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By: Eliezer Zalmanov
On Friday, November 8, I awoke to the dreaded message on my phone, received overnight from my friend Lior in Israel: Our friend Guy Shabtay had passed away. He also included a link to a live broadcast of the funeral, which was already underway on Mt. Herzl in Jerusalem. I tuned in and caught the end of the service, hearing some of the speakers laud Guy’s character and his many accomplishments during a life cut short by a terrorist’s bullet.
Two weeks earlier, Guy had been mortally wounded in southern Lebanon on Shabbat Bereishit. He and several other soldiers were ambushed by terrorists hiding in a structure their unit was attempting to clear. Six soldiers were pronounced dead on the spot. Guy and the other wounded soldiers were transferred to Beilinson Hospital in Petach Tikva, where he underwent several surgeries in an attempt to save his life. For two weeks, friends and family around the world prayed for Guy’s recovery, and he was even given an additional name — Chizkiyahu, meaning “G‑d should strengthen him.” Devastatingly, he succumbed to his injuries and his soul returned to its maker, just shy of his 40th birthday.
Over the next few days, I was in shock, unable to process that Guy was really gone. I tried to go about my daily routine, but it all felt meaningless. I couldn’t fathom that this vibrant, full-of-life man was no longer with us. His wife of ten years, Reut, was now a widow, and his three precious daughters, Gefen, Halleli, and Chana, orphans.
A few weeks earlier, I had been texting with Guy and our conversation ended with him asking if I had plans to visit Israel. I told him that I actually did have plans to visit last winter, but they were postponed due to the war, and that I still hoped to be there soon and see him and his family. His last message to me was, “G‑d willing, I will be overjoyed to see you here.” Now, I was looking into flights to pay a shivah call to his family.
I met Guy and Lior for the first time in the fall of 2009, when I heard that a nearby community college had recruited a group of Israeli soccer players. I reached out to the coach and he gave me a phone number for one of them. I called and invited them for dinner in the sukkah with my family. They had all finished their mandatory military service and were starting college in their mid-20s as student athletes. Guy had previously played for Maccabi Tel Aviv. What followed was a years-long friendship, during which most of them began keeping Shabbat and even moved into our house every week to observe it properly. A moment of pride for both me and them was when their team scheduled a game on Yom Kippur, yet they chose to spend it with us in the synagogue rather than on the pitch.
Guy spent close to four years here, and in his final year the dramatic change in his life was apparent to all. He was wearing a kippah and tzitzit at all times, spending his spare time studying Torah and learning about living as an observant Jew. And after he graduated with an engineering degree, he returned to Israel and took the next obvious step — he enrolled in yeshivah, where he entered the tents of Torah, studying and becoming proficient in our ancient yet most relevant texts.
His secular parents, especially his academic father, were originally concerned about their son adopting a religious lifestyle. They felt that spending time in yeshivah—rather than utilizing his degree in a more productive manner—would force him to lead a life of dependency and living off others. But Guy proved that concern to be unfounded. Parallel to his yeshivah studies, he taught English and math at a local yeshivah high school, a job that he took great pride in and kept until his last day. He had hundreds of students over the last decade, all of them touched by his unique teaching style, imbued with patience and care for each individual under his tutelage.
We visited Guy on one trip to Israel shortly after he had enrolled in yeshivah, but then with me leading my community in Munster, Indiana, and Guy settling down, marrying, and starting a family of his own, our contact was sporadic. Every once in a while he would call, email, or text, just to catch up, update us about his life and hear how things were going with us.
One such call happened three years ago, in November 2021. My phone rang out of the blue and it was Guy. After some pleasantries, he got to the reason for his call: He was studying the weekly Torah portion, Parshat Vayetzei, and remembered that it was the first Torah portion I had taught him, and therefore most likely the first time in his life that he had actually studied Torah. Feeling indebted to me for that, he immediately called to share his appreciation for helping set him on his extraordinary spiritual journey, which had brought him to his current station in life.
We continued to stay in touch over the last three years. I texted him to check on him after the October 7 attacks. His brief reply: “I’m in the army. Pray for us.” As a former soldier, he was called up for reserve duty and served a tour in Gaza in the initial stages of the war. He then returned home and resumed life with his family and at work.
Over the last year, we talked more often than we had in the previous decade. Our conversations focused on the war, obviously, and Guy felt strongly about every Jew’s duty to stand up for their people and their land. Whether a Jew in America or in Israel, we all have an obligation to each other, he stated emphatically. In our final conversation, after we shared updates about our families and what our children were up to, he said to me: “I have a strong desire to always be on the path of teshuvah.” Although he had already been living an observant lifestyle for more than a decade, he acknowledged that a Jew can never rest and must always be moving and growing.
We spoke a lot about a mutual friend, Chaim Cohen, who also had a strong impact on Guy’s life, and who had tragically passed away last spring. Guy couldn’t believe it when I reached out to him to share the unpleasant news. He made a special trip to pay a shivah call to Chaim’s family, just to share with them how much Chaim influenced him and his path in life.
After being home for several months following his tour in Gaza, with hostilities heating up on Israel’s northern border, Guy volunteered to serve again; this time as religion coordinator on behalf of the IDF’s chief rabbinate, in the Alon combat unit fighting Hezbollah. Members of his unit shared that during the week prior to the ambush, which coincided with the holiday of Sukkot, Master Sergeant Guy ensured he had his lulav and etrog with him at all times, making an effort to offer everyone he encountered an opportunity to recite the blessing and perform the mitzvah.
