When the
text message was sent out I was already in Jerusalem in a neighbor’s car. We
were stuck in traffic and for some reason I thought the message was about our
traffic jam. It was not. Instead it informed us that Tapuach Junction was
closed for security reasons. What could be the reason? We did not have a lot of
time to wonder. A second message informed us that a Jew had been stabbed to
death there.
As always,
after hearing of a terror attack, my eyes filled with tears and my heart beat
rapidly. I did a mental checklist of my family members and took out my cell
phone. My oldest son told me that he and all of our family were okay. For that
I was thankful but still I was full of dread. How long would it be until the
name of the murdered victim was announced? When would we know whose lives had
been turned upside down?
It is at
Tapuach Junction that the highway between Tel Aviv and the Jordan Valley and
the road from Jerusalem to Shechem intersect.
There is heavy traffic there, both Jewish and Arab, for pedestrians, cars,
trucks, and buses. I pass by there
whenever I visit two of my children. I have stood there waiting for a ride. One
time, standing there alone, a carful of Arab teenagers drove by and made
catcalls, but I did not feel threatened. At that time there was a whole unit of
soldiers on duty. Last year the army camp was dismantled in a goodwill gesture.
Since then there has been one lone soldier on duty in the pill box and
sometimes a handful of border policeman. In January a seventeen-year-old boy was stabbed
there and, thankfully, recovered. As
these thoughts ran through my mind I wondered how old this new victim is.
My cell
phone rang and was my husband with answers to some of the questions. The victim
was Evyatar Borovsky, my oldest son’s neighbor. Thirty-one years old, he is, or
was, married, the father of five, an actor who enjoyed working with the
youth. Now he is another in the long
list of Jews who have been murdered by anti-Semitism.
Although I
did not know him it still hurts. It hurts me to see those I love, who did know
him, in pain. It hurts me to know that my six-year-old grandson, a schoolmate
of Evyatar’s oldest, seven-year-old son, now knows that a father can be taken
away in the blink of an eye. Most of all, it hurts me that already, the day after
Evyatar’s murder, he had began disappearing from the country’s consciousness. Is this because he was only one person?
Perhaps there is a feeling of national guilt because the army camp at his
murder site was dismantled.
Gershon Mesika, head of the regional council, has a
response to that guilt. He moved his office from a comfortable, air-conditioned
building to a trailer near Tapuach Junction.
It is on government land and he has called on the Prime Minister and
Defense Minister to authorize the site for a legal settlement in Evyatar's memory. I pray it will
be successful. I pray that Evyatar will be the last of our national sacrifices. And I pray that Tzofia,
Evyarar’s widow, will find comfort among the mourners of Zion and be given the
strength to raise her five fatherless children.
Saying goodbye to his father
H”YD: HaShem should avenge his blood
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