More than a hundred days of uncertainty have passed for the Sperka family of Shaarei Chesed, Jerusalem. Their son and brother, Yehuda, 24, classified as an at-risk missing person, walked out of his parents' home and has not been seen since. Despite extensive searches by police, ZAKA, and the Israel Canine Unit, not a single lead has emerged.
In an interview with Kikar HaShabbat, his brother Menachem Sperka returns to the hours before the puzzling disappearance. "It was two days before Tishah B'Av, around ten in the evening," he recalls. "Yehuda told us he was going out for a walk, a routine hour-long circuit he did often. He left the house with nothing, no phone, no wallet, everything stayed in his room. We haven't heard from him since."
From family searches to an intelligence operation
When the hours passed and Yehuda did not return home, the family understood this was not a routine delay. "We started calling people he knew. He used to share his life with us, so we knew where he spent time and where he liked to be," Menachem says. "At first we went out searching on our own, me and my brothers. When we saw time passing and nothing happening, we turned to the police, ZAKA, and the canine unit. At first they didn't take the reports seriously enough, but as time went on everyone understood this was a highly unusual incident."
Today, four months after that night, active ground searches have largely stopped, and efforts are focused on intelligence work and public vigilance. "When a call comes in from a citizen claiming to have seen him, police immediately check security cameras in the area, and we go out with ZAKA volunteers and police to scan the location and understand who they were talking about," Menachem explains the family's unimaginable routine. "But when no call comes in, there's really no active operation. That's where we're living right now."
