* Translation by Yehoshua Siskin
Eliran Ohayon wrote the following words after the terrorist attack in Beersheba, but they are just as pertinent now following the terrorist attack in Hadera:
"I once took part in a discussion where each participant was asked to share an especially powerful childhood memory. I closed my eyes and it immediately came to me: the beginning of the 2000's, when buses were being blown up every day and, in response, grandma's emotional outpouring became a regular ritual - she would sit opposite the television screen and weep.
"As a child, it was difficult for me to understand her tears since what was there, after all, between her and them? It took me time to understand that, as far as she was concerned, they were family. Her endless prayers for the entire nation of Israel while her hand rested on the mezuzah gave away the true depth of her feelings. And it was she who brought me to understand that I am part of a large extended family indeed.
"Today my grandmother is not in the best of health and she speaks with difficulty. Yet when I told her about the terrorist attack in Beersheba, she shed a tear. She understood, but not completely, and so I took her tear with me to the cemetery for the funeral of the murdered men and women.
"The Chief Rabbi of Beersheba stood up to eulogize them, and shouted words from last week's Torah portion: 'And let your brethren, the whole house of Israel, bewail the burning which the Lord hath wrought.' From that moment on, a woman standing next to me did not stop crying. I did not know her personally but the deceased certainly did not know her personally either. And although I did not know her, I recognized the weeping - it was the weeping of my grandmother. The tears of am Yisrael, the entire nation of Israel."
