( JTA ) — Hersh Goldberg-Polin and Yuval Shoham were childhood friends, having grown up together in in Jerusalem’s Baka neighborhood, where both their families were involved in the egalitarian prayer community Hakhel. When Hersh, a 23-year-old American-Israeli, was taken hostage from the Nova music festival on Oct. 7, 2023, Yuval was among the soldiers tasked with finding him, shouting “Hersh” as he patrolled the Gaza Strip. When Goldberg-Polin’s family announced Hersh’s death over the summer, Yuval’s mother, Oshrat Shoham, spoke of her family and their community’s pain. “It really feels like he’s our son,” Oshrat said at the time . “The whole neighborhood is here with Hersh signs. We didn’t think it would end like this. Everyone was hoping that we would meet in the joy of liberation and not in this end. We didn’t imagine such an end.” On Sunday, the unimaginable befell the Shoham family, when the Israeli military announced that Yuval Shoham was killed in an operational accident in ...