The Short Vort by Rabbi Eisenman

When I awoke this morning, I felt it.

Something wasn’t right.

The feeling was different than the constant feeling of anxiety which has held me captive since October 7^th.

This time was different.

During Krias Shema, the epiphany took hold of me.

After davening, I checked the dates.

My feelings were correct.

My internal clock sensed that today was different.

Today’s discomfort was a flashback.

A flashback to an event I can never and will never forget.

A flashback to an event fifty years- ago.

Yet, the fear, anguish, and all-consuming sadness are as palpable- if not even more so- than they were a half-century ago.

I know exactly where I was when I heard the news.

It was a Wednesday, just like today, and I was in high school.

That May 15^th of fifty years ago continues to haunt and torment me.

The passage of fifty years has not minimized the pain of that horrific day.

And the events of October 7^th and beyond only reinforce my sadness as I recall that day fifty years ago.

That Wednesday, May 15^th, 1974, was the day when three Arab terrorists held approximately 85 high school students hostage in the Netiv Meir Elementary School in Maalot, in the north of Israel.

The students, all Sefardic of North African descent, attended a religious high school in Tzfat.

They were on a three-day excursion and spent the night of May 14-15^th in the Netiv Meir school in Maalot when, in the early morning of May 15^th, the three terrorists took control of the school.

The terrorists were demanding the release of 23 prisoners.

Golda Meir’s government debated the issue for hours.

Yet, ultimately,  Moshe Dayan insisted on storming the building.

The results were catastrophic.

The mission went horrifically wrong, and out of the approximately 85 students and staff, twenty-five students and staff members were killed and over fifty wounded.

Few, if any, emerged unscathed from the massacre.

Of the twenty-two students killed, eighteen were girls.

One of them was 16-year-old Ilana Neeman.

During the hours-long stand-off with the terrorists, she wrote a letter to her parents and placed it in her pocket.

After the massacre, a member of IDF’s Chevra Kadisha found the letter.

Here is an excerpt from the letter (translation in my own).

“I am now 16 and a half. If it has been decreed that I shall die, I will die quietly, with honor, and with Emunah. Yes, Emunah (faith). Emunah is what you gave me. You always told me that life would be worthless and more painful without Emunah. And now, at this difficult time, “Ani Maamina Harbeh” (I greatly believe (in Hashem)…

When I say my final Shema Yisroel, I will be thinking of you…

This letter will be the last letter of my life…

Very soon, I will be gone….”

Yehi Zichram Baruch