Time is running out. Event producer and chef for 30 years, now “invisible wounded” – can’t attend friends’ weddings. Creditors won’t wait forever. October 7 destroyed Natan Kenig’s business, left crushing debts
When Natan Kenig arrived at the massacre sites on the afternoon of Simchat Torah, he thought he knew what horror looked like.
Volunteering for thirty years with ZAKA, he had responded to terror attacks, devastating accidents, and tragic deaths. He had seen the worst humanity could do. Or so he believed.
“I arrived at the scene and about an hour and a half from home I felt like I was in another world. Some kind of apocalypse,” Kenig recalls from his recent appearance on Arutz Sheva. Initially, the scenes on Route 232 seemed like a large-scale shooting incident. “I drove on roads and could see dozens of casualties.” But as he moved to the Nova festival site and the communities, he realized this was “a horror we had never known.
The true depth of evil revealed itself gradually, methodically, horrifically.
On Route 232, a brother was shot dead while his wounded sibling fled. Weeks later, the family returned to find their vehicle burned to ashes. “What did they actually do? They didn’t just come to kill us, they came to annihilate. They burned everything to the ground so as not to leave a trace.
Two years have passed since October 7. The headlines have moved on. The cameras have left. But Natan’s battle has only intensified. Every day creditors call. Every night the memories return. Every week another supplier asks: “When will I be paid?
The clock is ticking. The debts are growing. The trauma is deepening.
Before October 7, Kenig lived two lives of service. By day, a ZAKA volunteer running toward scenes others fled from. By night, an event producer creating joy at weddings, bar mitzvahs, and celebrations across the country. His boutique catering business and event production company thrived for years, built on his passion for bringing people together in moments of happiness.
The massacre destroyed that second life completel.
“I used to be an event producer. I’m invited to events every week and I can’t go. Even if it’s my friends,” he confesses. The man who once orchestrated celebrations, who filled rooms with laughter and dancing, now cannot bear to step into those same spaces. Every wedding reminds him of the families torn apart. Every celebration echoes with the screams he heard in those homec.
His business collapsed within months. The kitchen where he once prepared feasts became a prison of memories. Suppliers who had trusted him for years now wait for payment. Employees who worked alongside him face their own struggles. Hundreds of thousands of shekels in debt tower over him. But Kenig refuses to declare bankruptcy
