I’d known David for a long time. He’d been coming to Chabad for a while, and was a beloved member of our community.
When we celebrated the birth of our daughter, David called to congratulate us, offering his most sincere and joyous Mazal tovs.
“I have a baby gift for you,” he told me. “Can I come over now to show it to you?”
David arrived about twenty minutes later, radiating barely contained emotion. He held a brown folder tightly against his chest, smoothing its cover every so often with unconscious strokes.
“I didn’t have it easy growing up,” he began, once he’d sat at the table with a cup of coffee. “My parents attended a synagogue at one point, but they moved to another part of town and never bothered finding a replacement. So I grew up knowing next to nothing about my Judaism.
“My parents both died when I was a teen, leaving me to patch up the broken pieces of my future. I felt lost and rudderless, so when I saw an ad asking for volunteers in Israel to replace workers who’d been called to serve in the Gulf War, I thought it was the perfect solution to all my problems.
“I joined a kibbutz and soon settled into my new routine. I made friends and was starting to envision a future, when tragedy struck. I was working in the fields with a group of friends, when terrorists opened fire on us. A few friends from my group died, and I was injured badly.
