Aaron Sofer. Photo: Facebook.

JNS.org – The parents of missing 23-year-old American yeshiva student Aaron Sofer are offering a $28,000 reward for anyone who can help locate their missing son.

Sofer has been missing since Friday, when he and a friend went on a hike in a difficult rocky and wooded portion of the Jerusalem Forest. At some point during the hike, Sofer and his friend apparently became separated, with Sofer never emerging.

“The police are working tirelessly on all fronts, and all options are being strongly investigated,” Sofer’s father Moshe said, The Jerusalem Post reported. “We would like to thank the American Consulate, the office of the Consul General, the FBI and the Israeli Police and ZAKA for all their efforts in trying to find our dear son Aaron.”

Meanwhile, nightly prayer vigils have been held in Sofer’s hometown in Lakewood, New Jersey. Many family members and friends are deeply worried about Sofer in light of Hamas’s kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens—Naftali Frankel, 16, Gilad Shaar, 16, and Eyal Yifrach, 19—in June.

“It’s scary to think what possibly could be the ramifications,” Sofer family neighbor Tzvi Meth told New York’s CBS 2. “Great fear is that he was accosted; he was taken away, kidnapped.”