7 Children HY”D

7 Children HY”D

The terror wave of the last 2 months has claimed so many children. So many young people’s lives snuffed out as they were just beginning.
During today’s heartbreaking funeral for sisters Maia and Rena Dee, I was so struck by the eulogies for these remarkable girls. “Maia,” her weeping father Rabbi Leo Dee said, “had always been an angel.” Over and over the eulogies focused on Maia’s exceptional dedication to Torah learning, to heartfelt prayer, to chesed. Sister Rena, following in her older sister’s footsteps was also a straight A-student, incredibly responsible, loved by all, and passionately idealistic about Israel and Am Yisrael. Maia and Rena had achieved a level of maturity, it seems, far beyond their years.
These eulogies reminded me of a quotation I read in the newly-released Piasczena Hagaddah. The Aish Kodesh, murdered during the Shoah, asked why the Nazis, like the ancient Egyptians, were especially determined to annihilate the Jewish children.
Here is the Aish Kodesh’s answer:
“The Torah says, “You are children to the Lord your God,” but isn’t the Holy One eternal? And our days in this world pass like a fleeting shadow. So how is it logical to say that we are God’s children? This is because it is through our children that we are eternal. Because, for as long as the world exists, the eternity of the Jewish people is through the their children and their children’s children….
“Therefore the first person who hated the Jewish people, Pharaoh, first went after the Jewish babies “throw every boy born into the Nile.”
And this is how it always is, that the cruelty of those who hate the Jewish people is focused with exceptional cruelty on the Jewish children, as they kill them…
“And, our hearts break, as we witness now, that above all the cruelties and horrible murders poured up the Jewish people, the cruelties and murders of the small boys and girls are the worst of all. Oy, what will become of us!”
78 years after the Shoah, our enemies have still not forgotten the source of our eternity, our children, the guardians of Judaism’s future.
May the recent horrific murders of our children be a wake up call to us, a reminder of the responsibility we parents hold in our hands and hearts.
To raise the next generation as proud and knowledgeable Jews.
As Rabbi Leo and Lucy Dee raised their daughters Rina and Maia, Hashem Yikom Damam.

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