The Final Davar Torah of Aryeh Schopak HY”D

The Final Davar Torah of Aryeh Schopak HY”D
Yesterday, hundreds attended the Jerusalem funeral of 16-year-old Aryeh Schopak, a Canadian-Israeli yeshiva student who was brutally murdered by a Palestinian terrorist while on his way to yeshiva.
Every week Aryeh’s yeshiva, the Harei Yehuda Yeshiva in Beit Meir, distributes a newsletter highlighting ideas that came up during the boys’ discussion of the weekly Torah portion. The newsletter from two weeks ago, in honor of Parshat Vayera, featured different students’ insights into the binding of Isaac and the test faced by Avraham to bind his own son.
In that newsletter, Aryeh Schopak noted that God ordered Avraham to bind his son immediately. To not delay at all in carrying out this final and most daunting of tests. Part of the hardship of this trial, Aryeh pointed out, was its urgency, that it had to be done right away. There was no time left for hesitation, doubt, fear.
Aryeh’s classmates commented in response to Aryeh’s insight that Avraham’s ability to stand up and immediately face his final test of sacrificing his son has provided strength to the millions of Jews, throughout the generations, who were murdered just for being Jews. Thus sanctifying G-d’s name, dying Al Kiddush Hashem.
Avraham’s strength thousands of years ago, they commented, is what infused strength into the hearts of all those murdered Jews throughout history. In the time of the Greeks and the Romans and the Crusades and the Inquisition and the Pogroms and the Holocaust up until the terror attacks of recent years, until yesterday when a young boy name Aryeh, instead of davening Shachrit and learning Torah as he had hoped, died with Shema Yisrael on his lips and the G-d and strength of Avraham in his heart.
May Hashem comfort the grieving parents and family and friends of Aryeh Schopak, HY”D.

One comment

  1. HYD. So heartbreaking.
    Where did you read that he said Shema? That is empowering.

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