Not a day goes by when Rena Ariel does not wonder how to best preserve the memory of her daughter, Hallel Yaffa, 13, who was stabbed to death by a Palestinian terrorist in the bedroom of the family’s Kiryat Arba home in June 2016.
Ariel shared those thoughts with members of the Hebron and Kiryat Arba community, which, as a result of COVID-19, held a Zoom memorial service rather than the annual traditional one in the Hebron cemetery.
“This year, it is complicated and different,” said Ariel.
Remembrance Day is analogous to Yom Kippur in the importance of the communal aspect to the event, Ariel said.
“What stands out in the regular Remembrance Day is the feeling that one has been embraced by the nation of Israel,” she said.
Ariel pondered the connection between death, sanctity and sacrifice as it appears in the religious texts, particularly with respect to the rebuilding of a home for the Jewish nation in the land of Israel.
It is a difficult connection to make and it is in some way inexplicable, Ariel said.
But it comes into play, because their private story of the death of a daughter is now also part of the national story, because of the manner of her death, she continued.
Involvement in the subject of sanctity, particularly as it relates to rebuilding a home in the land of Israel, including with respect to the Temple, has given the family a sense of direction in which to pour their energies, she said.
“We are always asked to relay memories of Hallel. As the years passed, it has become so clear how young she was,” said Ariel. As a result, there is a limited number of stories, Ariel explained, adding that it is not as if her daughter had passed away at an old age, when the stories were more likely to be boundless.
“We know the stories, we hear them again and again,” she said, and so there is a need to find a way to find something new that can remain alive and be renewed as the family moves forward.
“Thought of Hallel breaks into two, the way it is part of the larger story and then private memories of a mother and father who lost a daughter, age 13, with all the small stories and experience,” she said.
This year, Hallel’s friends came and stood outside the home, Ariel said.
But those that stood there were no longer children but young women who would soon finish their senior year of high school, Ariel continued.
“And Hallel is not with them. The thought of what is possible, as a mother and father who have lost a daughter, how to continue, is a daily challenge. We don’t just live on the larger ideas, but also in the day-to-day, how to create a daily existence that is constructive and happy. This is the challenge of anyone who has suffered a loss, how to both move on and to remember,” Ariel said.
Down the road from their West Bank settlement, the Gush Etzion Regional Council held a restricted memorial service at the cemetery in the West Bank Kfar Etzion cemetery.
It played a tape of that ceremony on Facebook, rather than a live broadcast.
Kfar Etzion is one of the first settlements built after the 1967 Six Day War, in the area of the Jewish communities that were destroyed during the 1948 War of Independence.
The date of Remembrance is linked to the date of the Arab Legion soldiers’ massacre of the Jewish residents who lived in that Etzion bloc.
Both former Knesset speaker Yuli Edelstein (Likud) and Gush Etzion Council head Shlomo Ne’eman delivered short speeches in honor of the terror victims, soldiers and the original residents of the Gush Etzion bloc, who lost their lives on behalf of the state.
“You have given your life so we can have a future in our country,” Ne’eman said.