Shortly after the harrowing events of October 7th, Chabad of Israel chartered a flight for the families of the hostages to travel to the United States.
My seatmate for the flight was Ohad Weiss from Kibbutz Be’eri. His father, Shmulik, ran into the safe room when he heard the terrorists. They rammed down the door and murdered him right there. His mother, Yehudit, was missing.
Ohad had no idea whether she’d also been killed, or, in a fate almost worse than death, taken hostage to Gaza.
We greeted each other politely and introduced ourselves. A short while into the flight, I turned to Ohad.
“Let me offer you a deal,” I said. “There are a lot of Chabad rabbis on this flight. That means you’ll definitely be putting on tefillin at some point. If you put them on with me right now, we can sit in peace for the rest of the flight instead of being asked every five minutes from another rabbi. What do you say?”
Ohad chuckled. “Sure. Let’s do it. Maybe it will serve as a zechus to help find my mother.”
We put on tefillin and said a tefillah for his mother.
Our first stop when we landed in New York was the Rebbe’s Ohel. Everyone wrote letters and read them over the Rebbe’s gravesite, their tears soaking the pages in their hands. It was an incredibly meaningful and uplifting experience.
IllumiNations
We then went to Washington DC and visited Congress before returning home.
Just two weeks after the Ohel visit, an IDF patrol in Gaza came upon the remains of an Israeli woman near Shifa Hospital. She was identified as Yehudit Weiss. With deep reverence, they were able to bring her back to Israel, where her family could honor her memory and lay her to rest with the dignity she deserved.
