BESHALACH 5784 You Shall Bear Witness... Rabbi Andrew Shaw Chief Executive, Mizrachi UK
I don’t think I have known a week like it. I am proud that last Monday Mizrachi UK led a group of UK Rabbanim to start a mission to Israel. Over the next three days we heard from so many people, there was Dani Miran who told us about his son Omri, still held in Gaza by Hamas. There was Jacqui and Yaron Vital who told us about their beautiful daughter Adi, who was murdered defending her family in Kibbutz Holit. There was Elad Keidar who stood in front of his mother’s burned house in Kibbutz Beeri and told the story of how he, in the space of two hours, became an orphan. There was Rabbi Bentzi Mann who movingly told us how he was responsible for helping prepare the hundreds and hundreds of bodies for burial, working tirelessly at this holy work to identify every single body. There was Yair Avinoam, a simple policeman in Sderot, who single handedly held off the terrorist onslaught on that fateful Shabbat morning with just a handgun. There was Simcha, the director of Zaka, who went into the conflagration time and time again with his team, to make sure all bodies were recovered, to be returned to the families for burial. Giving Kavod Ha Met to all. All of them heroes, all of them incredible people with a fortitude and sense of mission that was awesome to behold. We felt humbled in their presence. We started the mission with a talk from Rabbi Doron Perez, the CEO of World Mizrachi. He still has no news about his youngest son Daniel who was bravely defending Israel against the terrorist, saving countless lives on October 7th when his tank was captured by Hamas. Rav Perez’s opening words to us were from this week’s Parsha:
It came to pass when Pharaoh let the people go, that Hashem did not lead them [by] way of the land of the Philistines for it was near, because Hashem said, in case the people reconsider when they see war and return to Egypt. (Shemot 13:17)