Rav Yitzchak Biton and his wife, Tamar, have become powerful symbols of faith for a nation under fire
WE walk through the lobby of Jerusalem’s Grand Court Hotel, surprised to find it bustling even amid war. But that’s because Jews from every circle and community are making their way toward the shivah area at the end of the lobby, where the grieving Biton family is sitting: Rav Yitzchak Biton, his wife Tamar, and their youngest, four-and-a-half-year-old Racheli, who is still too young to comprehend the unimaginable loss or the realization that she is the only surviving child of her parents.
Rav and Rabbanit Biton, soft-spoken and quiet by nature, are admittedly still far from processing the event that changed their lives forever. Last Sunday afternoon, the second day of the Iran-Israel war, a ballistic missile with an enormous 400-kilogram warhead made a direct hit on a shul and shelter on Yehuda HaMaccabi Street in Beit Shemesh, leaving nine dead, over 60 injured, and an entire town reeling. The Tiferet Yisrael shul and the public shelter underneath were completely obliterated; a dozen homes were destroyed or severely damaged, and victims were trapped under the rubble of several collapsed structures. Among those who perished were three of the Biton children: Yaakov (17), Avigail (15), and Sarah (13), Hashem yikom damam.
Rabbi Biton, whose home next door to the shul was pulverized, recounts the moments of terror as the air-raid siren began to wail. “Suddenly we heard a tremendous explosion. Our house was nearly flattened from the blast — the whole ceiling collapsed. It’s really a great miracle that the three of us are alive.”
His other children had gone to the shelter, but then he looked out of what had been the window and saw smoke rising above where the shul had been standing just seconds before.
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