Staff Sgt. Orr Blumovitz, 20, an IDF soldier in Battalion 601, fell in combat in the southern Gaza Strip on June 15. Orr was the nephew of JUF CFO Boaz Blumovitz, who shares this moving tribute.
Yesterday, we buried Orr.
It was the largest and most intense funeral I have ever attended. More than a thousand people gathered in that small cemetery. Some of them did not even know him. And not a dry eye around.
I wish to share a few words about the person we lost.
Orr was a true hero. Not necessarily in the common use of that word, describing a soldier killed in battle. He was a hero during his life. This was a common theme spoken by all of those who stood at the podium - either from his family, or his fellow soldiers and commanders. A selfless, noble, purehearted, modest man - perhaps the core definition of a hero. Always thinking about others and never about himself. Always willing to sacrifice for what he thought was the greater good.
Orr had some conflicting attributes. A bookworm since a very young age, swallowing a book a day, but not a man of many words. A soft spoken, kind person - but a fearless fighter. The army and the war reshaped his identity. It was there he found his vocation.
He was named after the character Orr in Catch 22. A friend of Yossarian, the fictional Orr was considered crazy as he kept going to missions where he would be shot down with his plane - but he always survived. That is, until the last mission over the Mediterranean, when he was considered gone. Only toward the end of the book do we learn that he is alive in Sweden, and that whole time he had been practicing extreme survival to escape the war.
The real Orr could not, and did not want to, escape the war. On October 7 at 6:30 a.m., when the first news started to break through WhatsApp channels, he was at home for the weekend. At that very moment he loaded his gun and drafted himself before even being called. IDF was not functioning at that time. "Dad, there's gonna be a war. I need to go. Take me to the bus station."
Since 10/7 and until his last day, for more than eight months, he was fighting in Gaza, with just a few, rare weekends at home. Never complaining, never bickering, never saying how tough it was, how exhausting, how extreme, how demanding, never a single negative word.
Combat engineering is tough, and one of the most dangerous military jobs there are. "How are you holding on, Orr?" - "Fine." "What is the situation for your guys in Gaza now?" - "Just doing our jobs." "But what is it that you're doing there?" - "You wouldn't understand."
Yesterday when we heard the stories from people in his battalion, we understood a little more about what he was doing. He was nicknamed "the operations officer" of the squad, a job that doesn't exist, but he still did it. The go-to person for just about everything, solving every problem, coming up with creative solutions, sometimes managing his commanders, either through fierce fighting or in the in-betweens, filling in for anyone who for some reason couldn't function properly, doing everything from the smallest to the most strategic, at calm or under fire - making sure nothing is left behind.
Except himself.
This tragedy is national, all over the news, on TV and everywhere, and, now, so is the family's private grief. That includes the grief of Orr's two grandfathers - one that fought in the War of Independence, and the other in the Six Day War. Hundreds of people now come to this house from around the country, whether they knew him, knew anyone in the family, or neither.
Without getting into the politics of this war, one could not help thinking through this militarily-organized funeral about the country that was established after the Holocaust on the notion of creating a safe place for Jews. Orr's coffin was placed just next to that of Yinon Tamir, who was his best friend. Tamir was killed last November in Gaza by 'friendly fire.' His picture is on the wall of Orr's room at home. Now the two best friends are buried just next to each other.
Orr will be forever young, and his legacy will live on forever, too. What made him a hero in his life will be with us for the rest of ours. I hope that his memory will indeed be for a blessing.
