Yocheved84
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 Wed, Jan 02 2013, 11:06 am
I didn't know where else to post, but needed to share this.
This morning, I was complaining over narashkeit, not feeling very spiritual (the usual).
My Rabbi sent me an email. He had gone to visit the family of one of the boys who had so tragically passed away. The family was not observent--they were sitting shiva in a family friend's home with an XMas tree, but knew enough about traditions to cover mirrors. (I am not passing judgment--you'll see where I'm going w/ this.)
And they cherished their Jewish identity so much that the night before this boy's untimely passing, they even had a picture of him with a yalmulke lighting Channukah candles.
They asked my Rabbi (who has an affiliation to a college nearby) if he could get a note to the Western Wall.
I don't know how many hands that note went through---20? 30? Through emails, message boards, phone calls, car trips, international flights, etc., people came together to see that the note made its way from suburban CT to Israel. And in the video the Rabbi sent me and a couple other students this morning, he showed us the prayer said at the wall for the boy, and the note being placed in the wall.
I can't post the video here out of respect for the family (it says the name), but it brought tears to my eyes. Here, a family who suffered the most awful of tragedies. A family who embraced their heritage in the way they knew it. On this site, we fight everyday over split hairs of halacha, but these people loved being Jewish and practiced how they thought it and loved their identity. And the Jewish world came together to see that their son's memory and neshama was prayed for all the way across the world.
::tears::
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