(IsraelNN.com) Life in Yeshivat Merkaz HaRav is not yet back to normal, but the families of the eight terrorist-slaughter victims are concluding their mourning week today, and the dead are being remembered in ceremonies around the world.
The stream of visitors to the Yeshiva from around the country has barely stopped since the murderous Arab terrorist attack last Thursday night in which eight students were killed - most of them high-school students in the 9th and 10th grades.
Wednesday night, many students of other yeshivot - most notably hareidi Jews who do not often get a chance to visit Merkaz Harav - were on hand to try to understand the final moments of eight of their fellow yeshiva students. They walked among the rows of library shelves were the students hid - and where the terrorist gunned some of them down - and saw the dozens of bullet holes in the floor and walls. Thick Torah-text books with cover-to-cover bullet holes are currently being held in the library office, and will likely be put on display at a later date.
Dozens of American and other overseas students from Yeshivat Netiv Aryeh in the Old City of Jerusalem spent Wednesday evening studying Torah in Merkaz HaRav.
Memorials Around the World
Memorial ceremonies for the eight victims are being held in Jewish communities throughout Europe, North and South America, Australia and the former Soviet Union.
The memorials are being organized by the Jewish Agency, in accordance with a goal set by Chairman Zev Bielsky: "This slaughter must be made known to every person in the world, Jewish or not. We have decided to use our hundreds of emissaries around the world to reach the hundreds, thousands and millions who have no idea of what happened here."
The Jewish Agency has also prepared a series of web pages on various aspects of the slaughter, at
www.jewishagency.org/solidarity. The memorials will include prayer services in schools, special classes, and youth movement activities.
In Paris this week, between 1,500 and 5,000 people demonstrated against the terrorist slaughter in Jerusalem. Among the participants were Israel's Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar and France's Chief Rabbi Joseph Sitruk. President Shimon Peres, visiting in France, took part in the Jewish Agency's memorial ceremony for the victims in Paris.
In the Young Israel of Flatbush in Brookly, New York, on Wednesday night, the Orthodox Union (OU) held a memorial assembly on Wednesday night, led by Rabbis Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, Kenneth Auman, and Dovid Goldwasser. The three also addressed the participants on what the Jewish community must do at this time.
Rabbi Rosental Visits
Rabbi Yaakov Nissan Rosental, who served for 40 years as Rabbinical Court Chief Justice in Haifa, and now heads five Torah academies named Yeshivat HaGra (in Haifa, Bnei Brak, Ramat HaSharon, Petach Tikvah and Kiryat Sefer), made a special trip to Jerusalem Wednesday night to deliver a talk to the students in Yeshivat Merkaz HaRav. He compared the slaughter at the yeshiva with the one that occurred in Hevron in 1929, when 67 Jews were cruelly killed in their homes and synagogues, saying that in both cases, the victims were the manifestation of the Divine statement, 'in those closest to Me will I be sanctified.'
Rabbi Rosental told the students to "strive for greatness" in Torah study, and to write down their Torah thoughts "on behalf of the souls of your friends who were killed." He added that he was now concluding a 13-volume work named Mishnat Yaakov on Maimonides' magnum opus, using some of the thoughts he wrote when he was only 15 years old.
Major Yeshiva Memorial
At 6 PM on Thursday evening, to mark exactly one week since the slaughter, Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda St. in Jerusalem will be closed and Yeshivat Merkaz HaRav will hold a large memorial ceremony. At 3:30 PM, a smaller ceremony will be held in Merkaz HaRav's LeTze'irim High School, where six of the dead studied. It will be broadcast live through
www.yashlats.co.il, in conjunction with Arutz Meir of Machon Meir.
Neturei Karta Sends Pointed Condolences
Members of the extreme anti-Zionist Neturei Karta sect wrote letters of condolences to the families of the victims. Though the letter ends with the traditional consolation, 'May G-d comfort you among the mourners for Zion and Jerusalem,' it mainly uses the murders to justify Neturei Karta's anti-Zionist approach:
"Day and night over these past decades we have been pained and trying to prevent these terrible incidents in the camp of the Hebrews, because ever since the dispute and warring with the non-Jews began here in the Holy Land, they have been trying to avenge themselves with fury and wrath, and Jewish blood has been spilt like water all this time... Perhaps at such a bitter time as this, the time has come to take stock and to say to the Angel of Death, 'Stop!' Perhaps we have all been mistaken, perhaps we must recognize that our forefathers were correct during the 2,000 years of Exile in acting with the Gentiles by seeking only peace, mercy, and appeasement, and maybe we will then merit to have G-d sweeten our decree and prevent terrible calamities in the future among our brothers, the entire House of Israel.
"We well know that by our perpetual acts of seeking peace and submission to the Gentiles, we have been suspected by many among the House of Israel as having aided those who murder [us], Heaven forbid - but what can we do that we are commanded by the Torah to look ahead; in order to prevent terrible things and to save the nation, we are marching in 'the path of Exile'... We wish you from the depths of our heart [Divine consolation] and may G-d strengthen your shattered hearts and may you know no more pain."
Topic: Merkaz HaRav: Visitors Continue Coming, World-Wide Memorials (Read 2098 times)