From Montreal and Manchester, Buenos Aires and Teaneck, each of these very different people had made their own way to the same destination
As the outpouring of grief across Israel and beyond has made clear, Meron 2021 will go down as a tragedy of the entire Jewish People — 45 holy souls, Jews of all types, who died minutes after beseeching kera ro’a gezar dineinu.
But of the many thousands drawn to the elevation of Rabi Shimon last week, and the hundreds who entered the horror that was the tunnel of death, one group stands apart.
From different cities, countries, and continents, they’d waved goodbye as they boarded a plane to learn in yeshivah and grow in kollel, to spend time in Eretz Yisrael or go directly to Meron. From Montreal and Manchester, Buenos Aires and Teaneck, each of these very different people had made their own way to the same destination.
Like the sepia-tinted pictures of the foreign-born bochurim learning in Chevron before the massacre of 1929, there’s an aching poignancy to the moving words of tribute and pictures that follow.
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