Not in Vain

For these walls witnessed both unimaginable pain, and Divinely endowed reserves of strength and courage to find shards of light even in the darkest places.

It’s the home of Rabbi Avraham Noach and Devory Paley, a quiet, unassuming couple suddenly flung into the Jewish spotlight last February when their two little boys were murdered by a terrorist on Erev Shabbos while waiting for a bus to a family simchah. Five-year-old Yaakov Yisrael was killed instantly and seven-year-old Asher Menachem (Ushi) died a few hours later, while Reb Avraham Noach, his lower body crushed and with a traumatic head injury, was rushed unconscious to Hadassah’s ICU. Shlomo Alter Lederman, a young chassid married just five months, was also killed in the ramming attack.

Today, in what can only be called a miraculous recovery, Reb Avraham Noach, a longtime avreich, has returned to kollel standing on his own two feet, while Devory is trying to unpack the boxes stacked against the wall in her freshly expanded living room (most of them filled with seforim, but some also holding notebooks, pictures, letters, and gifts from people around the world she’d never even met before). In the background there’s the cooing of a smiley six-month old baby named Yonatan Refael, born just two days after the shloshim of their murdered sons.

Good people helped them renovate their apartment so it would be wheelchair-accessible when the prognosis for Reb Avraham Noach looked grim, but even though they no longer need a ramp, Devory sees her enlarged walls and spanking new floor tiles as a metaphor for her own life. Through the fog of tragedy there can be sun; through searing pain there can also be profound meaning, connection, healing — and even joy.