support for Hamas and terror,” Lubarsky says.

In one statement Joly was pro-Israel, like when she met Lubarsky’s niece, “and agreed that the problem of Hamas had to be eradicated. And then we see a photo of her holding hands with Abbas,” says Lubarsky, referring to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

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“Why does she say one thing in Israel and then come back to Canada and say something else. Why so duplicitous?”

(Joly’s press secretary, Isabella Orozco-Madison, says her office can offer the National Post “no comment,” citing technical email issues.)

“The feeling on the ground is that something is broken. We always felt that Canada, under the Harper government and before, was one of the strongest allies to Israel. Harper didn’t hesitate to vote at the UN when everyone was censuring Israel. Harper said this is a just war. Like when the allies wiped out the Nazis, there was a lot of collateral damage.

“Canada was pro-Israel. That has changed.”

Six months after the attack in Israel, Montreal’s Jewish community feels the ripple effects of the Israel-Hamas war: “We now have guards in our schools, community centres and in synagogues and we are talking about getting our guards armed, which is a significant development,” says Lubarsky.

While many in Toronto’s Jewish community have moved to Israel or are considering Florida, for now Lubarsky stays put, rooted in Montreal: “Côte Saint-Luc is kind of a ghetto,” he says. After 42 years in family medicine, from newborn babies to full-grown adults, he’s seen it all and isn’t worried about the future of Israel: “I am optimistic. I believe there is a certain mentality in that country that will prevail.

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“They have to do what they have to do.”

Shachar-Epstein and her husband Ori have settled into Matan, a suburban community near the city of Kfar Saba about an hour northeast of Tel Aviv. She works in sales for a laminating business; her husband is the business manager for the kibbutz. She hesitates about the idea of moving back to the kibbutz and offers no answers about the future.

Instead, she talks of the “moments of horror” on that Saturday six months ago.

“The most terrible thing was having to tell Netta that his grandmother was murdered, then his uncle, and then not being able to contact him. I got the news from Irene. Then my phone died.

“I didn’t know until the next day that she was rescued. That she was alive.”

“We buried him in Kibbutz Einat, next to here.”

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