Inspiration from Zion: This is a Love Story

Yesterday we ended the day with the Passover Seder. We began it at Dor’s funeral…

“Thank you for being my son.”

Dor’s father speaking of his son who always led the way, always first, born first, before his twin sister, and ever since looked for ways to be groundbreaking and make a difference, charming people and gathering friends around him.

“If I had been granted my miracle and you had woken up, you would never have been the same and you would never have accepted that.”

Dor’s mother explaining to the mourners, to herself, that [due to the brain injury] out of the horrible options available, she was given the less awful.

“Since I can remember I followed you everywhere and wanted to be your best friend.”

Dor’s younger brother, speaking of the brother he worshiped, the brother who was always there for him. Of how Dor went to extreme lengths to make sure to be at his ceremony: “You spent hours without sleep just to make sure that when I lifted my eyes, I’d see your smiling face”

Dor’s twin sister: “No one knows what it’s like to be twins. Only you [Dor] and I know what it’s like to understand each other just by looking at each other. To feel when something happens to you, like I felt on Wednesday [when the attack that fatally injured Dor happened]. To know you so well that when I saw Shir across a room, I knew that Shir was meant for you.” And she was right, Shir and Dor were engaged and supposed to be married in a month and a half.

She asked the mourners attending the funeral: “Please don’t just tell me that you are sorry for my pain, tell me that I was lucky to be Dor’s sister. I will always have a hole in my soul the shape of Dor, but I will always be very proud that I was his sister.”

And Shir, Dor’s fiancé, telling us what it was like to be loved by Dor: “I was so happy on Wednesday, knowing you were supposed to come home. When we spoke on the phone I asked if there was anything you wanted me to buy from the supermarket and you told me, Darling, buy whatever you want me to cook for you!”. In a calm and stable voice, she vowed to Dor to live her life exactly as he would want her to. I cracked when her voice cracked. In a soft, almost whisper, she added: “But please come visit me in my dreams.”

Our son, standing in the crowd with more of Dor’s friends, scrunching his face to not cry. A soldier standing next to him sobbed for Dor, his officer. Some of the soldiers injured in the attack, who insisted on being there, were brought from the hospital in ambulances.

The officer in command of Dor, sharing that this was the first time he had to bury someone under his command, describing Dor’s passion for defending the country: “The country is more important than me, you [Dor] said. For just a moment I want you to be my commander. I want to learn from you. To be more like you.”

A leading, new member of the local council whose campaign Dor managed: “You did more than help me. You made me love you as if you were my younger brother.”

The ripples of grief, the impact of loss spread far. They don’t end with the immediate family.

How do you celebrate a holiday after a funeral? It’s not really possible to draw a line between grief and celebration, personal and national. It’s all part of the same story.

And we continue. Because we must.

We are the Eternal Nation. We survived when there was no hope.

Now, we can fight back.

“In every generation the enemy rises up to destroy us and God saves us from their hands.”

How ironic that in Hebrew the word for “generation” is “Dor”.