This past Thursday night, November 26th, I was privileged to dance at the wedding of Am Yisrael (the nation of Israel), along with thousands of other people.
The wedding I am referring to was the wedding of Sarah-Techiya Litman and Ariel Briegel, which took place at Binyanei Hauma, in Jerusalem. You may recognize Sarah’s name as it has been in the news a few times in the past weeks. Her father and brother HY”D were murdered in cold blood by radical Muslim terrorists while on their way to a celebratory pre-wedding Shabbos, prior to Sarah’s originally scheduled wedding. However, when the world threw nasty lemons at Sarah-Techiya, she did not just run and hide and cry. She fought back.
During the seven-day mourning period of Shiva, Sarah-Techiya along with her now husband Ariel, decided to invite the entire nation of Israel to their wedding, and they did just that. They put the invitation in the newspapers, on popular websites and all over social media. With thousands attending, they knew that would be the way to make a statement: terror will never beat us, no matter what it steals from us.
Before making a final decision to go to the wedding, I weighed the option of going to a “Thanksgiving dinner”. In my deliberation I realized that this would be the ultimate Thanksgiving. (It also helped that my friends decided to make a Thanksgiving FEAST for Friday night. FOMO averted.) I also came to the realization that I was not going for them I was going for me.
Upon arriving at the wedding, what I had imagined became a reality. Thousands upon thousands of Jews came from across Israel and the globe to celebrate with this couple in the face of terror. There were raffles around the world which allotted each winner a ticket to Israel for the wedding, with all of the leftovers going towards presents for the new couple. We all celebrated together, when the terrorists were hoping we would all be in mourning, and cowering in fear.
Every time I speak about the wedding I get the chills. It still boggles my mind that this is our reality. They murdered and we flourished. It’s what we, Am Yisrael, do. I like to think that when these terrorists threw huge sour lemons at Sarah-Techiya, not only did she make lemonade out of them, she made the best Goddamn lemonade ever and drank it, along with the entire nation of Israel, right in the faces of those terrorists. I feel proud, honored, lucky and privileged to have been a part of it.
I came, I felt, we danced, we won.