I met Debbie in the United States at a Bnei Akiva Zionist youth camp. We were both in eleventh grade at the age of 17, Debbie came from Washington. In the camp we were divided into study groups, we learned about Zionism and all sorts of things like that.
One day the whole company blew out of the class, the one who did come was just me, Aiki (Rabbi Aryeh Weiss) and a few other friends and also Debbie Wolf (Dina Horowitz) was there. Since it was no longer a lesson, so we sat on the grass and started such mental conversations about our aspirations and what we want to do in life.
I remember it as something that left a very strong impression on me. Debbie was very tall and very beautiful with such long hair and she told us that she is going through a very difficult process of repentance at home. Debbie said that it is very difficult for her with this because she attends a non-Jewish school.
Debbie said she wants to make the whole house kosher and her father strongly opposes it because he thinks it is impudence for a 17-year-old girl to tell her mother what she will eat and what she will not eat. Debbie also decided that she brings paper plates home and eats only them and only cold food. This also did not please her father, who thought it was not the place of a 17-year-old to determine what the procedures would be at home.
Debbie told us this in the camp and there was such an aura around her head and we sat there gaping, we saw that things that are very obvious to us, we who came from religious homes, she has that ambition and in general she wants to immigrate to Israel. Debbie recounted things with such admiration.
A few years after summer camp in America, I met Debbie again. This time in Israel, in 1973, I came to the Horowitz family home to do Shabbat with them because I am a relative of theirs, that Saturday Debbie was also there with her best friend, Eli's sister. Eli also came just before Saturday and had such wild hair, if he had a dome then I did not see her.
During the Sabbath we sat and talked and Eli tailed behind us and croaked around us some of the time. On Saturday night, Debbie told me that she and Eli were going to hear a lesson by Rabbi Zvi Yehuda at the Merkaz Harav yeshiva in Kiryat Moshe.
Debbie's Hebrew at the time was very bad, much worse than mine, because she did not attend a real Jewish school (only a few years in elementary school).
I joined them. We went to class in Kiryat Moshe, Eli did not come in, he was constantly walking in the background. We, along with all the women, sat there in some niche and there was some little speaker that all the women were sitting around and trying to listen to the lesson. I saw Debbie write every word, even though it was very difficult to understand. After class, Debbie came out in admiration and said, "What a wonderful lesson, what a wonder."
I asked her "Do you want to tell me that you really understood something from this whole lesson?" Debbie replied "I wrote, some I understood and some I did not understand, but at home we will sit and invest and we will understand everything that was there, but it was wonderful"
Enthusiasm is a trait that characterized her, this is what I saw with her all the way (even when we worked together in the studio in Kiryat Arba) the very simple things in life, for her were in great admiration. For me Dina was a soul that started from somewhere and like a magnet would aspire up and sweep you further. Her desire to get to the top, from where she started, was something that always impressed me. Her enthusiasm always impressed me and drew me up.
I think if she had frustration in the studio, it was that she sometimes felt that there were girls who just wanted to learn and weren't excited about it. To this day, anything from it can be admired.
Eddie Rosenblue
