He began humming Kol Nidrei, and suddenly Purim had been transformed into Yom Hakippurim.…
War broke out on the afternoon of Yom Kippur. Many students were called to report to their units even before the fast ended, and they went to take leave of the roshei yeshivah. They left the yeshivah’s minyan and convened their own, completing Ne’ilah early. At the yeshivah’s main minyan, Rav Yehuda Amital gave an emotional speech before Ne’ilah.…
It was not long before terrible tidings began to arrive, one after the other. During the first twenty days of the war, Yeshivat Har Etzion lost eight of its students. Asher Yaron and Sariel Birnbaum, members of the yeshivah’s first class, were called up right after Yom Kippur and were killed the next day, in the holding defense battle against the Syrians on the Golan Heights. Birnbaum died still wearing his Yom Kippur clothes.…
Yoel Amital, who was called up on Simchas Torah, later asked his father how he felt and what he had to say about the loss of his eight students. Rav Amital sorrowfully answered his son: “What did [they] say in Slabodka after the events of 1929, when so many students of Yeshivas Chevron were killed? [They] cried.” …
The first Purim after the [Yom Kippur] war was charged with mixed feelings. The joy of the holiday was mixed with anguish over the war’s victims. A particularly emotional moment occurred on one of the nights before Purim, when all the rabbis and students sat together at a tish. Rav Amital told the students the well-known story of a Jew trying to remember the origins of a certain tune and whose searches led him ultimately to the tune of Kol Nidrei. “At the root of every tune we eventually reach Kol Nidrei.” He began humming Kol Nidrei, and suddenly Purim had been transformed into Yom Hakippurim.…
Create a free account to keep reading.
