The Search for Gershon

Gershon Nadivi was born on the 24th of Elul, 5715 (1955), in the moshav of Masu'ot Yitzhak in Gush Etzion. From a young age, he stood out as a brilliant yeshiva student, admired and beloved by all who knew him.

When he was 19 years old, during the festival of Chanukah in 5735 (1974), he went on a hike with friends in Nachal Arugot, near Kibbutz Ein Gedi. Nachal Arugot is known as a friendly and straightforward trail, often walked by families, children, and school groups throughout the summer months. At one point on the hike, the group suddenly realized that Gershon was not with them. At first, they weren’t worried. After all, this wasn’t the dangerous Nachal Darja but a family route. Yet, as more time passed, it became clear that Gershon hadn’t gone ahead, nor had he remained behind. He had simply vanished.

From that moment, there was no sign of him. Searchers spread out through the Arugot and Ein Gedi area. Volunteers came to help, but there were no results. Nobody could understand how a young man could disappear so completely on such a familiar trail.

Weeks later, the family heard of a parapsychologist from Holland who claimed he could connect with the forces of nature to locate missing people. (We are retelling the story as it happened, without giving judgment about whether this is in line with Jewish law or belief.) Astonishingly, he claimed he could “see” Gershon’s body.

To better understand, the family brought in Eli Raz, a geologist and the director of the Ein Gedi Field School. Raz was also a biologist and a leading researcher of the Dead Sea and the Arava. He knew the desert around Ein Gedi as well as anyone could. The Dutch psychic said that six kilometers north of Ein Gedi there was a spring with a tree next to it, and that Gershon’s body lay there.

Raz was certain there was no spring in that place. “With all due respect,” he told the psychic, “I know every crevice and tree in the desert of Ein Gedi. There is no spring where you describe.” But the Dutchman insisted, “There is a spring, and there is a body.”

Raz went with the family to check. To his great surprise, he discovered that there was indeed a spring and a tree exactly six kilometers north of the Dead Sea. And to their astonishment, they did find a body but it was not Gershon’s. It was the body of another man who had been missing in the Judean Desert for nine months.

The years passed with no further answers. Then, in 1984, nine years later, searchers discovered a body by chance in a deep crevice at the base of a cliff behind Nachal Arugot. Next to it was a backpack. Inside were a siddur (prayer book) and tefillin (phylacteries), both marked with Gershon’s name. There could no longer be any doubt. Gershon’s body had been hidden in a place so difficult to access that no searcher had ever reached it.

He was finally laid to rest in his community of Masu'ot Yitzhak. In his memory, a forest was planted in Gush Etzion, called “Gershon’s Orchard.”

The spring that had been discovered earlier was named Nahal Salvadora, after the Salvadora bush that grows wildly there. The site had been inaccessible for years due to the height of the cliff. The waterfall of Nahal Salvadora plunges 185 meters. Today, thanks to ladders and stakes, hikers can reach it, and a sign tells the story of the place.

As for Eli Raz, his life continued to be filled with research and discovery. He became one of the leading experts on the Dead Sea and studied its dangerous sinkholes. In 2023, at the age of 85, Raz himself fell into a deep sinkhole near Ein Gedi beach. Trapped there, he wrote farewell notes on scraps of tissue paper, recording his thoughts as he waited. By the grace of God, he was found after 14 hours and rescued. Today, he is still alive, still able to tell his story, and still giving thanks.