The Bartender Who Survived the Nova Festival

After watching his friends and fellow bartenders be killed at the Nova festival on October 7, Lion Piv believes God gave him a second chance at life.

Lion had no intention of working at the Nova Festival. Although he wasn’t Shabbat observant, he was growing spiritually and had decided to stop working on Shabbat a few months previously.

Then he got a call from a friend, Liron, the managing bartender. She said, “Lion, please come help me. I’m going to pay you well.” Lion reluctantly agreed.

Since October 7, Lion has buried 14 friends. Liron, the bar manager, was later kidnapped and murdered in Gaza. Her body was returned in August 2024. Seventy percent of the bartenders were killed.

Chaos and Escape

At 6:30 a.m. that morning, Lion had just finished his night shift and went to the bathroom to change his clothes and then check out the dance floor. While changing, he saw alerts on his phone. At first, everyone thought it was fireworks but when they saw thousands, they understood it was something much bigger.

Everyone wanted to leave right away but Lion had been drinking all night and knew he wasn’t in any state to drive. He calmly told his friends, “Do not leave yet. Let all the people who are drunk and high leave first. We’ll go after them.”

Around 7:15 a.m., the bar manager told the bartenders to come back and reload.

His friend, Hila Franco, wanted to help the manager reload the bar. Lion didn’t want to go back. He told her, “You honestly think that this is what you need to do? You can drive home.” That’s how he saved her life.

Lion tried to call his family to say goodbye but he didn’t have cell service.

In the parking lot, one of his friends started to scream, “They’re shooting us! We have people hurt!” Lion thought they were high or hallucinating—it seemed absurd.

Then he heard the bullets. They were about 400 meters away. He began to drive like a madman but crashed into a tree. He wasn’t hurt but the car was destroyed. They couldn’t leave by car anyway—there were around 900 cars trying to escape at once.

They realized they needed to run for their lives.

While trying to escape, he approached a police car and asked the officer where to run. The policeman advised him to run toward the sun.

He began to run. Seconds later, an RPG hit the police car and killed the officer who had just helped him.

“There was a huge black cloud. The explosion was so loud, I went temporarily deaf.”

Seconds later, an RPG hit the police car and killed the officer who had just helped him.

Everyone was rushing toward the potato field, then on toward the orange forest. But Lion felt a deep, sick twist in his gut. Something was wrong. Trusting his instincts, he broke away and ran in a different direction. Bullets hissed through the air around him but none found their mark. Even as people collapsed all around him, falling one by one, he kept running.

“I felt hopeless. While running, I screamed, ‘Shema Yisrael!’, praying from a depth I didn’t know I had.”

Eventually, he saw two of his friends and they continued to run together.

They stole a car but it eventually crashed too—everything was blocked. They couldn’t escape the traffic.

People began jumping on their car, trying to survive. Everyone was screaming: Where is the army?! It’s the sound Lion can’t forget—people screaming for their lives.

Then, out of nowhere, they saw Yair Golan, a high-ranking military officer. He appeared in a private car wearing an IDF uniform.

At first, they thought he was a terrorist in disguise. But he said, “Please go that way and save yourselves.”

Lion and his friends asked, “Why are you the only one here?”

They managed to find another car and got onto Highway 323 where they witnessed horrific scenes.

“We got to Netivot and started getting notifications about Sderot and Ofakim. There were terrorists everywhere. It felt like a nightmare. Nothing was real. We saw terrorists with IDF uniforms. We saw people running from a synagogue, screaming ‘Terrorists!’ I wondered if they were killing people in synagogues too. It felt unreal.”

When they reached a neighborhood, people were too frightened to let anyone in.

Lion and his two friends jumped a fence and entered a home where they found about 30 Jews celebrating Simchat Torah. One of them was an acquaintance from Ashdod, his hometown.

Lion finally made it home on Sunday at noon.

The Aftermath

“So many of my friends died. Some were taken hostage into Gaza, and most of my fellow bartenders were killed. It makes no sense that I am here. God gave me a second chance at life. Now I’m trying to figure out what He wants from me with this extra time on earth. I’ve found a lot of healing through spirituality.”

So many of my friends died. It makes no sense that I am here.

Today, he no longer smokes on Shabbat. He makes Kiddush, keeps a kosher home, and recites Asher Yatzar—the blessing after using the restroom.

“I am trying to reconnect with God and to thank Him. Nothing is a coincidence. Everything is meant to be.”