"The people are with you, the Raz family": An exciting human chain in Kida | Israel today

A great deal of sadness enveloped the settlement of Kida in Binyamin yesterday, after the fall of the late IDF fighter Noam Raz in an operation in Jenin.

Kida is considered a moderate settlement.

Most of its inhabitants work in the liberal professions, which they combine with farming and Torah study.

Noam Raz, the YMCA fighter who was killed, is a clear example of this combination: Raz was one of the first nucleus of the community's founders, and in addition to his many years of YMCA service, as a warrior, sniper and paramedic, he was also a farmer who cultivated olive groves and planned to plant a vineyard soon.

Alongside this, his friends say, Raz made sure to study Torah daily in the Beit Midrash in Kida.

Feelings of mourning, sadness and loss prevail after the death of Raz, one of the pillars of the community, where almost everyone knows everyone.

All Kida residents attended Raz's funeral yesterday, and those who were forced to stay in the settlement participated in a human chain made up of women, teenagers and children along Route 60, as his funeral procession advanced to Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.

Some residents carried signs that read "The people are with you, the Raz family."

In addition, the construction of a permanent synagogue will soon begin in the community, and some are already thinking of naming the building after the late Noam Raz, the man who was composed of so many layers - warrior, farmer, family man, scholar - and well reflected the character of the community .

"Officers' Hill" is the nickname in the settlement for the settlement of Kida in Benjamin, due to the high rate of permanent servicemen and senior officers in the reserve, who made up the first dozens of families who lived there in its early years.

In fact, the proportion of officers who serve permanently and in the reserve in elite units was so high in the early 2000s that when the Second Lebanon War broke out, the settlement was emptied of men, after almost all had been drafted into the reserve.

Today, about 100 families live in Kida, including seven senior officers in the regular service and another seven in the ranks of Lt. Col. or higher in the reserve. The town of Kida is considered part of the young settlement.

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