TEL AVIV — On the morning of Oct. 7, 2023, Reut Karp was staying with a friend outside Tel Aviv when she was awakened by sirens. It was Simchat Torah, and she was about two hours from home at Kibbutz Re’im, a close-knit community of 435 residents just a couple of miles from the Gaza border. So, when she got a text from her ex-husband, Dvir Karp, saying their children were safe at the kibbutz with him and his girlfriend, Stav Kimchi, “I felt relieved,” Reut said.
“However, soon after (around 8 a.m.), I got a worrying text from my daughter Liya, who was 12 at the time. She told me there was a terrorist near her friend’s house in Ein Habesor (another kibbutz), which is very close to Re’im. I quickly realized she was not with Dvir but with a friend. I tried to reassure her but, of course I was panicked.”
She tried calling Liya, but she texted back saying she needed to be quiet — she was in the safe room with her friend and her family. Reut then sent a screenshot of Liya’s text to her ex-husband, who told her at 8:15 a.m. there was now chaos and shooting at their kibbutz, too. Minutes later, at 8:24 a.m., she received a text from her daughter Daria, 10, that read:
“Mom, it’s Daria. Dad was murdered. Stav, too. Help”
She quickly tried calling Dvir’s cellphone. Daria answered and whispered that terrorists had entered the safe room in the home.
“The first thing I did was press record on my phone,” Reut said, “because I thought these would be the last words I’d hear from my Daria.”
Love and chocolate
Reut, 43, has shared this harrowing story countless times over the past 18 months. Today, she tells it once more, to me and a few other Jewish journalists visiting from the United States. We are gathered in the basement of the coffeehouse she runs in the Florentin neighborhood of south Tel Aviv, a space that pays tribute to both her late ex-husband and everything that was lost on what is known here as Black Shabbat.
Before tragedy struck, Reut said, she and Dvir, who was 46 when he was killed, had built a life full of joy, purpose and sweetness — quite literally.
Born and raised on Kibbutz Re’im, she moved to Tel Aviv in her early 20s for more opportunity and a livelier pace. While working in finance, she met Dvir, a professional chocolatier. He had studied in Belgium and, after returning to Israel, made pralines for his family’s coffee shop in Tel Aviv.
They fell in love “not just because of the chocolate, although that was certainly a nice touch,” Reut said with a laugh. After marrying and welcoming Liya, they moved to Kibbutz Re’im.
“I felt that city life wasn’t for me, especially after seeing the synthetic grass in the kindergarten and the concrete jungle surrounding us,” she said. “I wanted the real thing, so we decided to move back to the kibbutz, despite the proximity to Gaza and the unstable security situation.”
There, they opened Chocolate Café, where Dvir’s confections became beloved in the area. Reut handled the business end while he made the chocolates. Over the next few years, the couple welcomed two more children, daughter Daria and son Lavi, in quick succession.
When Lavi turned 3, Reut resumed her career in finance, commuting to and from Tel Aviv while Dvir remained in Re’im, running the café. Though they divorced in early 2023, they continued to co-parent in the same community.
“I got an offer to act as the CFO of the kibbutz,” Reut said, “which I accepted, thinking it would be the best option to stay close to my children.”
A day no one could imagine
Two minutes after learning Dvir had been murdered, Reut sent a message to the kibbutz’s WhatsApp group to serve as a warning. People quickly locked their doors, got into their safe rooms, trying to keep the terrorists out.
“Our first responder team was just six people,” Reut said, adding they were all armed. “With no army in sight, they split into pairs, hoping to trick the attackers into thinking we had more defense. They held the line. Without them, none of us would be here.”
Meanwhile, Daria was trapped in an impossible situation.
“The door (of the safe room) was wide open, two bodies were in front of her and the terrorists had looked her in the eyes,” Reut said. “After killing Dvir and Stav, the terrorists entered the safe room, took the blanket off her head (that she used to hide), and for some reason, chose not to hurt her (or Lavi) physically, though they left deep emotional scars.”
For nine agonizing hours, Daria stayed hidden, quietly texting with her mother while trying to soothe 8-year-old Lavi, who is on the autism spectrum. Frozen by trauma, he mostly stayed quiet.
Eventually, a neighbor, Golan Sefton, rescued them. Before they left, he snapped a picture of a message scrawled in Arabic on the safe room wall, which Daria thought was written in blood. Reut later learned it read, “Al Qassam don’t murder children.” It had been written in Stav’s red lipstick.
In total, seven members of Kibbutz Re’im were killed that day, including two Thai workers. Five others were taken hostage and later released. Dvir and Stav were the last two to be murdered in the community.
“We couldn’t even attend his funeral,” Reut said. “They lost his body in the chaos. It took more than a week to bury him.”
Rebuilding with intention
In the months that followed, Reut and the children, along with most Re’im kibbutzniks, were first evacuated to Eilat, then later to Tel Aviv, where about 300 still remain. Slowly, grief has given way to action and, with action, new beginnings of hope, of healing, of life are returning.
During the COVID pandemic, Reut had persuaded Dvir to write down his treasured recipes, something he had long resisted. After his death, she passed those handwritten notes to a fellow chocolatier, hoping to preserve and share her late ex-husband’s legacy.
Today, her coffeehouse is part of a broader initiative called Café Otef Re’im, named for both her kibbutz and the surrounding Gaza Envelope region (Otef Aza in Hebrew). More than just a place for coffee and pastries, the café doubles as a retail store as well as a microenterprise hub for evacuees and survivors, several of whom now work alongside Reut.
Its centerpiece is a gleaming glass counter that showcases handcrafted chocolates and confections, each one a tiny, delectable work of art. More than a display, it’s a quiet tribute to Dvir; his portrait rests on a shelf behind it, watching over the space.
Every item sold carries a story. The cheese, for instance, comes from Kibbutz Be’eri, where 120 of its residents, including children, were murdered by Hamas on Oct. 7. The cheese is made by the surviving business partner of a friend of the Karps who was murdered that day. The friend’s wife, once a waitress at the original Chocolate Café, also was killed. Two of their three children were taken hostage and later freed.
“I wanted their cheese here,” Reut said. “It matters. These products have meaning.”
A network of survival
Reut tells us how Café Otef is expanding to other Israeli cities. There’s now a branch inside a high-tech company in Rehovot for evacuees from Sderot. Another opened in Rosh Pina in northern Israel.
Each location offers jobs, training, dignity and community to those who have been displaced. Each also sells products from their region and ones made by community members.
This isn’t charity. Rent is paid. Salaries are earned. Profits go back into small businesses and families trying to rebuild their lives.
“This is how we heal,” Reut said. “By creating. By building something that lasts.”
With help from volunteers and a pro bono business consultant, she’s launching an online store and hopes to share Dvir’s chocolates with the world.
“We’re starting to build an online catalog to make the business sustainable because I can’t just sell products locally,” Reut said. “People want to support us. I just need help getting there. That’s what we’re working on now.”
Moving forward
Today, Reut and her children live near the café in a building shared with other kibbutz evacuees. They hope to return to Re’im in June.
Daria, who lived through the horror firsthand, still struggles with school, with trust, with finding her footing.
“She’s not in a good situation,” Reut said softly. “She’s not communicating much, but yes, she’s getting therapy, like all of us. It takes time. She hasn’t been able to sit in class the way she used to.”
Lavi, once sensitive to touch, now hugs his mother often.
And Reut?
“How are you doing?” I asked.
“I have no idea,” she said, shrugging. Then she smiled, gave me a quick hug and disappeared up the stairs — back to work, back to purpose.
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