By ERICA SCHACHNEOfir Sha'ar(photo credit: ONEFAMILY)
On the evening of April 30, the start of Remembrance Day, a large crowd filled the gardens of the OneFamily center in Old Katamon to hear fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters and wives pay homage to those they had lost to terrorism.Ofir Sha’ar, father of Gil-Ad, 16, one of the three yeshiva students kidnapped and murdered by Hamas in June 2014, lamented “the emptiness of the seat next me [in the synagogue] which causes constant pain,” yet said he is comforted by his “five daughters filled with light.”Yael Weissman – the widow of Tuvia Yanai Weissman, 21, an off-duty soldier who was killed in a February 2016 terrorist attack in a Sha’ar Binyamin supermarket – recounted how he was struck down while they were shopping together with their infant daughter Netta. She detailed the “deep abyss”and “freefall” his death had left behind, but said she draws strength from Netta, her “seedling.”Many spoke of being “unable to find their place” after the death of their loved ones, but then added that their “second family” at OneFamily nurtures and supports them.