‘Always looked out for the little guy,’ friends say of Omer Neutra

Michelle Rich, director of teen travel and international engagement at United Synagogue Youth, laughs as she recounts a memory she has of Omer Neutra.

“He was so smiley, and so happy and so jolly,” Rich said. “He was a good neshama.”

Not only was Neutra’s energy magnetic, but there was “so much” of it, said Eitan Gitlin, who attended the Schechter School of Long Island with Neutra and was also a part of USY. “He had so much ruach.”

Jared Rogers met Neutra in elementary school and was with him at Midway Jewish Center and Schechter and ran cross-country together.

“Omer was a natural leader,” he said. “He always made people feel safe and like they belonged. Always looked out for the little guy.”

Tali Schor, another classmate of Neutra’s from first grade and a former USY member, remembered when Neutra was wheelchair-bound in third grade after breaking his foot. “It was Purim and he was in costume, and everyone stood around him,” she said. “He was making everyone laugh even when he was in pain himself.”

For Neutra, love of Judaism and the Jewish state were “inextricably linked,” Schor said. “Judaism and Israel were everything to Omer, and that was true from the moment that we met him.”

When Neutra opted to join the IDF, “it wasn’t a choice, it was a conviction,” Schor said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu noted Neutra’s love of the Jewish state when expressing condolences to his family: “Omer was a man of values, blessed with talents and a Zionist in every inch of his limbs.”

“Making a sacrifice to protect Israel and all of us, he’s a hero for that,” Schor said.