His Mother Was Killed by Hamas. Her Death Transformed His Life.
The son of a peace activist brutally killed on Oct. 7 is determined to make sure that her dream for Israel does not die with her.
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Emma Goldberg is a features writer who spent months interviewing Vivian’s son and traveled to the kibbutz where his mother was killed by Hamas.
The day Vivian Silver’s home burned, her backyard was scattered with her grandchildren’s toys, a blue plastic boat upturned near a rubber duck. Vivian often spent days preparing for their visits, planning trips to the petting zoo and baking birthday cakes molded into the shape of a Barbie or a dinosaur. Her sons, Yonatan and Chen Zeigen, reminded her that she didn’t need to do so much, but Vivian measured her life by the way she made other people feel. The boys teased their mother: As a self-declared no-nonsense feminist, a renowned Israeli peace activist who was used to the sound of mortar fire, how had she stayed so soft?
Listen to this article, read by Gabra Zackman
Last year, in the days leading up to Oct. 7, Vivian was once again busily anticipating the arrival of Yonatan’s family from Tel Aviv. He and his partner, Maayan, would be packing their three floppy-haired children into the car for the familiar drive to his mother’s home in Kibbutz Be’eri, a desert village with socialist roots three miles from the border with Gaza. They were coming not only to celebrate Simchat Torah, the festival of the Bible, but also the 77th anniversary of the founding of the kibbutz.
But then Yonatan and Maayan changed their minds. It was time, they decided, to have their own private holiday. Be’eri, where they both grew up, was such a tight-knit community that a childhood nickname could stick to a person until they died. There, Yonatan would always be known as Vivian’s son. He wanted to separate himself: He and Maayan would build their own lives, create their own traditions. Yonatan, defiant and a little guilty, told his mother they wouldn’t be coming that day.
Twenty-four hours later, Yonatan woke up in Tel Aviv to the sound of sirens. Opening WhatsApp, he learned that hundreds of Hamas militants had crossed the border. Many of them had surged into his mother’s kibbutz.
Vivian, that morning, was utterly herself. Hiding in her safe room, as fighters came down her street, she cracked god-awful jokes in text messages to Yonatan. “Say something,” he wrote. “Something,” she replied. “I’m trying to keep my sense of humor.”
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