* Translated by Janine Muller Sherr
“Shalom Sivan,
My name is Ravit and I’m the mother of Staff sgt. Dvir Resler who fell in battle on Simchat Torah. Today, the 17th of Sivan, is his birthday. We’ve been thinking about a fitting way to celebrate his special day and we decided to focus on the mitzvah that was such an intrinsic part of who he was: honoring his parents.
Dvir was very close to us and we had wonderful conversations. He always helped out at home and showed us so much love. We thought we knew everything about him, but recently his friends shared some new and moving things about him that we didn’t know.
We are a religious family; Dvir didn’t wear a kippah. When his friends would invite him to go out with them on Shabbat, he would say, “I can’t come with you— I know it would upset my mother.” They would then try to persuade him by saying, “We’re all going, your mother won’t even know.” He would answer. “Even if she never finds out about it, I don’t want to hurt my parents.”
One Shabbat morning, for example, Dvir stood in front of a group of his friends before they left for a trip to the Kinneret and told them: “I’m not going. I need to respect my parents.” He was able to withstand this peer pressure yet his friends still accepted him and looked up to him as a leader. Now they tell us, “You were the most important thing in his life.”
We encourage everyone reading this story to reflect on this important mitzvah and do something for your parents. Think about what you can do to make them happy, even something small like sending a bouquet of flowers, preparing coffee for them, inviting them for a meal, or even just sending them athoughtful message on WhatsApp.
To mark this day when Dvir was sent down to our world to fulfill his mission, we would like to give him a birthday present: We call on everyone to continue on his path of observing the mitzvah of honoring your parents with love.
May we hear good news soon.״
