If You’re Reading These Words

Last Letters from Heroes
of the October 7th War

By: Shlomo Kavas and Racheli Palant-Rozen
Koren Jerusalem – Toby Books

A portion of the book’s proceeds is donated to commemorating the fallen of the war.

What does a person write in a letter they hope will never be read?

Final words are unlike anything else a person writes in their lifetime, and unlike anything you’ve ever read. They contain dark humor, inside jokes, searing honesty, burning love, mortal fear, and blinding courage.They hold both high drama and a flight from it, spelling mistakes, apologies, gratitude, and even practical instructions for the day after.

They include requests that can only be made in a final moment, and truths one dares to speak only when it’s the last chance to say them.

If You Are Reading These Words is a first-of-its-kind literary-documentary project, curating forty-nine final letters written by those who fell in the war that began on October 7th. Most of these letters have never been published before. This is a piece of history being written now, in the words of young soldiers who, with the blood of their hearts, penned new chapters in the Israeli story.

Maybe it will happen to you, tooMeet the Authors

Shlomo Kavas is a copywriter and stand-up comedian.

Racheli Planat-Rozen is a journalist and social entrepreneur.

Their encounter with the soldiers’ last words made them fall in love with the forty-nine heroes they never got to meet.

It might happen to you too.

צילום: לירון מולדובן

Our Heroes

Every hero in this remarkable book fell in battle, yet this book overflows with life. It focuses not on their deaths, but on what they had to say about living – to us, those who are left behind to read it.

Shoham Moshe Ben Harush

Uri Nechemia Ashkenazi

With contributions from leading Israeli artists and public figures, who wrote reflections for the book on the power of final words:

President Isaac Herzog • Eshkol Nevo • Zeruya Shalev • Evyatar Banai • Rabbanit Yemima Mizrachi • Dr. Rubik Rosenthal • Avishag Sha’ar-Yashuv • Rabbi Tamir Granot • Dr. Maya Tevet Dayan • Tzvi Ben Meir • Lt. Col. Aviran Alfasi • Iris Haim • Avi Issacharoff • Tsur Ehrlich

Rabbinit Yemima Mizrachi

"I read the entire book... I can't describe how possible it is not to go to sleep, just to continue - I can do everything the book describes so I can fill my entire life, with absolute confidence, with the sweetness from tune to tune on the heart."

Emily Damari

This book is a wonderful treasure trove. It's a life testimony for love of the land and people from a simple person, for learning, for the family, for life itself. It was given to us to hear his voice, to feel emotions, to learn in a pleasant way with the beloved tradition. Every page kept me with 'what will be forgotten.'"

Hanan Diot

"One of the most important and beautiful books that have appeared in Israel recently. This book should be in every Israeli home, we recommend it especially to young people too. This book you'll find hard to put down."

Shlomo Artzi

"A wonderful and soulful project of David's generation. A heartwarming inheritance for all of Israel. This book brings heroes to life in our memory, the father who is always with us, and teaches us who we belong to."

Roni Kuban

"The longings and melancholy of the actual Moses are no coincidence. The subject he deals with, only in its lightness, and he describes the findings in the most beautiful way, the authors of the book's beauty and calculation and devotion."

Avri Gilad

"A book that will convince, a wonderful testimony and full of garden flowers in a place where there are sixty years in one breath."