For the last two-and-a-half years, Hannah Wacholder Katsman ’86 has been trying to heal from every parent’s worst nightmare: the brutal killing of her son.
Dr. Hayim Katsman, the second of Hannah’s six children, was killed during the October 7, 2023 attack, days after he turned 32 at Kibbutz Holit in the southwest of Israel near the Gaza Strip border. His death in the violent attack that started a war was ironic, Wacholder Katsman said, because he was a peace activist.
“He really wanted to bring Jews and Palestinians together,” Hannah said. His headstone is engraved with the phrase, “A Man of Peace.”
Bringing People Together
Hayim earned his doctorate in International Studies with a focus on religions, cultures and civilizations from the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington in 2021. Hayim moved to the kibbutz in 2012 and took on a wide range of jobs, working as a landscaper, a mechanic, a teacher of political philosophy, chair of the kibbutz council and even as a DJ featuring Arabic electronic music “to bring people together,” his mother said.
“He was involved in ‘Academia for Equality’ and regularly spent weekends with activists in the southern Hebron Hills to deter and document settler violence,” Katsman added
Hayim’s death thrust his family – as well as the families of other victims – into the international spotlight.
“That first year, I participated in a memorial almost every month, most of them surrounding his academic research,” Hannah said. “I say yes to 95% of things because they really do help me. People tell me they’re inspired by his life, his work.” Hannah had unknowingly laid down the roots of the community who would support her shortly before her son’s killing when she moved to Jerusalem after thirty years in a suburb of Tel Aviv.
“When I first came, newly divorced, I got in touch with the Jerusalem Barnard Book Club, and they just welcomed me so warmly,” she said. After his death, Hannah noticed that at nearly every event where she was invited to speak, Barnard alumnae showed up to support her and the project she would eventually work on in her son’s memory.
Making His Memory a Blessing
In his memory, Hayim’s family has partnered with Next October, an initiative connecting bereaved families with Israeli startups to fund meaningful memorials. The startup CauseMatch, a crowdfunding platform, offered to donate an online campaign to raise $500,000 to build a sustainability center in the Bedouin city of Rahat where Hayim worked with local schools to create two community gardens.
“When someone dies they leave a big empty space,” Hannah said. “But things come to fill it – that’s just the nature of life. Our mind gets filled with new relationships and activities and obviously that's healthy, but it's also difficult. You don't want to forget, and you also want to move forward, so this is a way of doing something positive, remembering him, but also working on something that's going to have a positive impact.”
When Hayim was killed, Hannah said of the Barnard alumnae community that, “They came out from the very beginning in different groups and different ways.” The book club’s main organizer, Marcia Gelpe ’65, reached out to friends and families in the U.S. for donations, as did Naomi Voss Potter ’86 and Julie Zuckerman ’91.
At an event in the summer of 2025 by the newly-formed Jewish Barnard Alumnae Group, the organizers honored the memory of Hayim as well as two others.
Through the project, which will fund an educational garden, public workshops and school programs, Hannah hopes her son’s memory may be a blessing for others.
If you’d like to donate to Next October’s Hayim Center project, you can do so at causematch.com/hayim