Learn why the village honored Cedarhurst resident Micah Lader

Cedarhurst resident Micah Lader, a member of the Rockaway Nassau Safety Patrol, was observing the Jewish holiday of Sukkot on Oct. 7 when Hamas attacked Israel.

He learned about the attack from non-observing members of the volunteer patrol group, who relayed the information to him using radios. Lader said that members would report death toll numbers that didn’t seem real.

“It didn’t make sense,” Lader said. “We were in shock.”

The number started at 200 and would eventually grow to more than 1,000 dead. Last month, Israel officials confirmed the number of deaths to be around 1,200.

Lader, along with Jesse Vogel, of Far Rockaway, and Y. Isaac Stern, of Lawrence, are part of the search-and-rescue team that helps safeguard Far Rockaway, the Five Towns and West Hempstead.

Along with their commitment to the safety patrol, they are also members of Chesed Shel Emes, a nationwide Jewish volunteer organization that provides after-death services for Jewish community members. One group is headquartered in Brooklyn.

Through connections in Israel, the safety patrol has a relationship with members of ZAKA (a Hebrew abbreviation for Zihuy Korbanot Ason, disaster victim identification), a volunteer search and rescue community emergency response team based in the Jewish state. Founded in 1995, ZAKA is a non-governmental rescue and recovery organization boasting more than 3,000 volunteers.

Lader said it began ZAKA members not exactly knowing what they needed, but a week later after the attacks, they had a plan and were on a plane to Israel to join their team.

“It wasn’t a question,” Lader said. “If I was able to go help, I was going to help.”

Lader and safety patrol members are skilled in searching for missing people, and the ZAKA team searches for survivors and victims street by street after an attack.

“The people who were killed, we wanted to make sure that they were buried in a proper way,” Lader said. “Whatever we were able to help with.”

While on scene in Israel, members were on a recovery mission, cleaning up the blood-splattered homes where families were killed.

“There were certain houses that looked like they threw grenades inside the house,” Lader said, “like the whole family was there. From the ceiling, the walls to the lights, we were just cleaning wherever.”

Young partygoers were attending a festival near the Israel-Gaza perimeter in the early morning of Oct. 7, and many others were on their way to the festival, abandoning their cars when the attack occurred.

Others who were en route were killed or burned to death, leaving the group to clean up and find what they could to help identify loved ones for their family members.

Vogel joined the local safety patrol after a rise in home break-ins across Long Island following Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

When he joined Lader in Israel, he said it was challenging but felt he had to do something rather than staying home watching and doing nothing.

“It was difficult,” Vogel said. “You have to push through it. Sometimes, you have to shut off the part of your brain that thinks.

“We wanted to go, we wanted to help,” he added. “We have six and a half million relatives in Israel. That’s our family.”

After returning home, Stern was faced with the trauma of what he had seen with his patrol members, saying he had to speak to a therapist to process what had happened.

However, the Lawrence resident said it was his calling to help in Israel despite the difficulties he has to now undergo.

“When I came back, I didn’t want to talk about it,” Stern said. “I just wanted to be by myself because it was too much, but then I knew at some point that I would have to open up.

“My whole idea of just being in this world is we all do things that we could contribute,” he added. “I knew it was my calling to do that because I know most people cannot.”

Cedarhurst village officials honored Lader with his family by his side, with a citation on Dec. 4, for his rescue and recovery efforts in Israel. He returned home on Nov. 7.

Lader said he wasn’t looking for recognition when he decided to go to Israel, but said being honored meant a lot to him, especially for his children, 18, 17, 14 and 9 to hear about it, because they are too young to understand what is going on in the Jewish state.

“It was an honor,” Lader said. “I hope it brings more recognition of what’s actually going on and not something that can just be forgotten … I see reports of people denying that it actually happened or that it wasn’t as bad as they’re saying.

“It doesn’t make sense,” he added. “Just go, go down there and see it.”