* Translation by Yehoshua Siskin
Did you hear about Dina Fahimi, the woman from Netivot? I am embarrassed to admit that I had never heard of her until Pesach night.
On October 7th, a missile from Gaza made a direct hit on the home of the Fahimi family. Dina lost her husband Rafael, her son-in-law Natanel who was married to her daughter Tal, and her oldest grandchild Rafael, shortly before his Bar Mitzvah. Members of three generations from the same family perished on the same day.
Dina, together with her widowed daughter and her orphaned children, came to Jerusalem to celebrate Pesach at a Seder with 30 other bereaved families. We were privileged to be with them and to see how heroic people emerge from the suffering that Egypt represents. I will focus here on Dina and what I learned from her:
1. How can it be that everyone I ask has never hear the story of the Fahimi family? Her story, like so many others, is incredibly shocking but also incredibly important. We can never lose sight of our true enemy and what it wants to do to every one of us every day, not only what it wanted to do to us on October 7th.
2. We need to remind ourselves of October 7 not only because of evil, but because of good. Everyone is already familiar with Miriam Peretz and Iris Haim. Dina Fahimi is cut from the same cloth. Within the pain of a shattered heart, there is optimism and hope. How many heroes like those who were murdered on October 7 went up to heaven without our knowing them, and how many heroes like them live among us without our knowing them either.
3. Towards the end of the Chag, I asked each family if it would like to convey a message to the rest of us. When Dina’s turn came, she said she had nothing to add to the words of the Haggadah that were spoken that night since those words covered everything. For those who plumb the depths of life, the past connects to the present and the future on Pesach night: the matzah and the maror, “you will live by your blood,” “in every generation they try to destroy us,” “this is what has stood by our fathers and us,” and finally, “next year in rebuilt Jerusalem” when the final redemption comes. Amen.
Thank you to Mendy Kenig, from the “Menucha Veyeshua” organization, for an uplifting Shabbat and Chag and thank you to Yad Sarah’s hotel “Yirmiyahu 33”.
Besorot tovot.
