Two survivors of Nova festival tell Pitt students to focus on healing, love
'If we keep looking for the good we’ll find it'
In a closed room packed with more than 50 University of Pittsburgh students, Ohad Seelenfreund and Roy Yesharim described their quest to survive.
Seelenfreund and Yesharim, both 24, attended the Nova music festival on Oct. 7. The two Israelis, during a private meeting at Hillel Jewish University Center on Sept. 9, recounted how they came to the desert eager to party with friends, how they freely danced with strangers through the night and how an insouciant scene framed by beats of rhythmic trance mutated into horror.
In the early hours of Oct. 7, Palestinian militants entered the festival, killed at least 364 attendees and took 40 people hostage, the Associated Press reported.
Seelenfreund and Yesharim are among 2,500 survivors. Sharing cellphone footage and photographs, the two Israelis began their talk by explaining the rationale for attending Nova.
Festival-goers are an “open-minded” and peace-loving group, Seelenfreund said. “The thing about these parties is that they are the safest place to be,” he continued. The psytrance community — people interested in a subgenre of trance music — welcomes individuals to “come as you are, with all your defects.”
After Seelenfreund arrived at Nova, he said he didn’t set up camp in the desert: “I just went straight to dance.”
Seelenfreund showed the students pictures from the festival. The images depicted fellow Gen Zers laughing, posing and embracing.
“I remember saying, ‘This is the best night of my life,’” Seelenfreund said.
At 6:29 a.m. on Oct. 7, the music stopped. Rockets flew above. There wasn’t a palpable feeling of terror, Seelenfreund said. The thought was more that “we would go into a shelter and wait it out.”
Seelenfreund calmly described the next several hours. He said he and friends exited the parking lot in their car, saw missiles nearby, exited their vehicle, entered a shelter and listened to rapidly approaching gunfire.
His earlier military service made him familiar with clamor.
“But nothing sounded like what I heard,” he said.
As gunfire and cries of “Allahu Akbar” grew closer, a girl ran out of the shelter and was shot, Seelenfreund said. “We were stuck in there. Everything was dark in the shelter and I said, ‘Shema Yisrael.’”
Reciting the biblical phrase prompted Seelenfreund to envision fragments of his life, he said. “I texted my parents goodbye and began praying. And I am not even a little bit religious.”
Seelenfreund heard a shootout and “different gunfire,” he said. Two Israelis with pistols battled eight terrorists with rifles.
He said he and a friend ran from the shelter toward their car.
“Three feet from me a girl fell,” he said. “She was shot.”
Seelenfreund said he and his friend drove toward the festival. They saw a traffic jam and people running.
“There were gunshots everywhere and terrorists all around,” he said.
Seelenfreund described exiting his vehicle, reentering his vehicle and thinking, “How many terrorists can there be in Israel? It can’t be possible.”
Seelenfreund said his friend drove toward a forest and then a vineyard.
“We encountered five terrorist groups after everything we encountered,” he said.
The friends eventually reached a gas station “about an hour from the festival,” Seelenfreund said. A police officer directed them to a nearby shelter, but Seelenfreund refused to go. Instead, he and his friend headed toward a kibbutz.
“We saw hundreds of people injured,” Seelenfreund said. “Everyone was in shock.”
Seelenfreund said he tried reaching out to people from the festival but couldn’t get through.
“I lost a lot of friends that day,” he said. “I know 16 people that died. Seven were close friends.”
Seelenfreund said he spent hours pondering what to say at his best friend’s funeral.
“That’s a f**ked up thing to think about,” he told the students. “People our age shouldn’t have to think about that.”
Yesharim began his speech by showing photographs.
“I want you to meet my friends,” he said. “We were having the best time together.”
“At 6:29 a.m. everyone was waiting for sunrise. We hear the bombs and I think, ‘This is an amazing production,’” Yesharim said with a laugh.
He and a friend immediately entered a vehicle and began driving. They ignored their GPS’ instructions and headed toward a shelter, he said.
“We have snacks, we have water, we have weed, we can stay in a shelter for a week,” he joked again.
Yesharim told the students he kept thinking, “There’s no way there are terrorists in Israel.”
Yesharim said he refused to send “last words” to his family via text. “I have so much more to do.”
Yesharim and his friend eventually made it to an IDF base. For 90 minutes they begged to enter a secure area. “We told them we are Israeli and we will go in naked,” he said.
A Bedouin member of the IDF ran toward them, Yesharim said. “He let us in.”
Yesharim and his friend entered a space where “so many people are trying to figure out what the hell is going on.”
Around 1 a.m. on Oct. 8, Yesharim and his friend were told it was safe to leave, he said. The drive home was “disgusting. The scent was terrible. There were bodies of terrorists, bodies of Israelis, so many crashed cars.”
Yesharim arrived home around 1:30 a.m.
“I started crying and fell on the floor,” he said.
Then he went to sleep.
“When I woke up I was already alerted to show up for reserve duty,” he said.
Yesharim said he began looking through missing person posters. He said he found one of himself.
“Imagine seeing that,” he told the students.
Yesharim said he immediately visited a “healing center” where he learned to deal with the effects of trauma. “That center saved my life.”
The Israeli, who prior to Oct. 7 intended to become an electrical engineer, began freediving.
He showed a video of himself descending the Red Sea.
Plunging beneath the surface was the “first time I could just be, and not deal with so many thoughts in my head,” he said.
Yesharim said he’s become a free dive instructor “in order to give back,” and that he’s also attended several festivals since Oct. 7.
“Every party I go to and I see the sunrise I shout and I cry, but my friends embrace me,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what we go through,” he told the students. “If you make up your mind and decide to get through it you can.”
Seelenfreund and Yesharim’s talk was supported by Survived to Tell, a project of Israel-Is, a non-government organization whose mission is to connect young Israelis with their global peers.
University of Pittsburgh student Yoni Preuss, 22, described the Israelis’ talk as valuable.
“Hearing these important stories, it’s difficult,” he said. “You never get used to it, but you understand it a bit, mentally, spiritually, physically. I think I grapple with it differently every single time, but it’s important to do so.”
“It’s exceedingly important that we continue to educate ourselves, continue seeking information on the events of Oct. 7 and amplify the voices of those who experienced it,” Pitt student Asher Goodwin, 22, said. Only by doing so can “we fully understand the gravity of the situation, why we are where we are now.”
Fellow Pitt student Ilan Gordon, 21, said it was important that Jewish and non-Jewish peers heard Seelenfreund and Yesharim’s accounts.
“Hopefully we can spread that to the whole entire Pitt community,” Gordon said. Sharing what happened that day could help “humanize Israelis.”
Before the program’s close, Seelenfreund was asked about those who deny the atrocities of Oct. 7.
The Israeli, who said he’s shared his story nearly 50 times in the past year, recalled being told that Oct. 7 was nothing more than a false flag.
Instead of getting angry that the person said IDF helicopters shot civilians at the Nova festival, Seelenfreund said he stayed calm and simply replied, “I hope you don’t have friends who die at a party [attacked] by terrorists.”
Reaching a point where aggression is met with sangfroid took time, he said.
“I found that anger does nothing,” the Israeli told the students. “Love is so much stronger. If we keep looking for the good we’ll find it.” PJC
Adam Reinherz can be reached at areinherz@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.
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