Tal Katz, 37, from Ma’alot, was killed on October 7 in Kibbutz Be’eri after fleeing there from the Supernova music festival.
Tal attended the rave with his girlfriend, Yasmin Porat, arriving there overnight. When the rocket fire began, they decided to leave the site of the festival and head home.
They stopped to seek safety in a roadside bomb shelter, and then heard gunfire outside. Feeling unsafe in the shelter, Tal and Yasmin decided to head to Be’eri, hoping to find safety there. They knocked on the door of Hadas and Adi Dagan, and the couple took them in and let them hide with them inside their reinforced room.
When Hamas terrorists stormed the Dagan home, they took Tal, Yasmin, Hadas and Adi hostage and brought them to the house of Pessi Cohen, where they were held captive with a number of other hostages.
When IDF forces gathered outside the home, one Hamas terrorist used Yasmin as a human shield to surrender to the troops, saving her life. After hours of standoff, IDF troops fired tank shells in warning at the home and then engaged in a firefight with the Hamas gunmen. Hadas was the only hostage to emerge alive.
The IDF said in a probe of the highly contentious incident that “most of the hostages were likely murdered by the terrorists,” though it could not determine the exact figure.
Tal was buried outside Ma’alot on October 11. He is survived by his daughter, Orian, his parents, Hana and Shai, and his siblings, Itzik and Sapir.
Born and raised in Ma’alot-Tarshiha in the north, Tal was the middle of his siblings, according to a state eulogy. He attended a local elementary school and went to high school in nearby Karmiel.
He was drawn to music as a child, learning to play the keyboard, guitar and drums and a number of other instruments. He was also very into mechanics, his loved ones said, always taking apart and reassembling electronics.
Tal worked as a medical equipment technician and also as a DJ on the side, under the stage name SPIRITAL, recording his own trance music dance tracks. He loved to attend music festivals, which is also where he met Yasmin in 2021.
On what would have been his 38th birthday, Yasmin wrote on Facebook that she “feels you walking hand in hand with me every day, achieving dreams with me.”
“You pleaded with me to do so many things and I didn’t always agree with you,” she said. “Suddenly I find myself doing those things that you pushed me to do.”
Yasmin said despite feeling his presence all the time, “I miss your physical body, your embrace, your touch, your voice and your care for me, our conversations, our partying, I miss taking care of you and making you laugh — nobody will understand me the way you understood me.”
Tal’s sister, Sapir, wrote online to “my brother, my heart, my life — I don’t have many words to say, except that the longing is burning inside me every day.”
“Nothing that fill this empty space, but thank you my brother for leaving us your little treasure, Orian, who will continue in your path and fill up the joy that you always had and that you left in our hearts — I love you, I love you so much.”
