Back in touch

Dear friends,
 
This letter is the second coming.
 
The first effort at being back in touch has gone the way of all flesh and is somewhere in cyberspace. I was out of touch for so long! I envision you when I write and genuinely missed you.
 
The week before this one was the week of mourning. The two little boys who were killed by ramming somehow opened our closed hearts. One of the writers for Haaretz, a secular rather left-wing newspaper, is a man called Chaim Levinson. He was brought up in a chareidi home, but has gone his own way, and is presently far from where he started. He wrote “I can’t just go on. I was raised the way these two boys were. I went to their Talmud Torah, and when I saw it again, nothing changed. The building was the same building. The play yard was the same play yard, floored with gravel. I looked at their pictures. One is in a colored shirt, no doubt his “weekday shirt.” He would wear it to school, to the beach, and on trips. It’s a bit faded and oversized. It no doubt belonged originally to an older brother or two and will be passed on. If you look at his face, you see an innocent bashful smile, the smile of a child whose picture isn’t being constantly taken and sent out. The younger boy is wearing a colored sweater. He is young enough that it’s still “nice” to wear a sweater with designs over the front. These little boys have a daily routine that is rarely changed. Get up in the morning. Go to the Talmud Torah. Return home. Repeat again the next day. The routine is broken by weddings, bar-mitzvahs, other occasions, and Shabbos. The white shirt tells me that he rushed home that Friday to have a shower, polish his shoes, and put on his Shabbos clothes. The boys headed out to the bus stop, the same one that I would stand by and the same one used by anyone who would be traveling out of Yerushalaim by highway 443. 
 
It felt safe. Ramot was a safe neighborhood. Even in the ’90s, when there were many incidents of terror, Ramot was quiet. No stabbings. No gunfire ever. There was an incident not far from there, where two young men were kidnapped and their bodies were found later in the forest between Ramot and Beit Chanina, an Arab mini village. 
 
The boys stood at the stop. They probably kicked the gravel and looked towards the road every so often to see if the bus was finally coming. Until the man whose overwhelming hatred filled him, and his desire to avenge himself on the Jews came by, and their next stop was Har Menuchot (the cemetery). Sunday the rest of the boys will come back to school. People will stand by the stop waiting for their bus. In a week there will be distance. In a month, people will begin to forget.  We should not let this fade.”
 
I sent out my original letter on Sunday a week ago. On Thursday I went to the shiva. Because of the large number of people who felt what I did, there were two tents in the yard of 35 Rechov Mintz, where the family lives. My son lives next door, in 33. The women’s tent was full. Devorah Palai, the boy’s mother, was surrounded by her mother and daughters and literally about 100 other women who stood and sat in front of her. She was composed as she spoke into a handheld microphone. “Since I was a child, I was brought up to have emunah. Hashem is in control and knows what He is doing. They were such sweet boys. They always said thank you and tried to help. Sometimes when things were out of shape in the house, I would say, “oof!” (As she said these words, I could see the spilled cereal, the shirt whose button mysteriously disappeared, or similar domestic pseudo disasters that are part of being a mother.) My little boy would say, “Don’t say oof. Say koof”. He was referring to the letter koof, which equals 100. What he was talking about was Tehillim number 100, the one that begins with the words, “A song of thanks,” and it was sort of a byword in the house. “I know it’s good for them now.” She had someone make magnets with psalm 100. She also said that she knows that Hashem doesn’t do anything for no reason. He wants us to be better and has shaken us to make us rethink. She had a book open on the table. She invited the women to write down any resolutions for self-improvement that they felt they want to take on as a merit for the boys. Two women had taken on keeping Shabbos. One had resolved to wear a skirt instead of pants. Most of the resolutions were far more humble (like mine), and less dramatic. I resolved to try to judge more favorably, at least for a limited amount of time. You, my dear distant friends, are the only ones who know about this.
 
The first of the two boys was killed immediately. Since it was Friday, and everything had to be done immediately, Devora herself had to identify him. The second boy lingered over Shabbos and was buried on Motzai Shabbos. Her husband was standing not far away and was seriously injured. His name for Tehillim is Avraham Noach ben Yehudis. Another two sons were nearby. The older one had the presence of mind to place his hand over his ten-year-old brother’s eyes as the car crashed into the crowd, sparing him the initial horror of the moment.
 
You can easily open your heart to feel something, and lose it.
 
Close to the same time, over 30,000 were killed by an earthquake in Turkey and Syria. Those of you who are old enough to recall the Twin Tower disaster which took over 5,000 lives are not under the impression that the “problem” is Israeli security. The “problem” is that we all must face death. We don’t want to; we are created to love life. The Torah tells us, “Choose life.” We cling to it, and should cling to it. We are not created to make light of any death, or the loss of anyone, especially the good and the pure. No one reading this letter knows with any certainty that they will be here again tomorrow, or that the lives of those whom they love will last forever.
 
The deepest part of the message is the one that Devorah Paley repeated again and again. Be good people. That’s what life is for.
 
The two boys would go door to door collecting money every Friday (a practice not uncommon in Israel – terror may horrify you, and justly so, but you can send little boys alone to collect tzedaka.) They raised money for a charity called Bonei Olam (literally “World Builders”) which sponsors fertility treatment for couples who want to have a child. The Paleys were told that the charity will now be called “Pela'ai Olam”, which besides being a play on the name Paley, means “Wonders of the World.”
 
Every child is a wonder. And to tell the truth, so is every adult. So are you.
Enjoy your time and do something with it!
 
Love,
Tziporah