A Love Story Born from the Tragic Day of Oct. 7

The couple met while working at Pitchon-Lev, an apolitical NGO established in 1998 as a national humanitarian organization focused on breaking the intergenerational cycle of poverty in Israel.

By Atara Beck, JNS

Rebecca Starr and Benjamin (Benji) Katz are among countless Diaspora Jews who immediately volunteered to join the war effort in Israel after the shocking massacre perpetrated by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023.

Starr, 29, is an English and mathematics teacher at a Jewish school in Montreal. The daughter of a Moroccan mother and an Ashkenazi father, she was raised in a Zionist home and was always proud of her Jewish heritage.

Katz, 31, born and raised in Boston, works for a sports merchandise marketing company for baseball players in Miami. He, too, grew up in a staunchly Zionist family and spent a year in Israel after high school.

He has always been active in the Jewish community and has a sister who lives in northern Israel.

Starr described how, like many others, she was astounded by the news on Oct. 7 and felt the need to do something.

“A friend of mine from Israel texted me about what happened, and I was shocked,” she said. “I immediately opened X and saw horrific videos. I went to the synagogue for Simchat Torah and met two friends who didn’t know about it at all. Slowly, everyone found out.”

Suddenly, she explained, what was supposed to be a joyous festival turned into a day of grief. “For me, it was like sitting in a shiva (mourning period). Everyone was sitting there and didn’t know whether to celebrate the holiday or not. It was a shock, and we didn’t know how to deal with it.”

For days, she said, “I felt helpless, like others in our community in Montreal. It wasn’t enough for us to donate money from afar. We wanted to do more, to really help with our hands.”

In Dec. 2023, already in Israel, she met Katz, among other volunteers, and they immediately became friends.

Coincidentally, both were assigned to work for two weeks at Pitchon-Lev, an apolitical NGO established in 1998 as a national humanitarian organization focused on breaking the intergenerational cycle of poverty in Israel.

Since the start of the current war, Swords of Iron, Pitchon-Lev has been providing emergency aid to Israel’s security forces and survivors of the massacre.

Starr and Katz, working side by side, packed hundreds of food and aid boxes daily, and naturally, they spent much of that time chatting. Their topics of conversation included hockey, a sport they both love watching.

“I despise the team that he’s a fan of and vice versa,” she said with a laugh. “But it was a good subject that broke the ice between us, and we connected from the start.”

After only three days, their friendship developed into romance. During their free time, “we would go for walks on the beach at sunset, listen to music, and spend more time together,” Starr said.

“A funny thing happened when I ran into an acquaintance, an IDF reservist, who had returned from Gaza to refresh himself, and I told him what I was doing at Pitchon-Lev,” she said.

“He responded: ‘Pitchon-Lev? I know about them. I get their [donation] boxes at my unit in Gaza.”

Those words reassured Starr. “It meant that I was really helping and that what I was doing mattered to others.”

The situation became challenging, however, when it was time for the couple to return home – to different cities. “We didn’t plan on being pen pals,” she joked. “It’s a three-and-a-half-hour flight between us, but it just felt so strong. We wanted to give it a chance.”

They immediately made plans to meet as soon as possible and spoke often on video calls.

Last August, at the end of the school year, Starr moved to Miami and landed a job at a Jewish school there. They will be married this coming July.

Rebecca Starr and Benjamin Katz volunteering at Pitchon-Lev. Photo credit: Pitchon-Lev

On a recent visit to Israel, they volunteered for a day at Pitchon-Lev. “We hope to do this on every visit,” Katz said.

Both sets of parents are thrilled about the match and especially about how they met volunteering in Israel.

The couple plans on having children who will also “get to know Israel and experience the land and life there,” Starr enthused. They decided that the middle names of each of their children would be after hostages who died in captivity.

“This is the least we can do,” Starr said. After all, she noted, “This war is what brought Benji and me together, and they will always be a part of our home.”

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