May We Be Worthy

In the song Acharei HaNetzach, “Beyond Eternity,” by Peer Tasi, there is one one line I keep playing over and over in my mind ever since I heard it the first time: 

Zman hu yam, ach lo hachof.
Time is the sea, but not the shore.

For me, and for many people in my synagogue on Long Island, those words carry a particular weight.

Captain Omer Neutra z”l grew up at Midway Jewish Center. We watched him grow from a little boy into a kind, funny, deeply committed young man. He attended the Schechter School of Long Island, was active in USY, spent summers at Camp Young Judaea Sprout Lake, and later worked at Ramah Nyack. After high school, he deferred college and went to Israel, eventually enlisting in the IDF and becoming a tank commander.

He had expected to attend Binghamton University. “After several years of bringing Israel to my friends,” he wrote, “I felt that the only way to continue was to bring myself to Israel.” He decided: “I can’t come back to Binghamton University. I have to stay, and I have to do my share.”

That was Omer’s Torah: responsibility, service, doing your share. Torah is not only something we read. It is something we can live, and there is Torah we learn simply by watching another person act on it. Sometimes people never tell us they are teaching us, and sometimes we don’t realize we are learning until years later.

On October 7, 2023, Omer was commander of Tank 3 along the Gaza border. In the documentary The Tank: The Black Box Opens, we hear actual recordings recovered from inside that tank: Omer, Oz Daniel, Shaked Dahan, and Nimrod Cohen, speaking to one another, encouraging one another. And singing. One of their songs was Acharei HaNetzach.  The chorus declares:

Beyond eternity, back before it all, we’ll meet again, you’ll see, in the end.

Shaked was killed on October 7. Omer, Oz, and Nimrod were taken hostage, and we fought and prayed for the safe return of all three. Oz was declared deceased in February 2024. For the next fourteen months, we prayed and hoped for Omer to come home alive. We learned he had been killed on October 7, and our prayers changed: we prayed to bring him home for a dignified burial he valiantly earned. Nimrod was released in October 2025. Omer was returned to Israel soon after, and was buried there in November 2025. At the funeral, Admiral Brad Cooper, Commander of U.S. Central Command, called him “a hero of two countries.”

He was. Omer was a son of America and a defender of Israel, and for him those were never in conflict. They were one sense of responsibility, the conviction that belonging to something larger than yourself creates obligations.

At Midway, we dedicated a new Sefer Torah in his memory. A Torah scroll is written letter by letter. But Torah can also be written in a life, and when we dedicated that scroll we were doing more than preserving a name. We were making a promise: that Omer’s Torah would continue to be read, and that it would continue to be lived.

That promise is being kept in many places. At Schechter, an award now goes to a graduating senior who embodies qualities of selflessness, leadership, and inclusion. Camp Young Judea Sprout Lake has an Omer Neutra Center for Leadership, Israel and Jewish Education. At Camp Ramah Nyack, a renovated staff residence is now Beit Omer. The Town dedicated a public park in his memory.

And at Kibbutz Hannaton in the Galilee, a new home gives lone soldiers what Omer himself once needed: not simply a bed, but a community, with Shabbat meals, holidays, and adoptive families. At its dedication, Omer’s mother, Orna Neutra, spoke to young people who had left North America to serve in the IDF, just as her son had. “There would be beautiful days and difficult ones,” she told them, moments of exhaustion, doubt, and longing. “In those moments, remember Omer.”

That may be one of the deepest forms of memory. Not merely saying a name, but asking, when we are tired or uncertain or called upon to act: What does the Torah of this person’s life ask of me now?

In the coming days, on Shemini Atzeret, we will gather for Yizkor. Yizkor is personal: a parent, a spouse, a sibling, a child, a friend. But Jewish memory is also communal. We remember the nearly 1,200 people murdered on October 7, including 46 Americans, and the Israeli soldiers killed since. As a rabbi and military chaplain, I also remember the American service members killed in the region by Iran-backed forces and ISIS, and those I stood beside as we honored them.

Different countries. Different uniforms. Different families sitting with an empty chair. And still, the same question: What do we do with their memory?

Because time moves. Another year passes, and then another. There are celebrations our loved ones were not here to see, children and grandchildren they never met, questions we wish we had asked. As the song reminds us, the sea keeps moving. But not everything moves with it. A voice we can still hear. A melody. A value. A way of treating people. A way of being Jewish.

This year, only days separate Simchat Torah from the third anniversary of October 7. For Israelis, October 7, 2023 was Simchat Torah, and for Jews everywhere the holiday will forever carry that echo. We will dance with the Torah, and then we will remember. Or perhaps we will do both at once.

Orna Neutra has written that since October 7, “we hear the same words over and over again: May we be worthy. Worthy of the fallen. Worthy of their courage. Worthy of their sacrifice.” Those words, she argues, cannot become just a slogan. They demand responsibility and accountability. She points to Omer and his tank crew, young men who, when everything around them was collapsing, understood that responsibility still belonged to them.

What does it mean for the rest of us to be worthy? Perhaps Yizkor offers part of the answer. We do not remember simply to preserve the past. We remember to decide what we will carry forward. The question is not only What do I remember about this person? but What Torah did I receive from them? What part of their life will continue because of the way I choose to live mine?

Then comes Simchat Torah. We finish the Torah. Moses dies. There is mourning, and an ending. And then we refuse to remain there. Another scroll is opened: Bereishit bara Elohim. In the beginning. We begin again, not because what came before no longer matters, but because we carry it with us: every story, every teaching, every generation that received this Torah before us.

Three years on, beginning again cannot mean pretending we can return to October 6. Too much has happened, and too many chairs are empty. But neither can honoring memory mean staying frozen on October 7. Our tradition describes the soul as tzrurah bitzror hachayim, bound up in the bond of life. Perhaps that happens when another person’s courage changes the way we live: when their generosity becomes ours, their commitment becomes ours, their Torah becomes a part of ours.

Zman hu yam, ach lo hachof. The sea has carried us three years from that terrible Simchat Torah morning. But some things remain on the shore: the people, their voices, their stories, their Torah.

Omer once said he had to stay and “do my share.” Three years later, perhaps that is the question he leaves for us: What is our share?

Omer and so many others are no longer here to write the next chapter. That part has been entrusted to us.

May we be worthy, not as a slogan, but as a way of living.