Dina and I lived in the same American city, a city that specializes in the imagination, shows and circuses industry. A city that embodies the vision of the poet who says: "The whole world is a stage and all the people are actors." Full of bustle and rage, and meaning no. We both lived in Washington in the exact same neighborhood. We could have met and gotten married, but that was not the case.
Dina came from a secular home with an affinity for Judaism and was sent to a Jewish school where she found grace and taste in the sacred content and love of the Land of Israel that my father instilled in the same institution as its director. Whereas I, having come from a house of Torah and piety and found myself in the opposite direction, moving away from Judaism and Jews, carried on the turbulent waves of the turbulent 1960s with all that that entails.
So we continued to stay away until the war, the War of Independence. I was born in respite between the first part of the war in which we liberated the coastal plain, the Galilee and the Negev, and the second part of the war in which we liberated the heart and heart of the Land of Israel.
Those six days that affected millions of people, those days whose meaning is so profound that to this day we have a hard time digesting - affected the lives of Dina and myself.
I came to Israel immediately after the war, to a kibbutz in the Hula Valley, to my uncles. True, with a tendency to reach east to completely different horizons, but I have arrived.
I will never forget the trip to the Kibbutz, when soldiers who are being released for the first time on vacation home go up and down into are car for the first time, each with his own experiences. Without being able to understand anything, the light and warmth of brotherly love washed over me, enveloping me, "Here's what's good and what's pleasant Shabbat brothers.
A few days later, when I mentioned at a four-course meal at the kibbutz that I actually intended to continue my journey east, my uncle and an IDF officer dressed in his dusty uniform in the Golan dust erupted: "This is your country and this is your people! This is the East״
Eli with Nahum Carmeli
His words did not fall on deaf ears. I stayed in the country, on the farm, in class. I hit roots in the valley soil.
Dina in those days decided in her heart to reach a year of sacred study in the country and despite all the charms of American culture, and all the tempting offers, and all the scholarships to prestigious universities, the longing for the Holy and the Holy Land increased. She decided to enroll in a girls' college in Jerusalem and study there for a year, before continuing her career development.
The "MIchlala" college is an exclusive institution, which accepts girls at a high level, religious level and Torah. There are entrance tests. Dina did not flinch and there in Washington, at the neighborhood rabbi's house, sat down to write the test.
The central question was: What is between Noah and Abraham? A question that all commentators needed, almost, first and last, Zohar and Midrashim. But what about Dina and all that ?! The question did ignite her imagination and she wrote a very original Freudian psychoanalytic analysis, yet no commentator has conceived such ideas.
The registration form should have indicated two relatives in the country and whether they are religious. Dina wrote down, but since none of her relatives were religious, she wrote down in small letters the name of my father (Rabbi Moshe Horowitz). My family, meanwhile, immigrated to Israel and lived in Jerusalem. In even smaller letters, Dina wrote, "It is not close, but a good seller."
Her surgery was not what they expected, it even aroused some wonder that someone who knew nothing would dare to sign up, but on the way to the trash the examining rabbi noticed my father's name. He picked up the phone, doubtless to ask, doubtless to tell the curiosity. My father said to him: Accept it, at my own risk. When Dina received a positive answer from the college, it did not surprise her. Only at the end of the year did she learn the protection.
That year Dina was busy with her studies and I was in the military service. And the Blessed One was engaged, among other things, in the creation of Batsheva and Zvi and Nehama and Shulamit.
My initial enthusiasm has really faded a bit. There were two reflections and again I squinted east. Dina was about to finish a year in college and return to integrate into music and math in America.
Many thoughts in the heart of man and the counsel of God it will arise
One day we met at my parents' house, the conversation was smooth. My explanations of the benefits of Hinduism did not impress her. Dina's explanations of Judaism were not convincing either, but not many days passed and I found myself in the house of the late Rabbi Zvi Yehuda. Several more months passed and I entered the Rabbi Center. Then to the canopy and then, while I was requesting, I was told that my wife was in the hospital and after a while Batsheva Keshet was born, not many days passed and Batsheva met Yehuda (Sadan). The sequel will be seen ...
Rabbi Eli Horowitz
From his sermon on the engagement of his eldest daughter Batsheva
