Some people just have it. You cannot quite name it, but you feel it the moment they walk into a room. Moshe Yitzchak Katz had it. The 22-year-old from New Haven, Connecticut was that guy. The one who made everything feel a little lighter. A young Chabad man, a sergeant in the IDF’s 890th Battalion, a paratrooper. And to the people who lived alongside him as fellow lone soldiers, he was simply one of their own.
He fell in battle in southern Lebanon this past Friday night. Three other soldiers were wounded in the same attack. He was the fifth Israeli soldier killed in southern Lebanon since the fighting began.
His father, Mendy Katz, broke the news to the world in a Facebook post that stopped people in their tracks.
“With unspeakable tragedy I regret to inform you that my 22 year old son Moshe Yitzchak a*h a sergeant in the idf, fell in battle in Lebanon. My oldest Son with a zest for life and jokes. Burial is tomorrow in israel. Maybe we only share good news. My heart is shattered and the wound is real. May he be a malitz yosher for only good things. With love. Mendy Katz”
A zest for life and jokes. That one line says so much. Because everyone who knew Moshe would tell you the same thing without hesitation.
A close friend, a fellow lone soldier who lived nearby and spent countless hours with him, shared his memories in the raw, unfiltered way that grief sometimes forces out of people. For lone soldiers, he explained, the community they build together becomes their family. Three apartments, always in and out of each other’s lives, always checking in, always making plans the second they got off base. And Moshe was at the center of all of it.
“I don’t remember seeing him without a smile,” his friend said. Whatever came his way, Moshe just took it and kept going. He was always happy, always up for anything. Call him up and say you’re going for a beer, he was there. Say you’re going to eat, he was already putting on his shoes.
About three weeks ago, Moshe finished his training march and earned his beret. His friend ran into him outside a barber shop and noticed he was limping. Moshe shrugged it off. “Yeah, I just hurt my knee.” His friend happened to have a knee brace in his bag from his own injury and handed it over without a second thought. Later that same Friday afternoon, Moshe called him up. “You want to go to eat?” They went out, his friend paid for the meal as a way of saying congratulations, and they sat together for a long time. Good food, good company, a lot of laughs. That was Moshe.
“Really amazing person,” his friend said, his voice breaking. “Wow, what a loss.”
He did not have to be there. Moshe grew up in New Haven, thousands of miles from the front lines. He chose to leave, chose to enlist, chose to serve. That is not a small thing. It speaks to something deep in who he was as a young Chabad man, a commitment to his people that went beyond words. He put on a uniform and stood where it counted, with a smile on his face and a joke always ready.
The Jewish people lost one of their own this Shabbos. A son, a friend, a brother in arms. May his memory be a blessing.
