The Life and Death of Binyamin Airley

On the morning of Saturday, November 18th, Binyamin Airley, 21, and his fellow soldiers woke up early to pray. They were staying in Gaza in a house near the beach. They were eating breakfast when at 7:30am, they were called to join a battle. A group of terrorists had wounded seven soldiers, one seriously. Two terrorists ran into a house and were shooting incessantly. They would stop for a brief period only to start the vicious cycle all over again.

Jamal Abas, a Druze Commander from a different batallion, had enough and decided to go in with his right-hand man, Shachar Friedman.

“Binyamin did not know them,” Jen Airley, Binyamin’s mother, said in an Aish.com interview. “He just pushed his way forward and said, ‘You can’t go in without me. I have a Negev gun [heavy duty machine gun].’

The three went in, scouting different rooms of the house. They saw a terrorist on the floor and assumed he was alone, but another terrorist was hiding behind the couch and killed all three of them.”

Jen was grateful Binyamin died instantly and did not suffer from his wounds.

“He valued the land of Israel and the Jewish People and always said, ‘If I have to die for Eretz Yisrael, that’s what I have to do.’ He considered it a privilege to fight for his country.”

An Eerie Premonition

Jen had a premonition that morning and found herself crying uncontrollably. She was in synagogue Saturday morning when she started to choke up and had to go home. Sitting at her table, she began to bawl again with no explanation. Her ten-year old daughter tried to comfort her and hugged her tightly.

Jen pulled herself together and explained, “I just wish we could all have Shabbos together.”

She and her daughter prayed and cried together. Jen even hosted guests for lunch. At 4:00 pm, they heard a knock on the door. Soldiers arrived to inform her of Binyamin’s death. Jen knew deep down, but asked them what time it happened.

They answered, “The battle took place between 9:30 and 10:30 am.”

It was exactly the time she was crying and praying.

Jen feels confident that her prayers did not go unanswered. Perhaps they prevented her son from suffering or saved a different soldier. She believes that they accomplished something.

Living with Joy and Purpose

Jen and her husband, Robert, have channeled their pain into creating an organization called Beit Binyamin, Binyamin’s House. Taking the home in Tzfat they bought two years ago with the hope to rent it out to generate income and use it for vacations, they converted it to a retreat center for anyone who needs healing from war trauma.

“People can come and be pampered. It’s beautiful. It has an amazing panoramic view of the Meron mountains and it sits right next to artist galleries. It’s everything someone would need to come relax and heal.

“This project is part of how we are choosing to continue living. We want our other children to see our resilience. Sure, they see me cry. We cry together, but we also dance and laugh and we also live life. Instead of asking lama – why, we are asking Le mah—what can we do with this? What can we make of this? How can we make the world a better place? How can we keep shining Binyamin’s light?”

Binyamin’s Unbridled Zest for Life

Binyamin was known in the Army as the guy who could make everyone laugh—even in the toughest of times. He had a fierce love for life.

Jen reflected, “Even when his body was identified, I was told he had a smile on his face. He went into war with a smile and left war with a smile.” Jen has decided to keep smiling because, “that’s what he would want. I want to emulate his zest for life.”

Growing up, Binyamin was a “rambunctious, wild child.” Binyamin had ADD and never fit into a typical learning structure. He drove his teachers crazy and was regularly kicked out of class or refused to show up.

Although Binyamin was always respectful to his parents, authority was a challenge for him. He loved to have fun, and was deeply curious about the world around him.

In seventh grade, Binyamin took a ball of aluminum foil and placed it inside the new microwave at school. He turned it on for twenty minutes and left the room. The microwave was lit on fire.

However, Jen explained, “Binyamin showed up the next day at school with a new microwave to replace the one he had destroyed. He owned up to what he did.”

Binyamin had been through several different schools, and Jen had experienced many sleepless nights. He would come home at all hours of the night, even as a 13-year old.

On the first day of ninth grade, Binyamin arrived and was asked to put his iPhone in the bucket before entering school. While everyone else complied, Binyamin refused.

The teacher informed him that he would have to leave if he didn’t turn in his phone. He simply said “okay” and left the campus.

Jen was angry and didn’t know how to handle the situation. Rabbi Brezak, her parenting mentor, told her, “This is between him and the school. He has to own up to this.”

Jen heeded this advice and acted neutral when he came home. “By day three, he woke up and said, ‘I’m going to school.’ He handed in his phone, and that was the end of the matter. We had tried incentives and other programs, but he had to learn to do it for himself. Not for us or the incentives, but for him.”

Binyamin’s List

The eleventh grade was a turning point.

“Binyamin got caught smoking something. I don’t exactly know what.”

Jen’s husband, Robert, looked at Binyamin and said, “Look, you can keep going down this road. You can keep getting into trouble, but you are only going to go down. Or you can make a decision to go up. The choice is yours. We are not going to tell you what to do anymore.”

Reflecting on that time in Binyamin’s life, Jen said, “That seems to have been the pivotal move. When Binyamin decided that he was going to make that turn, he literally flew. Giving him that choice gave him the wings to fly.”

Binyamin started a new school, connected with different teachers, and made several decisions that set him on a different path.

After he was killed Jen found in his bedroom a list of 55 items he wanted to achieve in his lifetime in his room that wrote when he was 16. His impressive list captures the kind of man Binyamin was working on becoming. It included the following:

I want….

1. to eat healthy
2. to workout “kravi” style
3. to have good friends that would influence me in a good way
4. to do well on his tests
5. to be in an elite unit in the army
6. to have good relationships with all of my family and my extended family
7. to learn Torah
8. to pray with feeling
9. to have enough money- not too much, but enough to live
10. to have and to ride horses
11. Moshiach which should come and the beit hamikdash (temple) to be rebuilt
12. to be without a smartphone
13. to be humble
14. to understand why I came into this world

At the time he wrote this list, Binyamin was still figuring himself out, but he had a vision and knew where he wanted to go. Deep down, he wanted so much more for himself.

Jen said, “We have these mantras we always tell our kids — ‘don't give up’ and ‘you can do it.’ We assume it’s falling on deaf ears, but it’s there somewhere, deep inside them. It just has to be drawn out.”

Binyamin also noted that he did not want to waste his abilities. “I think that’s the greatness of Binyamin. He used all of his strengths for the good. The fact that he made a list of 55 things is wild. The fact that he accomplished almost all of them is even wilder…He set himself out to do it and he did it. All by the time he was 21. I hope his list inspires others to write their own list.”

Feeling Binyamin’s Hand

Jen and her husband had to confront the choice: Am I going to fall into a depression or will I choose to smile and keep living for him?

Jen has decided to focus on the silver lining in this most unfathomable scenario of losing her son and to focus on the good.

“Thousands of people have been inspired by Binyamin. Just yesterday, I was at my grandfather’s grave. He was a Holocaust survivor. He lost his parents and his siblings after the war. Obviously, he suffered trauma. He had nightmares. Yet, despite it all, his sole desire is to continue and live and bring more people into the world. He lost half of his family. I lost one—he lost so much more. These are our genes. It’s not just my genes. It’s our genes. If he can do it, I can do it.”

Jen also gains strength from one of her favorite memories of Binyamin.

Two years ago, Jen ran the Jerusalem Half Marathon with Binyamin. They were jogging up a hill when Binyamin put his hand on her back to push her forward.

“I’m like, ‘Dude! Stop pushing my back! You want to go ahead? Go ahead! I’m slow and steady.’” Later on, he started pushing her back again, and again she urged him to go ahead without her.

“No, I want to stay with you,” he answered simply.

Jen explained, “Going uphill sometimes, I feel his hand still on my back, pushing me forward. He is still there. He’s still pushing.”

Jen also shared that during the race, Binyamin wanted to start sprinting as they came close to the end. “At kilometer 19, he wants to sprint and again at kilometer 20. I told him, ‘I can’t sprint yet, you go ahead.’

“I said, ‘When we are going to turn and you see the finish line, that’s when you are going to sprint.’”

Jen explained this is a metaphor for life. “If you can see the finish line, you can sprint. But sometimes we don’t know when the finish line is coming. We don’t know how long it’s going to be. We are definitely in the process. Are we close enough that we can push every ounce we’ve got? I don’t know. I kind of feel like I am.”

Israel’s Remembrance Day

This year’s Yom Hazikaron—Israel’s Remembrance Day—will take on a whole new meaning for the Airley family.

“Yom Hazikaron is now every day for us. Our plan is to go to Binyamin’s farm and plant and build. I'm sure the sirens will be different for everybody. We will be there for each other. We will be together and we will hold each other.”

Yom Haatzmaut will also be different this year.

“It’s not the time to celebrate and party, but at the same time, there is a cause to celebrate. We have the land of Israel, we are living the dream of living in our homeland. We can walk the streets, hike our trails, we can go to the Western Wall, or go to Rachel’s Tomb. I have so much gratitude. We are blessed to live here.”

The Airleys plan to go to the Kotel on Yom Haatzmaut to celebrate their younger son donning tefillin for the first time.

“He is about to turn 13 so he will be using Binyamin’s tefillin. That is how we will celebrate, by continuing on and being grateful.”

A Jew Is a Jew Is a Jew

Through her struggles, Jen wants to convey a simple message to the world. “We are in such unsteady times. More than ever before, we have to keep holding on. Yes, it’s hard, but we can do hard.

“For Binyamin, this war was about holiness. We, as Jews, are different from the rest of the world. We are different from our enemies. Binyamin was fighting for the land and the people. He didn’t care what people looked like. If they looked like a super Jew or if they were bald with tattoos everywhere. He had this relationship with people, and he could connect with anyone. A Jew is a Jew is a Jew. Protect and love every Jew. They are your brother.

“That was his holiness. That was Binyamin.”

Jen Airley is featured in the powerful documentary October 7th: Voices of Pain, Hope and Resilience. Click here to register to watch online.