For over a year, the New York Jewish community — and the Conservative community in particular — absorbed the shock of Omer Neutra’s captivity. 

A Long Island native, Neutra spent his youth within the folds of the Conservative movement and its institutions, studying at Solomon Schechter School of Long Island, working as a lifeguard at Ramah’s Nyack camp and being active in the United Synagogue Youth, eventually becoming the president of its Metropolitan New York (METNY) region. He also attended Young Judaea’s Sprout Lake in the summers.

With this background, for the past 14 months, and now in his death, Neutra — who made aliyah after high school and served as a tank commander — represented someone that Conservative Jews could connect with personally based on shared experiences.

“It’s indescribable to read eulogies that feel as though they could be written about yourself,” Rabbi Jordan David Soffer, the head of school at Striar Hebrew Academy in Sharon, Mass., wrote in a Facebook post on Tuesday. “Summers at Sprout Lake. School years at Schechter. Metny President. Nyack Staff. Years in Israel. Though our threads may never have passed, they relied on each other, fundamentally.”

The Neutra family — Omer’s parents Ronen and Orna and brother Daniel — advocated relentlessly for him and the more than 100 hostages that remain in Gaza, meeting with world leaders, speaking at the Republican National Convention and helping to organize and participate in events throughout the New York area.

Neutra’s community members — those who knew him and those who knew of him — plastered hostage posters on telephone poles and fence posts and the windows of homes in Plainview, N.Y., the Long Island suburb where he grew up. They organized and attended marches, built art installations and developed educational programming at summer camps and Jewish day schools to raise awareness.

On Monday, almost 14 months after Hamas invaded Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel’s military announced that Neutra was, in fact, killed that day — a gut punch for the Jewish community.

“The entire Jewish people stood with his parents as they worked tirelessly to secure his release. For 422 days we have waited for the return of these hostages,” the Jewish Federations of North America wrote in a statement on X on Monday, “Our hearts mourn with the Neutra family and the Jewish people on this sad day.”

Directors of many of the institutions he passed through attended his memorial service on Tuesday at Midway Jewish Center, the Conservative synagogue in Syosset that hosted his bar mitzvah nearly a decade ago. There, his mother, Orna, spoke of the deep loss, Neutra’s smile and the network of communal support the Neutra family has been embraced by since Oct. 7.  

“The boy who had three bar mitzvahs, one in Schechter, one in this community and one in Israel — now he has memorial services and vigils all around the world,” she said. 

Julie Marder, senior director of USY, said that Neutra’s death had been felt deeply throughout the Conservative youth group. Though Marder only met Neutra once or twice when he served as regional president, his leadership and ability to make others feel comfortable stood out to her. “His personality was magnetic,” Marder told eJewishPhilanthropy.  

This year, both staff and teens throughout USY have incorporated Neutra’s story into programming — an empty chair was left for him to recognize his absence at conventions, a prayer for the hostages was said before programs and webinars, and many of his USY peers and friends delivered speeches about him this past year, she told eJP. Now, Marder said, the organization is grappling with how to keep his memory alive. 

“This kind of stopped us in our tracks,” she told eJP. “We remembered him while he was being held captive, and we had the hopes that he was still alive. How do we take that essence and the memory of him and commemorate it through USY?” 

Jesse Bartell, now a senior at SUNY Binghamton, worked alongside Neutra on USY’s board in high school, later working as a lifeguard with him at Ramah Nyack. According to Bartell, Neutra’s ability to make others feel important and included stood out to him. 

“He had this way of making you kind of feel like your ideas were good, even if they weren’t. And then we would work them out,” Bartell told eJP. “You grow up parallel to somebody and you’re involved in all the same spaces and places… it impacts you.” 

Sara Blau, 23, attended Solomon Schechter School of Long Island with Neutra from kindergarten through high school, developing a close-knit friend group with Neutra that has pulled tighter since he was taken captive on Oct. 7 of last year. 

“The Schechter community is pretty small, so we’re all really like brothers and sisters to one another. You know, 40 kids in a grade. You really get close to people over the years,” Blau told eJP. 

Blau and many of her friends from Schechter have attended marches and events, delivered speeches and pushed to ensure that Neutra’s plight was not forgotten. Now, she said, they’re feeling the loss.      

“When I was younger, my friends and I would laugh for hours just being with him… I figured that news would come in one way or another at some point, I was praying that it wouldn’t be this news,” she told eJP.

Since Monday, at his memorial service, in interviews and across social media, Neutra has been remembered as kindhearted, committed to the Jewish people, confident, inclusive, a natural leader and a smiley goofball. 

“Omer truly embodies all of the Jewish values that a parent would want their child to encompass,” said Alyssa Mendelowitz, a SSLI classmate and lifelong friend of Neutra’s, in her speech at Tuesday’s memorial. “The values that Schechter, USY, Ramah, Tel Yehuda, try to instill in children through these programs are all embodied in one person.” 

Ed. note: An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified Young Judaea’s Sprout Lake as a Conservative institution. It is a pluralistic camp.