Eli's parenting honor was something, he always came to build me the sukkah. In preparation for the surgery I had to undergo in France, I was amazed at all of Eli's planning, he took on all the responsibility, with such dedication that it is hard to describe.
Every Saturday night Eli made sure to ring before lighting candles and ask how we were feeling. On the eve of the Saturday before the murder he called and told me something, which only in retrospect I understood its meaning, Eli said 'Dad, this is very strange to me, this is the first time in so many years that we have no one with us on Saturday. Shulamit went to Eilat to be with girls who were there with her in national service, the adopted son was invited to another place. mozar". Their house was always full on Saturdays. Always always always always the house was full.
I have a feeling that the whole affair of their lives is something that needs to be learned and educated from. Both, Eli and Dina, were born ordinary children, Eli was born into a family with Torah, Dina was born into a Jewish family but not Torah observant. They were both gifted. We were happy and Dina's parents were happy.
Eli had some development until adolescence, he went on to study and was interested in everything, but he had some fears and we brought him to a great personality in psychology who was impressed by Eli and told us "you have a very very gifted and smart child, but he sees reality with special eyes, And it will be very, very difficult to educate such a child. Get educated and work on it because something can come out of it. "
She gave us advice and we thought to ourselves that we were going in the right direction.
Dina's parents raised their daughter, who was gifted and first-class intellectual, but more than that, she was sensitive. She was very gifted in music, thought she would be a concert pianist in mass dimensions.
That's how they learned in the limiter, she's in Washington, we're in Miami Beach, until adolescence. As teenagers we moved to Washington. Eli entered a very respectable, large and well-known yeshiva. Dina went to the day school where I was the principal.
Then some direction of rebellion began in both of them, except that Eli's revolt was in the opposite direction from Dina's revolt, Eli moved away from home, he was also in a distant yeshiva, but also moved away from the values of home. Dina moved away from the values of her home but in the opposite direction, to Judaism.
In Eli's adolescence, I must admit, we suffered mentally and especially I as an educator. We did not know how to educate with Eli. Dina's family also suffered because she chose to go in a different direction from the family, they were not happy.
Out of some recognition and thanks to the prayers, we have come to the conclusion that perhaps in some way Eli will be able to reach Israel, to the place where he was born, there may be hope from his exile. It was not easy to convince him, because by then he was already a universal man, whose intellect read so many books and was influenced by them and thought of everything, maybe it was one of our failures, but in the end we managed to immigrate to Israel and live with my wife's sister Not religious.
Eli came to Israel after the Six Day War and the atmosphere probably affected him very deeply. There he learned to love the land and to love the people. From the providence of the Name, in fact the one who sent him, we also sent ourselves to the Land of Israel as a result.
So we did not know that our arrival in Washington is some kind of private supervision of the nature walks we met with Dina. A beautiful and shy girl that from the first day I saw her I recognized that she was the greatest in the bunch in terms of intellect and emotion. Dina connected with my house.
When we left Washington Dina graduated from elementary school and was unable to continue in a Jewish setting, Dina went on to high school. Eli, who continued to be in the kibbutz, meanwhile, enlisted in the paratroopers and participated in the 1955 war in Egypt.
After high school, Dina rebelled again and decided to come to Israel for college. Eli rebelled against the kibbutz conventions and became interested in Judaism. Unbeknownst to me, Eli, along with a friend of his, came to a rabbi who was once one of my students in the village of Haroeh, whom Rabbi recognized as a potential Bali. Then Eli came with the help of a friend of the late Rabbi Zvi Yehuda.
Eli and Dina met at our house, where Dina was a housewife, and they each started getting stronger.
Thus ended the period of Eli and Dina's puberty and their great period began. Not only did they call and be together, but they got into a work of holiness with friendships with such good people. Slowly, after they had studied and studied, they set out to teach until they reached Hebron.
In his life I helped Eli with studies, math, Gemara, we went places together and talked a lot, but I, like many parents, did not really know my son, I feel I could have avoided his whole incarnation, if I knew more deeply our son's psyche.
I talked to Eli about it, he said it's one of the things he tries to do with his students and certainly with his sons. Eli said he tries to understand them, get into them and understand their needs.
So was Eli and so was Dina, they were not born that way, it came to them by development that they were able to engage in this direction.
In both there was honesty, humility, simplicity. Innocence, certainly in Dina, but innocence of openness. I also saw deep faith in both of them. They went through a lot of trouble, especially bringing up children that Dina suffered greatly and all her suffering was his, but they had a deep and indescribable faith. Such was the sequence of their lives.
Eli and Dina were seekers of God, seeking to ascend in holiness and draw near to God, but this was not just an aspiration with good will, but they worked and worked, at the same time they taught and helped others. They were constantly examining themselves. This is a wonderful feature I saw in both. They in their lives were a wonderful example.
I feel in some deep way that I must thank God for giving us, not just one soul, but two souls for the deposit, and I thank God we had the privilege of being with us and even though we are so sad we had to return the deposit, we are full of gratitude and feel we must thank For the short time they were with us.
Let their souls be bundled in the bundle of life
Rabbi Moshe Horowitz
