A Dream Come True

it was in February 2011 and RAB yotv elah was leading a trip to Israel for a group of 50 American High School students the last stop of the trip right before they went to the airport was the cemetery in har Herzel as you can imagine walking through the cemetery and looking at the graves of the young soldiers who gave up their lives and hearing their heroic stories can be a very emotional and moving experience the most difficult place for me to visit is har hearta because instead of the young bearing the old the old are bearing the young so asra is explaining to the students the sacrifice that these children these young soldiers and their families have made he suddenly sees just a few feet away from him there's an elderly couple crying over a grave suddenly everything I've been describing but it means to parents and families it's right there we see a mother and a man I said it's very clear this is ala coming to visit a c he sees that on the tombstone there's a picture of a young Israeli soldier his name was eras der one of us leaned over and Es her Mrs der starts telling them how Eris was a paratrooper and was tragically killed in 2006 you see the kids faces everybody's in pain everybody realizes as much as they can at that age what this meant to them then she tells them something that left them speechless she goes last night I had a [Music] dream and here's the spookiest part he says go to her in the dream something about this woman just sparked a connection with us and we as a cohort decided to take this project on to fundraise for saer Torah to dedicate in memory of her son one of us leaned over and said sh we're coming back with a saer Tor just like you dram when this was a group of secular kids and religious kids kids from day schools and kids from public schools it was bizarre but we were sort of possessed by this need to to do it the next year in February 2012 they came back with a brand new seor and they went to Mal and they wrote the last letters of the sa Torah in AR's room his uniform is hanging pressed against the wall on his desk we had the SE Tor open and we're there to write the last [Music] to you can feel the excitement in the air when they closed it up and they started walking down into the street people started dancing you had you looked up on all the porches there were people dancing on porches every type of Jew you can imagine was involved in this from those who gave the money to those who run r on from the sare to the band who play to the Two Chief rabbis of Mal adumin to the policemen who was standing in the streets to keep everybody quiet I'm sure everybody will never forget that day I'm Isel was there [Applause] when I first heard the story it made me feel so proud to be part of the Jewish Family just knowing that Jews can meet anywhere in the world whether it's in a cemetery in Israel or in an airport in Beijing China it doesn't matter where there's an immediate natural warm feeling of connection regardless of how different we look on the [Music] outside can it's one go it's one the Shama [Music]