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A beacon of hope in a sea of grief The bereaved Fathers’ Journey to Vietnam

We sat down with retired IDF Lieutenant-Colonel Irit Oren Gundars, recipient of the Israel Prize for Lifetime Achievement this year, and the founder of Or L’Mishpachot, the bereaved IDF families organization, to talk about its journey thus far, and her dream of seeing the families’ choir perform at the White House one day / By Yoel Tzafrir

Choosing life Today, Or L’Mishpachot takes care of about 2,700 families. “Our goal is not to replace the many invaluable official institutions operating in Israel, but to add an extra layer,” explains Oren Gundars. The organization focuses on the present, on trying to see how bereavement can also be a moment in which new outlooks on life can occur. Or L’Mishpachot is all about sanctifying life itself, in parallel to honoring the heroism of the fallen. As part of its scope of activities, the

In 2004, retired IDF Lieutenant Colonel Irit Oren Gundars struck a relationship with three bereaved families whose sons had served in the IDF Combat Engineering Corps (where Oren Gundars served as Head of Human Resources) and were killed in combat in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Wishing to somehow ease their pain, she invited the three families into her home one night, thinking perhaps they would find it helpful to meet and talk about what they were going through. That evening, Oren Gundars

says she realized how powerful simply being together, spending time in each other’s company and sharing thoughts and feelings, can be. “We simply started to talk – first there were tears, and then, as the conversation developed, jokes and laughter arrived. I began to realize how healing talking, sharing thoughts and memories can be”, she recalls. Three years later, in 2007, Oren Gundars began laying the official foundations of what would later become the “Or L’Mishpachot” (Light for the Families) oraganization.

26 ATMOSPHERE MAY 2026