Halevy, Ezra
Ezra, son of Zahara and Shlomo, was born on 15 July 1954. He studied in the Beit Yaakov elementary school in Ramle. Afterward, he studied high school at the “Hadarom” high school in Rehovot for five years, the last of which was also the year of a training seminar for teachers. The desire to acquire knowledge had distinguished Ezra from his childhood. He refused to go to the kindergarten, claiming that he could not find his place “with children wasting time playing games.” And so, even before he was five years old, he began to study in first grade, when the fundamentals of reading are already clear to him from studying in the “cheder” and in the home of Abba. In elementary school he was a disciplined student and was a good performer. “Ezra was a quiet, diligent and withdrawn young man,” said the principal of the high school at Yeshivat HaDarom. “There is a sad loneliness of depression, a loneliness of gloom, but there is a loneliness that stems from supreme feelings, from exaltation … Ezra was undoubtedly a member of the second type, Spiritually, yes he was also physically active. He began to work as a hobby, metalwork and a lot of sports. He saw the development of physical fitness for his army service. He disliked any indulgence and negation of the special treatment accorded to him by his parents because he was the only son of his six sisters. He always made do with little and never demanded pocket money. On the contrary – he managed to save money even while serving in the army. Ezra was drafted into the IDF in mid-November 1972 and volunteered for the Paratroopers Brigade, and he chose to serve in the Paratroopers Brigade, not only because of the glory and honor attributed to the parachutists, Volunteering and self-sacrifice, which he read about in the books about the paratroopers: “Shacharar, short, a little shy, that’s how we met him for the first time.” But he insisted and demanded the paratroopers. Faced with such a determined decision, we could not stand it and accepted it. Ezra always shared his vacations with visits to the Western Wall, and one of Ezra’s friends, who joined him on trips to the Western Wall, said: “Ezra always went to the Western Wall in uniform. At first I did not understand why only in uniform. But when I stood in front of the Wall, I understood Ezra’s feeling, which he always used to say: The Wall belonged to the paratroopers who liberated him in the Six-Day War … “When the Yom Kippur War broke out Ezra was in prayer, He was killed on the 8th of Tishrei 5734 (8.10.1973) in the bombing of the enemy planes on the base and brought to rest in the cemetery on Mount Herzl, and after his fall was promoted to the rank of corporal. Friends talk about him
