Rabbi Leo Dee: What if this is the way Hashem wanted it to be?

After Rabbi Leo Dee lost his wife and two daughters in a terrorist attack, people asked many “what if” questions.
 What if you hadn’t moved from England?
 What if the whole family had been in one car?

“Every one of those what-ifs went through my mind many times,” he shares.

But then another question emerged:
What if this is the way Hashem wanted it?

Obviously this is the way it was meant to be.
Does it hurt? Terribly.
But it wasn’t a mistake.

Rabbi Dee made the conscious choice not to remain trapped in his grief, forgetting those around him. His three surviving children still needed their father.

And so, through tears and pain, he told them:
 “We just lived Chapter One of our lives. Now we turn the page to Chapter Two.”

There may always be pain.
But they will live with as much simcha as they can.

Is it always easy? No.
Is it possible? Yes.

Do you want to hear how?

Click below.

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Questions or feedback? Email me at: podcast@mayrim.org

Transcript

Welcome & Mayrim’s Mission

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Grief Journey Podcast, hosted by Mrs. Miriam Riviet and brought to you by Mayrim. Mayrim is an organization dedicated to supporting families who have experienced the loss of a child. It was founded with Iloy Nishma's Nachamaliba and Miriam Holman. Despite her illness, Miriam devoted herself to addressing the needs of parents and siblings navigating the profound pain of child loss. This mission was deeply personal to her, and she had experienced such loss firsthand when her older sister Nhamaliba passed away. Mayrim continues to honor and expand upon the work Miriam began, with her parents carrying this mission forward with unwavering dedication. If you have any questions or comments for the speaker, or if you would like to suggest a guest for the podcast, please email us at podcastmayrim.org.

The Attack And Immediate Aftermath

SPEAKER_01 0:58

Hi everybody, thank you so much for joining me here today on the Grief Journey Podcast. Today, Rabbi Leo D is here and he has quite a story. So Rebbe D, thank you so so much for coming on.

SPEAKER_03 1:12

Thank you, Miriam.

SPEAKER_01 1:14

And I guess let's hear your story.

Life Before: Career, Faith, Israel

SPEAKER_03 1:16

Okay. I guess where to start. I I g I guess that uh my story starts most recently on the 7th of April 2023, when tragically my wife, uh Lucy, and two daughters, uh and Rina, were murdered by Hamas terrorists when we were on our way up to our Pesa holiday. Uh it was first day Holomoed, it was a uh Friday morning. Um and uh I was in a car ahead with uh two of the kids, and Lucy was two of the kids in the in the car. We were actually driving parallel, um, and Waze wanted us to take a left at a particular junction off the 90 going up the uh Jordan Valley. I continued straight, she took a left, and there she encountered two Hamas terris, and we buried my two daughters on the Sunday, and my wife on the Tuesday. That's really the story, I guess, that uh taught me about uh bereavement. But uh just give a bit of background about myself. Before that, uh I've I've been through many different changes in life. Uh maybe that will be relevant as we talk, but uh, I'm a Baltashuva, so I was brought up in a less religious family, and I discovered uh the Torah and Judaism uh really later in life. I became a uh private equity investor, and uh the day I was promoted to director of a billion-dollar fund in London, I took my bonus, quit, and uh was on a plane the next day to Israel with my wife and two kids to become a rabbi. And uh we went back to England, became a rabbinical couple after these four years uh in two communities. Um, and then we left again England after six years in England to come back to Israel because my wife Lucy said there is no other place in the world to bring up Jewish kids. So uh we re-established ourselves here in Israel in Afrat. Um, and there I went through a number of different incarnations job-wise. Uh, I didn't want to be a community rabbi, I didn't want to go back into finance, but somebody discovered me who ran a company doing a sustainable investment, which means moral, ethical investments. And she said, Well, you've been a rabbi and you've been an investor, so maybe you should try this. So I tried that for a few years. That led me into uh co-authoring the Eco Bible, uh, which is the only book of commentaries on every par shah uh relating to the environment and to sustainability. Um, and then I started um a fund, um an ethical fund in Tel Aviv and the Stock Exchange. Um, and my most recent incarnation was I was a maths teacher at the time of the uh the attack, and that that happened in April. I quit the job then. And since then I've been basically quite responsive. People um have asked me to speak all over the world and around Israel, and so I've been doing that. I don't know where the next step will be, but uh I should also mention I got remarried six months ago. So I've I guess change is something which I um have a lot of experience in.

SPEAKER_01 4:21

So I have two questions. Okay. First of all, did you ever say to your wife, Lucy, you said, right? Her name's Lucy. Did you ever say, Okay, Lucy, so you insist that we live in Air Tissell, but then you and our two kids were killed by terrorists, so we should have stayed in England.

unknown 4:37

Right.

SPEAKER_01 4:37

Um other question is a totally different topic, but your surviving children, I'm curious. I don't know if you want to share how they're taking to your new wife.

The “What If” Trap And Faith

SPEAKER_03 4:46

Sure. Okay, well, interesting questions. So the first question, people asked me after the tragedy, what if? What if you had never made Aliyah? Um, what if you'd left later in the morning of the tragedy? And I said to people that um, as painful as those questions were, they weren't as painful as you'd expect. Because every question people asked me, every what if, I'd asked myself already a thousand times. Um and this, I think, is the nature of tragedy, of trauma, that something happens and you constantly question yourself, why did this happen? What could I have done differently? Um, I realized soon afterwards that this was not a healthy way of dealing with it, to ask what if, because uh whenever anything happens, one can always ask what would have happened if it had been different, but it wasn't different. Only one thing happens in our life. Our lives are sort of like a line, you know, that moves forward, and there's lots of space on either side, but we're not on that space. We're actually on the line. So therefore I realized after a while it's completely not helpful to ask what if. In fact, it's very damaging to ask what if, except for one what if. What if God planned it this way? What if this was God's plan always, that I would be married to Lucy for 25 years? What if I was always meant to have five kids until the 7th of April, 2023, and then three kids? What if this was always going to be the way? And my job is to live through this particular story that's unfolding in front of me. And that is something which I found very helpful. So do I blame her or question her? Not at all. I think that um, you know, our tradition says that someone who dies in a terror attack like this dies per Kiddish Hashem. They end up at a level in Shemayim in heaven, which is next to the Kisea Kavod, next to God's throne. Um, it is the highest level that you can attain as a Jew, as a human being. And there's a famous uh story of Rabbi Joseph Caro, who famously one of the greatest rabbis wrote the Shul Khanaruch, greatest book on Jewish law. Uh, on his deathbed, he said he had one regret that he didn't have the opportunity to die by Kitish Hashem, that he didn't have this opportunity because um those who die in this particular way end up at a higher level than any rabbi uh in in history, and um this is the uh the the greatest uh you know for them it's it's tough for us, but I honestly believe that uh Lucy Meiner and Reno are sitting up there uh you know, surrounded by Moshe Rabinu and uh the Rambam and uh and all the great Sadiqim of our times, so uh and our previous times. So as hard as it is, um I think they they have made it to the highest possible point. The challenge is one revertson said to me is if they die by Kiddush Hashem, we have to live Bakedus Hashem. That's that's a challenge on us. Um and I think that's what uh what what's our requirement.

SPEAKER_01 7:31

So I guess you do that by um by going around and speaking and giving chazak and sharing your story.

Parenting Through Trauma

Choosing Happiness As A Practice

SPEAKER_03 7:37

I try to. I think I think that every every Jew um is trying to live in Kiddush Hashem. We're all trying to do the best we can, and you do what you do, and I do what I do, and um, and probably will always feel that we fall short of what we're capable of, but uh that's the nature of being human. Um But uh as far as the kids are concerned, let me let me tell you, I have had the honor of being able to speak to many different families here in Israel. Unfortunately, uh six months to the day after our tragedy was the 7th of October, where um the number of orphaned kids from Terror in Israel doubled in one day. So just to put that in perspective, the number of kids who had been orphaned by Terra over the previous 30, 40 years was equal to the number who became orphans on the 7th of October 2023. And so suddenly there were a lot of families in this position. I happen to be six months, we happen to be six months ahead. And I ended up speaking to some of them, not enough of them, but some of them and helping, hopefully, or at least, yeah, and learning from them and being helped by them. But what I discovered was, first of all, Baruch Hashem, there's tremendous strength amongst the Jewish people, particularly here in Israel. Uh, families, most families are doing incredibly well, but far better than you could possibly imagine. That in part is because we live in Israel, and Israel is just this most incredible place. And particularly at the moment, we're in the time of Ka'ulah, and you feel it every moment and everywhere you look, you know, that uh that the world is changing and that Israel is becoming all all the prophetic uh prophecies are being fulfilled as we speak. So that's that's one thing. But but then I find that you know there are some who are not, um, you know, there are obviously some families who are who are who are dealing with it less uh less well. And one thing I discovered was if the parents are coping, the kids are coping. If the parents are not coping, the kids are not coping. That the greatest, I think, from my experience, the greatest determinant as to whether or not the kids are going to cope is how the parents are coping. So I, for example, I met a family where they were on Schlichut in one of the places I was visiting abroad, and they told me that this lady's brother had been killed in combat on the 7th of October. This was really two years afterwards. Um, and I said, How's how are they coping? So she has seven siblings. She said, two or three of them have gone off to Derek because of this. I said, Well, you know, how are your parents coping? So much, she said, My mother is terrible, my father's not doing well. Uh, for example, she said Seda night at um was held at their house, and they invited the family, and they said, Let's get this over and done with very quickly, because Chaim is no longer here and uh there's nothing to be happy about. And this was already two years after the tragedy. So she said to me, you know, they were finishing their Schlichut and they were going to go back. And she her question to me was, you know, what can we do about this? They couldn't be there at that Pesach because they were with their family on Schlichut. And I said to her, I said, Your job is to go back, and your job is to make the next Seder and to invite your parents and the rest of the family to say, this will be a very, very happy Seder, and we're going to make it in honor of Chaim. And Chaim stood for X, Y, and Z, and therefore we've themed it around Chaim, around these particular features, and we're going to really sort of uh you know have a have a wonderful evening because Chaim would want us to have it. And and one of the messages I have for people um who are suffering like this after you know a year or two, and where they should be already showing some signs of of uh the recovery, but he maybe healing. I say to them, look, I remember a week after the tragedy, I'm walking up to Shul, Shabbas morning, I'm in tears. And suddenly the thought came to my mind, which was if it had been me who had been killed and Lucy and the kids were still here, I would be in Shemayim, I would be in heaven, I would be praying for one thing, that they were happy. That's all I would want. I know for sure they only want me and the kids to be happy. Um, and therefore, if I'm not, it's not for them. I mean, it's very easy to make yourself a victim in these situations. Um, and you know, actually, when you think about it, who are you doing it for? Why are you miserable? Why why do you have to go around with a glum uh expression on your face? Why do you have to be miserable? Why do you have to constantly think about all the terrible stuff? It's not helping you, and it's not helping them, and it's certainly not helping your kids, and certainly not uh inspiring anybody around you. You know, they want to keep a million miles away from you. So I realized actually that I think it's like um uh Yate Sahara. Actually, it's very easy to be miserable. It's that's the easiest state to be in. It's more difficult to be happy, right? Happiness is is a muscle, you have to sort of work on it. And our natural instinct is to fall back on these sort of feelings of of of misery because because it's basically easy, it's easier for me to lie in bed in the morning and not get up, it's easier for me not to meet people and have to explain myself. It's easy for me not to go to work, it's easy for me not to go to have to go to school in the morning to Dubai, it's easy for me to just ignore my kids and uh not have to deal with their problems. So, so therefore, that's the default. But actually, it's very unhealthy. So, really, the moment you start fighting all those different instincts and you start getting out there, you know, helping your kids, listening to your kids, getting remarried perhaps, if that's a possibility for people, seeing friends, you know, meeting up with friends, having fun, laughing, all these things that your soul tells you this is not the right thing to do as a victim, as a bereaved person. You know, I should be sad, I should be miserable, I shouldn't laugh, I shouldn't smile, I shouldn't have conversations with people, I shouldn't just talk about everyday things. Um, those are the yeah, but but the moment you start doing those things, then you're already on the on the route to recovery. Um and it's in your hands, it's in the hands of anyone to engage in that, but you just have to take that brave step forward.

SPEAKER_01 13:18

But even if you force yourself to do those things, even if you go away with friends and you laugh and you have a good time, there's still that like big empty space that's filled with pain, and it's not empty.

Therapy, Triggers, And Looking Forward

SPEAKER_03 13:32

So this is interesting, and uh, and people say this to me, and and it's a very common thing that people say to me, and I and I say to them, I don't agree. I don't think you have to have this feeling, this constant feeling of emptiness inside you. I think you have to transform it into simcha, um, which sounds a bit odd, but for example, um uh uh 10 weeks after the tragedy, I quit psychologist sessions, therapy. I found it not very helpful to me because basically I found the therapist was always dwelling on the past. I mean, I walked in and he'd asked me, you know, tell me about the day of the tragedy, what happened, how did you feel? Tell me about Lucy, tell me about Maya, tell me about Rina. And every time I look back, I was in tears. And so the days leading up to the therapy session, I was in trepidation. The the day of the uh I was, you know, I was in tears. And the days afterwards, I was like sort of just uh convulsing with in pain. And I and after a while I thought, what am I doing this for? It's not helping me. I thought to myself, if I was someone who had a deep-seated problem from my childhood, and I'm sitting in front of this expert, and he asked me to talk about my past and my parents, and maybe together we can discover what's causing it, and together we can solve it. But I don't need that. I know what's causing my pain. I was there, uh, you know, we're very not very far away, and I and I and I saw it with my own eyes, and I know exactly why I feel this way. So I don't need to revisit it. Actually, what I do need to do is to move forward. I need to think about the future, I need to build a new future, but but the the problem, you know, for someone who's grieving, and this I think um was something which I discovered. As a rabbi, many people in my community would say to me, Rabbi, you know, what are the rules about mourning in the Shiva, in the first seven days, in the Schloss in the 30 days, what about the year? Can I go to Bam Mitsa? Can I go to a wedding? You know, they'd ask me, what can I do? What can't I do? Not one person ever asked me the question, Rabbi, why am I doing this at all? Why why am I why am I doing um uh mourning? Why why do we mourn? And and you might say it's a natural thing or whatever, but it's not so natural and other cultures don't have the same the same pattern. And so I started to ask myself, why am I doing this? Why am I going through this mourning process? And I realized to myself that for me the answer was very clear. I want to remember Lucy, Meyer, and Rena, right? If you if you've lost somebody dear to you, you want to remember them. You want to remember them pretty much all the time, to think about them a lot uh through through the day, plus many things remind you of them all the time. However, at the beginning, everything is a trigger, everything causes you to break down in tears and it's painful. So, what do you naturally do? You naturally block them out. It's a terrible thing to say, but this is what happens after a tragedy. You start learning to block them out your memory because every time you think about them, it's too painful. So the natural human thing to do is to reduce the pain, to cut them out. And I realized this is very unhealthy because you know, this is not what I want to do. I I want to think about them. So then I thought what I need to do is be able to think about them with a smile. I need to think about them with a smile. How do you think about them with a smile? Um, I think that's a challenge for every individual person, but you know, if once you think about what they meant, what their values were, and you do something in memory of that person and you continue to do it, and you build, you know, they've uh build upon their values what was meaningful to them, then everything that you're doing is now connected to them. So now, you know, if I go out and speak, you know, I'm speaking on behalf of Lucy, Meyer and Rina, um, it brings me joy. You know, if people come up to me and say say something nice, whatever, which happens occasionally, so I feel you know, um that feeling is theirs. It it gives me a positive feeling towards you know uh remembering Lucy Meyer and Rena. Uh, you know, we we built a spring in Frat for Maya, we built um uh a Simchal Hall for Lucy, uh, we're building a uh youth club for Rena. Um other people have built other things as well. And then every time these things are used, every time we're there, it gives me pleasure and it it's connected to them. So I'm thinking about them, but I'm thinking about them with a smile. And I think what we need to do is is not have this hole in our heart, but actually try and turn that hole into um into a positive feeling, in you know, a a into happy, into happy feeling. And and it is possible to do it. Obviously, I have many times when I break down in tears, but I think it is possible to to gradually convert the pain into happiness.

SPEAKER_01 17:59

So so what you're saying is to convert it into to convert the pain into happiness, don't deny don't deny the pain because that's not healthy either.

Rituals, Memory, And Building In Their Honor

Remarriage And Family Dynamics

SPEAKER_03 18:11

Like sometimes it means I think you have to transform the pain. So pain is there for a reason. If if we analyze it, there's pain and pain is always a blessing, by the way. Pain is a blessing. For example, you know, great-grandmother has a headache. Um, she goes to the doctor, the doctor gives her a scan, they discover she's got a tumor, they treat it, great-grandmother has another 20 years of life. Right? If God forbid, great-grandmother um had the same problem, the tumor, without the pain, we know that the um result would not be that good. The pro prognosis would would not be as good. Um so the pain comes as a wake-up call to say you've got to do something. I've told the story many times, but I'll tell it again. The first Shabbat I was by myself at home after the tragedy was about a year after the tragedy. My kids were all out. Uh Karen, Atali, and Yehuda were out in the army or in the Mirashan Yeshiva. And um I was by myself. So I invited myself to friends for two meals, and then Surush Lu Shia, the third meal, Shabbat, after Minchar, I came home to an empty house and I cried for half an hour. And I just, you know, I just was uh crying. And suddenly I started thinking to myself, why are you crying? And even though it sounds obvious, actually, I came home to an empty house every day for a year, um, and I didn't cry like that. Um, and I realized I'm crying because it's Shabbat, I'm by myself, I don't want to be by myself. Um, and then I stopped and I heard a little voice say to me, So what can you do about it? And I thought, I need to get remarried. And it was like a wake-up call, and suddenly, you know, the next day I was uh calling up Shathan Shathanim and I was uh out on Shidochim and Bruchashem. That was the process that led me to Aliza, and uh we've been married for six months. But but in other words, the pain, once you recognize that pain is there to tell you something, it's a good pain. There's always a good pain. If you feel miserable in the morning, you don't want to get up, that is a good pain, but on condition that you think why I have that pain. And then I realized that you know, we have in our in our tradition, we this this is is is actually written into our daily lives, right? Because when what we say after we drink a glass of water, we say the blessing, Braina Fashotra Bab Khesranal, Khashranal. So thank you, God, for uh, you know, creating lots of souls and what they lack. Why do I thank God for what I lack? Right? I understand, you know, uh Hamochi Lachamina Ariz, thank you, God, you made bread come from the land, or thank you for the fruit or for the vegetables, or whatever we we say we say in our prayers. But why do I thank God for what I don't have? And then I realize because I don't do anything unless I lack it. I don't do anything unless there's some pain. If if if I'm hungry, I have the pain of hunger, I'll go and eat. If I'm uh thirsty because I've had the pain of thirst, I'll go and drink. If I, you know, feeling poor, the pain, the pain of poverty, I'm gonna go get a job. So everything I do is because I lack something, because there's a there's a there's a hole in my heart. Exactly what you're saying. There's this pain, this emptiness. That emptiness is what drives us in every other situation to do something. So we need to learn how to do that. What why does God give us these feelings? Because when when we have real holes in our hearts, then we can learn, well, we we we should know that the right thing to do is to try and fill that hole. And uh and that hole is telling us that there's something lacking. And often it's not maybe this sounds a terrible thing to say, it's not Lucy and Meyer and Rena physically that's lacking, which is that hole. My hole in my heart is my feelings of personal inadequacy, that I'm not achieving things in my life, or it's many different things. It's very easy to blame it on them. It's not that, right? And once I realize that actually the hole which is caused by them not being here actually is pointing me to change in ways which I need to change in, then there still have. An impact on my life. They're still there, they're still active, and now everything I do with that change is in their memory. And I think about them every time I do it. So you know, I'm married to Elisa, but I'm married to Elisa because I've felt that that loss. And it's all part of this next phase. So somebody said to me, a second marriage isn't building a new house, it's building a second story on the house that was there before. And I think that's very much true. So we we all need to learn how to build that second story now that uh you know we have that house, the basis, but we need to build the second story on top of it so that it's the foundations, but you know, we're still building.

SPEAKER_01 22:34

And being that you have three surviving children, are you able to bring Lucy into that second story or is that too sensitive because you have a new wife?

SPEAKER_03 22:43

No, we talk about Lucy all the time, and Elisa's amazing, she's happy and doesn't uh have a problem with that at all. We have a uh memorial service, please God, next week actually, because it's really up, it's coming up to the third yard site. I don't know what's gonna happen because in Israel we can't have more than 50 people together, and so we'll have to figure out what happens, but um but Elise's planned to be there and her family's gonna be there and whatever, and I'll say some nice words about Lucy and uh Yeah. Look, I I think she appreciates that you know I am who I am, partly because of Lucy. I mean, I I'm not a great husband, but you know, I'm definitely better than I would have been without 25 years of training from Lucy. That is my alarm saying that we're 10 minutes away from a uh missile attack, maybe. But uh if if the siren goes off, I'll leave. But in the meantime, we can continue. There's about a 30% chance that uh that will lead to a uh siren because usually they shoot them down before they get anywhere near.

SPEAKER_01 23:43

So how do you know if you have to go or not? They I guess another siren comes in.

SPEAKER_03 23:47

A second, a second beep on my phone, and I'll hear the siren in a frat in the streets, and then I'll go upstairs. At that point, we have a minute and a half.

SPEAKER_02 23:55

Oh my goodness. Yeah, it's fine. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 24:03

Um okay, so what do I want to ask you? No, so I was asking you earlier, I asked you, but we didn't get to that yet, about how your children uh, you know, uh how they're handling a new a new wife. It sounds like it's amazing. But I also wanted to ask you how they how they um like are are they able to go along with your recovery process? Like maybe they're more emotional and maybe they're having a hard time with the trend, you know, with transforming and stuff like that.

Siren Scare And Life In Israel

SPEAKER_03 24:29

Yeah, I let me tell you something. So as far as far as Lisa's concerned, Broch Hashem, she's amazing with them. They each in their own speed are getting used to it. So that that's fine.

SPEAKER_01 24:41

That's amazing.

Kids’ Adjustment And Future Focus

SPEAKER_03 24:42

Um, but but by the way, a lot of the problems they have are all the problems they always had as kids. I mean, in other words, it's not it's not necessarily caused by the um you know the their trauma. Um, it's just their regular personalities. And I knew when she came on the scene that, you know, one of them would take a year to get used to her, one of them would love her immediately, and one of them, you know, would just be fine over a period of a short period of time. And that's how it's panned out. And that's just what they've been like their whole lives, my kids. So nothing's really changed. And as far as the kids are concerned, I think in a way it's easier for kids, particularly if the parents, I say if the parents are dealing with it in some way, it's easier for kids because the kids are moving forward in their life by necessity, they're growing. Um, you know, each of them has moved from from school to new school or to from uh school to midrashah. Now my daughter's in the Air Force, and my other daughter was in um national service for a couple of years, and then she moved to Midrashah, and then she's now working and she's studying at this point. Yeah, so as you move to new stages in life, then um I think that helps because being future-oriented is is is really a massive part of the of recovery. I mean, in in that context, I'll I'll tell you a story which uh maybe um some of your listeners have heard. That I went on one of my dates with uh one of the ladies I was uh set up at a Shiddar, um was in a restaurant, and um it was the first date, and the lady said to me, Um, Leo, I'm suffering trauma from my uh divorce 10 years ago. So I said, I'm sorry to hear that. I said, What are you doing? She said, I'm still going to therapy. I said, I'm sorry to hear that. I said, I've I quit therapy after 10 weeks. I said, What uh what therapy are you doing? So she said, It's um Eastern therapy. So I said, What's that? She said, Buddhist therapy. So I said, What's that? She said, Um, they teach you to live in the now, the present. There is no past, there is no future, there's just the present. So I said, I said, I said, it's interesting, because I just heard a shiore by Rav YY Jacobson, where he quoted the Labamitcharebbe who said, There is no present, there's only the past and the future.

SPEAKER_02 26:46

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 26:46

So this was our last date. But in any case, I looked at that and I said, Look, I said, if if you think there's only the present and you have pain, I said, the pain is there, it's there in the present, right? It's always going to be there. There's no effort to go. You can sit on the floor, you can do yoga, you can sit there for three hours with a mantra. I said, but the moment you get up, it will all come back, the pain will come back, and you'll be at your therapist next week. Great business for the therapist, not good for you. I said, but if you understand there is no now, there's only the past and the future, then you can take the pain and you can package it and stick it on the on a shelf called the past, and you can choose to live the rest of your life on this white sheet of paper, which we call the future, and you can choose what to write in it. And I said, that that's where I am. And I think that is the challenge. It it it's very much, you know, that's why I quit therapy after 10 weeks, because it was bringing me back to the past the whole time, and and it wasn't giving me any room for the future. And what I really needed was visioning, sort of enthusiasm, you know, in inspiration about what I can do in the future. And that's really helped me, and I think it helps the kids. I think kids in general, you know, please God, if they're given, if the parents give them space to do that, you know, go and do new things, and every new thing is a new challenge, gives them energy and positivity, you know, excitement, and that's new friends, and that's really what what's gonna bring them out of this.

SPEAKER_01 28:05

It doesn't come with pain, like I have a new friend, and I know my mother or my sister would love her, and I wish she could meet her.

Reframing Pain: Past vs. Future

SPEAKER_03 28:12

It's look, it's a good question. More than that, for example, I gotta uh you know, I went to weddings after the tragedy, and the first year after the tragedy, I went to a wedding, and I would always cry thinking um thinking uh you know, Maya and Rina will never be under the chupa. Um, and and still that's a thought that comes to my mind. But something changed about um a year after the tragedy. I was invited to the wedding about a year and a half after the tragedy, and I thought uh I should go, I've been invited. It was three hours up north. There weren't a religious, they were not a religious family. I walked into the hall with my Keepah. I thought that I would stand at the back, and if I cried, then nobody would have to see me. However, I walked into the hall, I was the only Koupa in the hall, except the rabbi. The rabbi saw me immediately and he said, Come over here, I want you to be the second witness, I want you to stand under the khapa and pass me the wine. So I'm thinking, oh my goodness, how am I gonna cope with this? I was in front of 300 people under the chuppa, you know, and I had to. But I didn't cry. I actually felt really happy for the couple. And that feeling of happiness. So the couple took me through it. And actually now I realize when I go to a chupa, I can either think about Maya and Rina and the weddings that I'm never gonna uh witness of theirs, or I can think about the my wedding that uh I took place that took place, Bur Hashem, and my other three kids, and having them under the khoupa. And I can the couple themselves are under the khoupa and the happiness on the faces of all the guests. Um and I can choose, and it literally is a split second where I can make that decision. I can either think about the positive or the negative. So the same with the kids, you know, they they meet a new friend, they can either think, oh, how sad it is that mummy's not here to meet them, or they can think, oh, how nice it is that I can introduce them to daddy or to my uh siblings, or I've just got a new friend. I mean, yeah, so it it it's a choice, and we don't have to revert to that miserable thought of what would be, what if. Um I think that's that was my lesson.

SPEAKER_01 30:09

And in general, you didn't care that like you became famous and you know you were in all the papers and you couldn't, you didn't really have your own private morning.

SPEAKER_03 30:19

You know what? I I wouldn't say famous, I mean I think recognizable perhaps, but uh you know, but um funnily enough, you know, I occasionally I would be walking down the streets of Jerusalem or Tel Aviv or Haifa or even in New York or Los Angeles or whatever, and feeling miserable. And occasionally, you know, I'd come out of a talk and been speaking somewhere, and I felt I could have done a better job, whatever, and feeling miserable. And some random person comes up to me in the street and says, Oh, are you Rabbi D? And I said, Yes, sir. Do you mind if I give you a hug? And I honestly feel when it happens that Hakadosh Brohu is giving me a hug. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:51

Wow, that's amazing. So I wanted to ask you also about what I want to ask you, I wanted to ask you about community support and what that was like, and like helpful, harmful, sometimes both.

Public Grief And Unexpected Hugs

SPEAKER_03 31:03

Okay, so as you know, I wrote I read a book, uh, The Seven Facets of Healing. In this book, uh available on Amazon, I talk about different aspects of healing, one of which is family, one of which is friends, fun, and fitness, and so forth, all the different uh seven F's. Um but friends are a massive aspect to healing, and that includes community. But friends can do the right thing than do the wrong thing. And I have to say, as a rabbi, fortunately, I never had a tragedy in my community for six years that I was uh in two communities, I never had a tragedy. I would not have known how to react and I would have done everything wrong. So I'm just to put it in perspective, not that I'm an expert at this, I'm only an expert because I've been through it, but I'm not instinctive about this, and most people are not, and it's very easy to get it wrong. So, what should you not say at a shiva? Do not say, I feel terrible for you, and I can't imagine how it would be, and I just did a little the person's not interested in how you feel about it, they don't even know how they feel about it, and you putting it into words just makes it really painful, and it's maybe you know you're trying to show you've thought about it, but it really is very painful. So, what what can you say at a shiva? Uh or to somebody who's been recently bereaved, you can say, There are no words. Okay, this is what I discovered. There was people said to me, En Milim, there are no words. That was like the best thing. It shows that they've thought about the fact that it's you're you're in a tough situation. They understand that you're going through something which you don't understand, and they're saying, We I don't understand it either, but we're here for you. So that that that's something. The other thing which people generally will say is um, you know, call me when you're you're feeling up to it, and I'd love to see you. That again, you should not say, because somebody in trauma is unable to take the initiative. They can only be passive for this last for a few months after the trauma. So what you should say is, I'm coming around to your house on Tuesday evening at five o'clock. Okay, and even better, I'm coming every Tuesday at five o'clock. Um and a number of people have said to me that since I told them they've done this and and it's been really appreciated. If people did it to me, I wouldn't have known this, except people said to me, I'm coming tomorrow to see you, and then we just end up having a Khavrutta every week, and I still have three years later, have half a dozen people who I see every week. Because it started off, you know, then and it's it's been a life uh a life changer. So that's what you can do. Don't say to somebody, you know, tell me when you're ready to come for Shabbat, we'd love to have you. Tell them I'm waiting for you this Shabbat. If you um you you're invited for 12 o'clock, if you don't turn up at by 12:30, we'll start without you. That's what you do. So somebody who is suffering trauma, you manage their life. And and you can go even further. So, for example, in a frat where I live, the people are amazing, and somebody appointed for me a secretary during the Shiva. So people wanted to speak to me and meet with me, whatever it was, if it was journalists or people doing different projects and members of the girls, whatever. Um, so they they somehow found out to speak to this lady. She built my diary, and every every morning for about six weeks after the Shiva, she'd send me, you know, who's coming, these are the times, whatever, and uh whatever. So it and it was amazing. So my life was like, for I couldn't make a decision, I would never have agreed or organized anything. Um, but somebody just took over my life, and of course, you know, you know what it's like in a in most Jewish communities, there's a food train, the food kept coming. So that you don't have to take care of. I've even had friends of the girls coming in every Shabbat, serving us the meals and clearing up the meals, and uh it was just incredible. I mean, so there is no limit to what you can do for someone who is suffering trauma, but don't ask them. Do not ask them what they want, just do it for them. Um, and you know, if they don't want it, they'll make it very clear they won't let you in the house. But just force yourself in there, you know, at uh to whatever level is reasonable, um, and don't ask them.

SPEAKER_01 34:47

You know what I love what you wrote also about saying not how are you, but how are you today?

Community Help: What To Do And Not Do

SPEAKER_03 34:53

Right. Uh so yeah, that was from Cheryl, uh I can't remember her name from uh Facebook. Somebody told me at the time, because I could not stand it, but uh people were saying to me, How are you? And I felt really I felt really bad every time people asked me, How are you? I didn't put into words, but I um why is that it's it's traumatic if you're if you're somebody who's offering trauma? Because um you're feeling terrible, but you can't you can't say I'm feeling terrible, and and you can't say I'm fine. So you basically put the person in a little bit of trauma because they don't know what to say. And somebody said to me, she in her book says, You can say, How are you today? So if you say how are you today, that shows I understand that in general it's not good, but actually today might be a better day. So then someone can say, you know, a little bit better, actually not so good. And that's okay, that shows just a step more of caring.

SPEAKER_01 35:44

Right. It can even be how are you like right now, because maybe before you retire, well, and maybe later you'll be miserable, but right now you might be okay.

SPEAKER_03 35:52

Right. That right right. And generally, you know what, when people are in front of you with if you're visiting someone, you do cheer them up. I mean they probably are feeling a bit better because you're there.

SPEAKER_02 36:00

Right.

SPEAKER_03 36:00

Even though they wouldn't invite you, or maybe not even think to invite you or want you there. But once you're there, you're performing a great function. Right.

SPEAKER_01 36:10

So let me just ask you this before we wrap up. Um, you wrote about your laughing attack at Shiva.

SPEAKER_02 36:15

Right.

SPEAKER_01 36:16

And I just think it's so important because I mean, I guess anyone listening to this after this at Shiva, it's too late. But in general, I think every single family has their laughing attack and you know, during Shiva. And I just think it's something sort of almost important to talk about. Like no one has to feel crazy for like it doesn't mean that, like, oh my gosh, you're totally fine, and you don't care that you're sending Shiva for your beloved person. It just means that whatever.

Laughter In Shiva And Releasing Anger

SPEAKER_03 36:42

Right. So um, yeah, what happened was um uh we had 10,000 people visit our Shiva. That's the um message saying that there the rocket's been shot down and we're okay. I don't need to go to the safe room. But um the um we had about 10,000 people to the shiva, and they came into the tent uh in groups of 300 or whatever, and we'd speak for 10 minutes, and then the next group it was it was quite incredible. And one girl came all the way down from the north of Israel uh from a Midrasha, and she wanted to speak to me about something that was going on in her life, but really, I guess she couldn't get anywhere close, and I probably wasn't gonna speak to her about it. Anyway, she ended up speaking to my sister, and I'm a Baltashuva, so my sister, perhaps not the most Jewishly knowledgeable, uh, but she is a psychologist. She's a lovely person and she's very sensitive. And this girl said to her, you know, she said, These are my problems. I wanted to speak to your uh brother about these things going on in my life, you know, we're gonna get some advice. And my sister said she did what she could to try and help her because she's a psychologist, but she said it felt to her, she I I I saw my sister at like 10 o'clock at night at the end of the day, and she said it felt a little bit like somebody came to visit the Pope and they got to an audience with his cleaning lady. And so this idea was like so funny to me that I just burst into hysterics, and then you know, after a few minutes of of laughing, I I suddenly felt this terrible feeling of guilt. How can I be laughing at the shiver of my wife and my daughters? How can anything be funny after that? Yeah, but but I realized that actually there isn't no um what do you call it, uh, contradiction between happiness and sadness, that you can be very sad and very happy at the same time, which sounds odd in English because the opposite to happy is unhappy. But in Hebrew, um that's not the case. In Hebrew, we have Sameach and uh Atsuv, which are two totally different words, it's not the same. And so I realized that actually maybe the opposite to happy is not sad. And um this came back to me um later on the Shiva because I noticed I had about five people at the point of um the Shiva. We'd been living in about nine years in Israel at the time, the second time we'd been back in Israel, and there were about five people in my life who um I had broigas with, or they had broigas with me, meaning that you know they couldn't stand me or I couldn't stand them. And if I was walking down one side of the street, they'd cross the other side, or I'd cross the other side, and if we're in the supermarket, we'd make sure not to be in the same queue, and etc. Right. So these were five people, which is not a good thing to have, and you know, whatever. But what I noticed was that all five of them came to the shiva, and all they wanted from me was a hug, and all I wanted from them was a hug. Out of the 10,000 people who came to the shiva, I remember every single one of them. So they obviously had a big impact. And I think that I realized at that point, I remembered there's a song by Rabbi Nachman which is mitzvah gedali of Simchatamid. It's a big mitzvah to always be happy. So I thought myself, and it is, it turns out it really is. A Jew has to be always happy, and yet there are times when one has to be sad at a funeral or at uh you know Tishba'av, uh, the night of Devav when the temples were destroyed, those are times we have to be sad. So, how how can it be that we we always have to be happy, but sometimes we also have to be sad? So I realized maybe the opposite to happy is not sad. So I thought, okay, what is the one feeling which is forbidden ever, according to Jewish law? And the Rambam says it's anger, it's forbidden to be angry. So I thought to myself, okay, what if the opposite to happy is angry? And I realized that's true for me. When I'm angry, I can't be happy. When I'm happy, I can't be angry. And these people, you know, who I was broigus with, they were you know create a little bit of anger every time I saw them. And when, and that meant that was taking a bit of my happiness away. And and I realized that you know, when when you're in the state of trauma, you're the lowest possible level of happiness. And just having these people in your life, you know, who create this anger makes you even lower. And the moment that they came and gave me a hug, I suddenly released that anger and I and suddenly I was a step happier. And I and I realized that many of us have this in our lives. We have brought us with people, we don't speak to a parent, we don't speak to a friend, a child, whatever. The only person is hurting is is me. And the moment I just release it, um, and I just say, okay, I've all forgotten. It doesn't mean I have to be best friends with these people. Most of them I haven't seen again since. Um, but I just don't harbor any of these feelings. I don't have to harbor those feelings towards me, and um and suddenly you feel a little bit better. So it's you know, it's it was a lesson to me.

SPEAKER_01 41:16

Wow, that's so interesting. Wow, you're a very deep thinker. I feel like your brain never stops, no?

SPEAKER_03 41:23

I I don't know. I saw I strange thing is I feel like I've done a lot of things in my life, and in a strange way, I feel like everything that I've done in my life is leading to, you know, this, which I've picked up different sort of lessons, and each of those lessons, which seem to be a bit sort of random and irrelevant, have helped me in different ways now.

SPEAKER_01 41:42

So but not everyone always like takes in the lessons, like you think about it and you like think what it's teaching you, and then you let me know.

SPEAKER_03 41:49

But I'll tell you, I w I went to I wasn't brought up in a religious family, I was sent to a local private school, which was Christian school, and there were like 10% Jews. So I was very heavily bullied for a couple of years. And um, you know, it got to a point where they threatened to throw the kids throw threatened to throw me off the roof of the school, and then my parents got involved and and things got a bit better. And I was also the shortest in the grade because I was younger, and once I grew taller, it all went away. But you know, today people would call that trauma um and would go to a psychologist to to deal with it as a kid going through that type of uh bullying experience. In those days, it was whatever doesn't break you makes you stronger. And it it made me into a very introverted, sort of very, I guess, anxious kid, probably as a teenager. You know, I didn't have a huge number of friends, and I I changed once I sort of you know started getting out in the real world, university, etc. But um at the time, you know, I guess I felt very negative about this experience that I had in my life. And today I thank God every day that I went through it because I realized that whatever I learned through that experience of of bullying toughened me up and actually gave me some skills to deal with a greater trauma that I didn't realize I was gonna have later in life. So that's amazing. Pay pain is there for a reason. Sometimes, you know, we get the uh benefit of seeing why why we have the pain, sometimes we don't, but you know, it it's always it always teaches you something.

SPEAKER_01 43:25

Okay, so I I I guess anything that we didn't cover that you wanna leave as a parting message to everyone.

SPEAKER_03 43:33

I I think that the message, you know, the real message is that life has to continue. I feel that when I get to 120 please God, I will have a great claim against God and I can ask him why this happened, why not have to be this way. But until that point, um I feel that I need to live my life. Anything which is an impediment to that in terms of in in my head um from what I've been through. Is not helping me at all. It it's it's holding me back. And I think you know we need to learn how to get rid of those impediments. That's why I try to do in my book, You know, The Seven Facets of Healing, is to explain to people how to turn those triggers into positive triggers and and moments of growth. And I think that it's possible for anyone to do it. You don't have to go through massive trauma to do it. We all we all have trauma in our lives. I always say to people, you know, everybody's worst trauma is the worst trauma that they could possibly have, right? We all we all have the worst the worst possible trauma, and you can't compare, you know, we we're all uh we're all maxed out on trauma. Um and we can all we can all benefit from from you know transforming some of the pain into into joy. And it really is it is possible. It's that's why it's there. But we just have to understand how to uh how to how to take the pain as a signal that we need to change.

SPEAKER_01 44:51

Okay, it's incredible to listen to you. Thank you so so much for coming on. I really, really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_03 44:55

Okay, thank you. Thank you, Miriam, and good luck with the with your show.

Early Bullying, Resilience, And Lessons

SPEAKER_00 44:59

You've just listened to an episode of the Grief Journey Podcast with Miriam Ribiat, brought to you by Mayrim. For more episodes, please visit the Mayrim website at www.mayrim.org. Help us reach others who may benefit from this podcast. If you know someone who might find it meaningful, please consider sharing it with them. If you have questions or comments for the speaker, or if you would like to suggest a guest for a future episode, we would love to hear from you. Email us at podcast at mayrim.org. We look forward to having you join us for the next episode.