14 babies named Amit

February 19 would have been Amit Mann’s 25th birthday.

But Hamas terrorists murdered her on October 7, 2023, in the clinic of Kibbutz Be’eri. Instead of hiding in her home on the kibbutz, she’d spent hours tending to the wounded as a paramedic.

On February 18, Amit’s mother and three older sisters hosted a gathering of parents of babies named in memory of this senselessly slaughtered Israeli heroine.

One of those 14 babies is Gefen Amit Amminadav of Jerusalem, the six-month-old firstborn of Natania Casden, who grew up in Teaneck, and Gil Amminadav, who made aliyah from Fair Lawn.

“It’s always been important to me to raise strong, brave daughters,” Natania said.

“When we learned that we were having a girl, we decided to name her Gefen Amit after my grandmother, Gwen Cole, and after Amit Mann. My grandmother was a very strong woman, and obviously Amit Mann was a brave young woman, especially for a 22-year-old. I’d heard her story and was never able to forget it.

“That kind of bravery in somebody so young is incredible. She wasn’t a soldier; she was a citizen. It wasn’t her job to sacrifice herself or to endanger herself for others. She was just a paramedic who decided that she needed to do her job, come hell or high water. And it did come.”

Amit began working at Magen David Adom, Israel’s emergency medical response network, in 2015 as a youth volunteer. A year earlier, her father had died after a long illness, and she wanted to emulate the doctors and nurses who’d cared for him.

After training as an EMT and later as a paramedic, she worked in the mobile intensive care unit in MDA’s Negev region. In August 2023, she became chief instructor in the Negev region’s paramedic course — the youngest person in Israel to hold such a position — and was planning to start medical school. She was living on Kibbutz Be’eri, about 15 miles west of her childhood home in Netivot.

On the morning of October 7, Amit was the on-call paramedic in the kibbutz. As more than 300 terrorists burst in and began a savage spree of murder, destruction, torture, and hostage-taking, Amit ran to the clinic where wounded residents were streaming in. When the tourniquets ran out, she improvised with sheets and shirts. When those ran out, she calmed the wounded with words and stroked their heads.

Text messages to her sisters expressed her hope that the army would come to save them, but the terrorists stormed the clinic first and killed everyone left alive. Amit was buried in Netivot beside her father.

Shortly after Gefen Amit’s birth, Gil told Natania he wanted to contact the Mann family. “I was afraid it would bring up painful memories for them, but I decided okay, it’s been almost two years, maybe they’ve had time to process it,” Natania said. “So we did manage to get in touch with her mother, Rachel, and she was very happy to hear from us. She was very moved.”

Rachel told them there were other babies bearing Amit’s name, and Gil joined a WhatsApp group of those babies’ parents. The number has grown to 14, though it’s possible that other parents named their babies Amit and did not contact the Manns. On this forum, the “Amit Meetup” in a Netivot community center was planned and publicized.

“Naming your child after an Israeli hero gives you a sense of close camaraderie, so it was very intuitive that meeting with others who were likewise inspired by Amit Mann would be a cool thing,” Gil said.

The couple and their baby traveled for two hours, taking two trains and two buses each way to attend the event.

“As we were boarding the bus from the Netivot train station to the community center, I was watching people Amit’s age getting on and off the bus, and it was easy to imagine her riding that bus and chatting with her peers,” Gil said.

Amit’s family and friends had produced a homemade video about her. Natania said it revealed Amit as a person she would have liked to know: intelligent and warm, a talented singer, with a soft spot for animals.

“It was a chance to get to know Amit on a more personal level, through the eyes of the family and loved ones whose lives she enriched and left behind — to see the real human being behind the heroism,” Gil said.

Natania described attempts to photograph all the babies with the Mann family. With the older Amits already walking or crawling, “it was like herding cats.” She said that Rachel Mann was very loving to every little one named for her daughter, declaring that she considers them her grandchildren.

“They had all the families come up and talk about why they decided to name their babies after Amit,” Natania said. “Except one or two, nobody had a personal connection with her; they were just inspired by her story and wanted her name to be remembered.”

Natania made aliyah with her parents, Barbara and Fred Casden, in 2007. She is working toward her Ph.D. in biomedical sciences at Hebrew University. Gil, chief operating officer of a software company, made aliyah in 2011; his parents, Steve and Debby Kobrin, still live in Fair Lawn. (He adopted a Hebrew surname before making aliyah.)

“My parents instilled in me, from a very young age, the twin ethos of Zionism and ‘ordinary’ heroism,” he said. “My childhood was full of inspiring stories of regular people stepping up when the moment calls and heroically saving lives. Amit Mann is the best example of the Israeli hero I grew up admiring.

“I will try to pass on to Gefen that being a hero doesn’t mean you’re born different or live your life differently. There are so many Israeli youth like Amit. She was exceptional, she was dedicated to helping people, she was a great singer — but a lot of young people have talent and beauty and skill.

“When push came to shove, Amit made incredibly difficult decisions that saved many lives and still gets me a little choked up to think about. I want to raise my daughter to know that heroism is not far off in the heavens; anyone can just make a decision that they’re going to be a hero.”