A Jewish Mother’s Strength

In one room sat the mother, Mrs. Devorah Paley, surrounded by teenage daughters with anguish stamped on their faces. In her hand was a picture of her “sweeties” — the little boys she’d left at the bus stop dressed in their Shabbos best, whose remains she was called on to identify.

The men’s side was equally pathetic. A young teen with his even younger brother accepted comfort for the loss of their two siblings. In a hospital a few miles away, their father hovered between life and death, the victim of a devil in human form.

But amid the brokenness, there was something else that should resonate just as widely: the unimaginable strength and faith of a Jewish mother.

“They were happy children, good children who loved to help,” Devorah Paley said of her sons Yaakov Yisrael, 5, and Asher Menachem, 7.