* Translation by Yehoshua Siskin
“Shalom Sivan, My name is Elyasaf Miara. It’s important to me that everyone know about an amazing human being and an amazing event that took place yesterday.
Rabbi Yair Ankonina — of the army’s Chevra Kadisha burial service — was called up on October 7 and soon found himself at Kibbutz Be’eri and Re’im Junction. Working without interruption, he entered a mobile bomb shelter there the next day where 27 people had been murdered and began to conduct his difficult and holy work ...
Yair, from Beitar Ilit, who serves in the military rabbinate, later resolved that as part of his rehabilitation he needed to perpetuate the memories of those who died in that shelter and so he initiated a project to this end. As a result of his efforts, a “kindness shelter” was dedicated yesterday in the same exact place where the bomb shelter had stood. This is a mobile structure that will bring everything a family in mourning requires during the Shiva period.
Most of the families of the murdered attended this emotional event. One mother who met Yair for the first time spoke to him as follows: ‘I am relieved and happy that a man like you took care of my son — identifying his remains with such respect and bringing him to an honorable burial in Israel. I am an artist by profession and Yair appealed to me to paint on the kindness shelter what I had previously painted on the bomb shelter. So I painted the same picture I had done before: a country road in a beautiful bucolic setting, representing our continuing journey into a promising future.’
Here are the names of those murdered in the bomb shelter, most of whom I did not know. You are invited to take a moment to do something in their memory: Noy Aviv, Sigal Itach, Dean Nehorai Bar, Shoham Bar, Tal Batik Klein, Liel Giraffe, Ronen Dietchman, Kim Damati, Idan Herman, Daniel Meir Vadai, Liel Weinstein, Noah’s Zender, Hadar Chosen, Shoham Yaakov, Shinhav Yaakov, Amit Cohen, Livnat Levi, Noral Mantzuri, Revia Mantzuri, Hanani Glazer, Rotem Neiman, Eden Naftali, Maya Fuder, Not Farrago, Chai Chaim Tzarfati, Itan Rafael Shnir, Orel Paso.
Thank you to Yair, to Asaf, and to the families. How urgently do we need this reminder of our common enemy and how closely connected we are to one another.
King David wrote in the book of Psalms: ‘The world is built on kindness.’ Thank you to those who continue to build it.”
