Five Lost in Morocco    

“HaKadosh Baruch Hu picked them out one by one, you can see it clearly,” a relative says of the five victims of the car crash in Morocco last Friday. “He picked out who wouldn’t be in that car, too.”

The five Tzfas residents killed in the crash, four of whom were related, were part of a larger group that had rented several cars on a tour of kivrei tzaddikim in Morocco. Some had arrived straight from Uman, which they visited every Erev Rosh Chodesh. Last Thursday, they visited the kever of Rabbi Masud Abuchatzeira, the Baba Sali’s father. After that, they continued on their way, stopping at a gas station to get some sleep.

For most of the trip, there were only three to four people per vehicle. Then at some point, one person suggested a visit to another tzaddik’s kever. Brothers Shimon (33) and Chaim Yosef (20) Tfilinsky, and their cousins Moshe Galant (18) and Natan Shapira (37), had already decided to head out in one car, when Yisrael Meir Shasha (25) asked to join at the last moment. Another person who wanted to join was unable to. Shapira, a family member says, had initially said that he was tired, but decided to come at the urging of his cousins.

What happened next is not entirely clear. In the morning, the rest of the group were notified by the car rental company that the vehicle had been involved in an accident with five fatalities. It emerged that a driver behind them had seen the car swerve off the road. He did a U-turn at the very next junction, and called the police when he discovered the scene of the crash. The rest of the group rushed to the scene to gather the victims’ belongings.