I am the One... who forms light and creates darkness, who makes peace and creates evil. Yes, it is I, God, who makes all of these.
– Isaiah
This story begins on a fall day in 2002. It is September 30, and Sharon Preiser is in Bnei Brak’s Mayanei Hayeshua hospital, about to deliver her 10th child.
Sharon, Uriel, and the Preiser family had come on aliyah several years earlier, from Silver Spring, Maryland, living first in the Ra’anana absorption center and eventually moving to Karnei Shomron.
On that same fateful day, Sgt. Ari Weiss – who was born in Dallas, Texas almost 22 years earlier – was in Nablus with his elite anti-terror engineering unit, Palchan HaNachal. The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) had uncovered the location of Hamas headquarters and sent the unit to capture the building in which it was housed, in the center of the Casbah.
It was now two years since the Second Intifada had been launched by the Palestinians, ending the ill-fated Oslo Accords and resulting in the murder of many hundreds of Israeli civilians at the evil hands of Hamas.
The discovery of the Hamas offices revealed a treasure-trove of valuable information regarding past, present, and future terrorist operations perpetrated and planned by Hamas. The Shin Bet officials had spent a full day and a half going through the computer files, copying some and deleting others, as the unit’s soldiers guarded the building. Many planned acts of terrorism would be prevented – and countless lives saved – as a result of this crucial joint mission.
As dusk approached, the army prepared to leave the site. It was – per the official IDF report on the day’s events – precisely 6:02 p.m., the exact gematria (numerical value) of the name Ari Yehoshua.
Suddenly, shots rang out from the multistory building directly facing Hamas headquarters. Ari was shot as he went to the aid of fellow soldier Shai Chaim, who had been hit first. A bullet pierced Ari’s lung, and he collapsed. The army medic on site tried in vain to save Ari, while Shai was taken by helicopter to nearby Shavei Shomron. After several surgeries, Shai survived, though he still remains paralyzed from the waist down.
The last picture of Ari, a selfie taken just moments before Ari and Shai went on guard duty, shows the two of them with their arms around each other. This dramatic, final picture of comrades – and casualties – in arms hangs on the wall of my office.
It is the third day of the shiva for Ari. Hundreds of visitors, from fellow soldiers to school friends to army officials to political leaders (including dear friend Natan Sharansky, president Moshe Katsav, and IDF chief of staff Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon) have come to our home to pay their respects upon the supreme sacrifice of this unassuming, humble, handsome hero. So many tears, so many traumatic moments are going up and down the emotional scale of pain and pride. The faces blur and the words all jumble together as the consolations pour in.
And then, Uriel Preiser breaks through the crowd and kneels down in front of me. “Can I please see you and Susie privately for a moment?” he whispers.
I look at him with a strange expression. I know Uriel – he had been a member of the shul at the absorption center for several years when I was the rabbi there – but this request catches me completely off guard.
“You mean, I should leave the masses of people to go to a separate room?!” I say.
But Uriel insists, and so I pull Susie away from her group across the yard and we go into my office.
“I’ve come to ask you a halachic question,” says Uriel, and this really has me puzzled. He goes on. “Our son was born three hours before Ari fell; is it permissible to name him after your Ari? After all, he will be named for someone who was alive at his time of birth, which is not the Ashkenazi custom.” (Sephardim do name children after living persons.)
We are stunned, to say the least. I tell Uriel that yes, it is allowed, because by the time the baby is named, it will be after someone who has already died. We are emotionally overwhelmed with joy and sadness at the same time, and all we can do is cry, for a very long time, until we finally say, “Yes, we would be very honored for your son to carry our boy’s name.”
Uriel was not finished. “The brit will be on the day you finish the shiva,” he continues. “If we wait for you to get up (from shiva), would you come to the brit at our yishuv?”
I pause for a moment and then say, “Yes, of course.”
He goes on, “Will you be our son’s sandek [godfather]?”
This really throws me for a loop, and I just stare at Uriel, from another world, until I finally say “Yes.”
But he isn’t quite done yet. “And will you please speak at the meal following?”
And so, when shiva concludes, I walk around the block, as is the custom; I take a quick shower, and a friend drives me to Karnei Shomron. I hold this boy on my lap as he enters the covenant and is given his name.
How Ari became like a second sun son to the Weisses
Along with Susie (who didn’t come to the brit; she was too emotional and was afraid she would ruin the simha!), I formed an unbreakable bond with this first child (of 18 others, so far) to carry Ari’s name.
Each year, at Ari’s yahrzeit, Uriel and son Ari would come to the cemetery. They are kohanim, so they have to stand at a distance, apart from the graves.
But Ari senior’s yahrzeit – 24 Tishrei – is child Ari’s birthday, so we would always have his birthday gift with us and present it to him.
We watched him grow year by year. The gifts began with baby clothes, then toys, then books, then a computer, then a sound system, until, this year, the offer of a car. We were with Ari at his upsherin – his first haircut; at his bar mitzvah; and, tragically, at the untimely death of his beloved mother, just three weeks after the bar mitzvah. Susie became one of his devoted mother figures, and he spent many Shabbatot and holidays with us through the years.
Ari eventually entered the IDF hesder program, combining Torah study with IDF service, much as Ari (may God revenge his blood!) had also chosen to do. Ari chose to be in the Nahal Brigade, following his namesake, and he became a combat medic, serving meritoriously in Gaza. The boy, to our great joy, had become a man.
But – a man needs a woman. And where else would he find her but at Ohel Ari, the synagogue named for our son, the largest of Ra’anana’s 120 synagogues. Over 1,000 people pray there each Shabbat. One of those people – in fact, the person who opened the holy ark for the very first time at the very first Shabbat service when the shul opened – was Ami Ohayon. And Ami had a charming, beautiful, bright daughter named Anaelle, and it was love at first sight.
When the couple came to our house to announce their engagement, we were swept away by a flood of emotions. Of course, we were overjoyed; our “adopted son” Ari had met his intended. But our son Ari would never marry, though he, too, was in love when his life was ended too soon. He would have no children of his own, but Ari was our child, too. He would bring us the naches that was missing, helping to fill the space that was empty.
When Ari and Anaelle were married this past week, Susie and I spiritually walked down the aisle with them, and I had the privilege of giving the final blessing.
It was other-worldly, a meeting of heaven and earth. Because, you see, life is a continuum that goes round and round: a child leaves the world of souls to enter the world of the living, while the man leaves the world of the living to rejoin the world of souls. Both of our Aris were there, I believe, one under the huppah looking lovingly at his new wife, and one among the stars, happily looking down at them both.
Yes, there is light, and there is darkness; there is evil and there is peace. That is the world that God ordained, and we cannot change it. Our task, our challenge, is to endure the darkness while searching for the light and to combat the evil in the belief that peace will finally be ours.
The writer is the director of the Jewish Outreach Center of Ra’anana.rabbistewart@gmail.com