Memorial for Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva Massacre Victims

[muman613]

It is very difficult to remember how I felt one Jewish year ago... I am so glad that the memory of these young martyrs will not be forgotten. How much suffering must we endure?

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/130111

Memorial for Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva Massacre Victims
Shevat 30, 5769, 24 February 09 11:35
by Nissan Ratzlav-Katz

(IsraelNN.com) A special public memorial ceremony will be held Tuesday afternoon in Jerusalem to mark the approaching one-year anniversary of the terrorist murders of eight students in the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva. Alongside somber memorial prayers, the occasion will celebrate Jewish learning and life in the yeshiva, in the Land of Israel and among Jews worldwide. Leading Torah scholars and public figures from around Israel are slated to attend.

Watch a live video broadcast in English of the Mercaz HaRav Torah dedication ceremony starting at 7:00 p.m. on the IsraelNationalNews.com homepage

During the gathering, the final letters of eight new Torah scrolls will be inscribed by members of the families of the victims of the terrorist attack. The scrolls will then be carried in a procession around the seminary and eventually brought into the Mercaz HaRav study hall amidst singing and dancing. The families of the victims will each receive one of the scrolls, which were all commissioned by a single anonymous donor.

The memorial occasion will also be marked by the worldwide conclusion of the study of the 2,700-page Babylonian Talmud, sponsored by B'Lev Echad (With One Heart) and Mercaz HaRav. Over the course of this past year, those who wished to study a two-sided page of the religious-legal tome, or several of them, in memory of the slain students signed up via an Internet site designated for the purpose, specifying the pages they planned to study. The entire Talmud was completed more than three times in this manner and a festive conclusion ceremony will take place at the Tuesday memorial.

'Foxes Entered Our Holy Precinct'

A statement from the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva on the coming first anniversary of the jihadist killings said:

"For 80 years Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva has been spreading the light of Torah and unity among all sectors of the People of Israel, in Israel and abroad. Following the path of our master-teacher Rabbi Kook, of blessed memory, thousands of its graduates have integrated into all aspects of Israeli communal life, and serve today as the spiritual and moral vanguard of the State of Israel.

"One year ago, foxes entered our holy precinct in order to silence the voice of the redemptive Torah reverberating in Israel. Eight of our students, from Mercaz HaRav and from the Yeshiva High School, boys and young men who were laboring in the tents of Torah, paid with their lives for it, and went up to Heaven with a single, clear message: 'Only be strong and very courageous to observe [and] do according to all the laws which Moses My servant commanded you... for then you shall make your way successfully...." (Joshua 1:7, 8)

The victims were Yonatan Yitzchak Eldar, Ro'i Aharon Roth, Neria Cohen, Avraham David Moses, Segev Pniel Avichayil, Doron Mahareta, Yonadav Hirschfeld, and Yochai Lifschitz.

Last week, a highly emotional brit milah was held at the yeshiva, when the son of one of the men who killed the perpetrator of the Mercaz HaRav murders was ritually circumcised by the father of one of the victims.

Remembering and Continuing

In their efforts to turn the tragedy into a force for good, the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva has established a fund, 'Remembering and Continuing', to memorialize the victims in practical ways in their spirit "and in the spirit of all those who commit their lives for the sake of Israel."

In the wake of the attack, yeshiva representatives said, a large number of youths - both unaffiliated and religious - began coming to the yeshiva to investigate the institution's approach to Torah. Spontaneously, regular meetings of individuals and groups sprang up and they now include dozens of young people seeking out their Jewish heritage. Mercaz HaRav has thus established a Jewish Heritage Center to support these activities.

The yeshiva is also providing financial aid for members of Israel's Ethiopian Jewish community seeking to study at Mercaz HaRav through a new scholarship program established for that purpose. The fund is dedicated to preserving the memory of terror victim Doron Mahareta, who immigrated from Ethiopia and studied at the yeshiva for seven years until his brutal murder there. Mahareta, the yeshiva says, was a dedicated student who was planning to be a rabbi serving his community. His inspiring story, "The Holy Dish Washer of Mercaz HaRav", can be read here.

The memorial fund is also allocating monies for improving and expanding the physical structures of the yeshiva complex, "as a proper answer to those who sought to bring down the spirit of the yeshiva," Mercaz HaRav representatives explained.

[zachor_ve_kavod]

I didn't realize that it's been a year already.  Thank you, Muman, I will remember them.

I have to say, I'm so sick of yarzheits.  They kill our boys, and we bury them and then remember them.  Where is the anger against the murderers?  Why weren't the Arabs deported as a result of this?  How many more Jews have to die? 

Any country with an ounce of self respect would have deported (or more likely) annihilated these Islamic, nazi, murderers.  It disturbs me greatly that we just sit there and take it.

[GoIsraelGo!]

I didn't realize that it's been a year already.  Thank you, Muman, I will remember them.

I have to say, I'm so sick of yarzheits.  They kill our boys, and we bury them and then remember them.  Where is the anger against the murderers?  Why weren't the Arabs deported as a result of this?  How many more Jews have to die? 

Any country with an ounce of self respect would have deported (or more likely) annihilated these Islamic, nazi, murderers.  It disturbs me greatly that we just sit there and take it.

Zachor, G-d is watching and he is on our side, the side of righteousness. I believe that G-d is attempting to give our People a chance, and righteous Gentiles to come with complete faith in him before he interviens. G-d is collecting his Armies too, the ones who will fight Satan in the war of Gog and Magog.
Obviously our leaders are letting us down, and for this they will be the first to be punished by Hashem.

[zachor_ve_kavod]

I didn't realize that it's been a year already.  Thank you, Muman, I will remember them.

I have to say, I'm so sick of yarzheits.  They kill our boys, and we bury them and then remember them.  Where is the anger against the murderers?  Why weren't the Arabs deported as a result of this?  How many more Jews have to die? 

Any country with an ounce of self respect would have deported (or more likely) annihilated these Islamic, nazi, murderers.  It disturbs me greatly that we just sit there and take it.

Zachor, G-d is watching and he is on our side, the side of righteousness. I believe that G-d is attempting to give our People a chance, and righteous Gentiles to come with complete faith in him before he interviens. G-d is collecting his Armies too, the ones who will fight Satan in the war of Gog and Magog.
Obviously our leaders are letting us down, and for this they will be the first to be punished by Hashem.

Our side is only the righteous side if we act righteously.  When the Jews did not take vengeance for this massacre, they cheapened the blood of every victim.  This is not righteous.  How can G-d be for the Jews if the Jews are not for the Jews?  I hope you're right dox. 

[דוד בן זאב אריה]

I didn't realize that it's been a year already.  Thank you, Muman, I will remember them.

I have to say, I'm so sick of yarzheits.  They kill our boys, and we bury them and then remember them.  Where is the anger against the murderers?  Why weren't the Arabs deported as a result of this?  How many more Jews have to die? 

Any country with an ounce of self respect would have deported (or more likely) annihilated these Islamic, nazi, murderers.  It disturbs me greatly that we just sit there and take it.

I feel you same anger. I was only a block away from the attack given I left the country a month before the attack, But this really hit close to home for me because I was so close to the place of the attack. Also the Bulldozer attack was down the same street that I walked down each day. This Yeshiva attack was the deadliest attack on Torah education since the Holocaust. It just makes me sick that we sit back and take it.