“The Chazon Ish repeated the words ‘makom Torah, makom Torah’ and sat down. That was his entire derashah”
Dovid Aharon Diskind was just a baby when his father, Shmuel Binyamin a”h, perished in the Meron disaster on Lag B’omer 2021. Last week, little Dovid Aharon and his family returned to Meron, but this time it was for a simchah – it was time for the three-year-old’s upsherin. (Last year Shmuel Binyamin’s widow remarried, to a yungerman who was a friend of her husband.)
At the spot where his father perished, extended family members gathered to give Dovid Aharon his first haircut, joined by Rabbi Meir Nachman Elchadad, who lost two of his own sons – 12-year-old Moshe Mordechai and 18-year-old Yosef Dovid (Sefie) in the same tragedy.
Reb Shmuel Binyamin was a Gerrer chassid and young avreich who lived in Ramat Beit Shemesh and spent his days immersed in Torah learning.
That year would be the first time he traveled to Meron for Lag B’omer (for reasons of modesty, many unmarried chassidishe bochurim refrain from traveling in the crush of the crowd). Reb Shmuel Binyamin was one of 14 children, and at the time, his brother Yisrael – who’d left the chassidus – was serving in the army, stationed at the Gaza border. The two brothers, who remained very close despite their lifestyle differences, spoke that very morning. “Yisrael, you’re doing your job and I’m doing mine. You’re protecting the country from the south, and I’m going up to Meron with the thousands who are davening there, protecting the country from the north.”
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