Remembering Dekel Swissa z”l 10,000 km from home
Driving through the gates of Moshav Bar Giyora, in the beautiful hills near Jerusalem, the first thing I see is the sign reminding residents of the event marking the azkara (memorial) for Dekel Swissa. My heart skips a beat. Ever since first driving past the signs for the Moshav on my way to Ikea, I have been thinking of Dekel driving through these very roads, coming home after a long stint as commander in his Golani unit to the rolling hills and chirping birds.
The first street I see when I enter the Moshav is Rechov Dekel, and I immediately get goosebumps. Something in me tells me this is not coincidental, that this is where Dekel’s family lives, and where he grew up, but I don’t listen to my gut. I don’t know the exact address for the Swissa family home, so I circle around and after calling my friend, fellow shlicha, Tali in Atlanta, she tells me that indeed Dekel grew up on Rechov Dekel. She reminds me that as his father was one of the founders of the Moshav, he had a say in naming the streets. As I turn into Rechov HaDekel, the lines of cars betray what I already knew I’d see, hundreds of people turned up to honor Dekel’s memory, 11 months after he heroically fell protecting his soldiers at the Puga Outpost just outside of Gaza.
So how did I come to encounter Dekel? It all started with the decision to go on shlichut somewhere in the haze of COVID. My husband and I had grown up in Melbourne, Australia and benefited greatly from the various shlichim who traveled literally to the ends of the earth to educate us about Israel. Both of our families had been host families to some of these shlichim, and they left an indelible impression on us. They hosted us in their houses when we came to visit Israel, and kept in touch after we made aliyah and started our own family here. We felt that after living in Israel for over a decade, it was now our turn to give back to the Jewish communities outside of Israel. And so, that is how we found ourselves in Atlanta in late July 2021, watching the rainy summer storms, ready to start teaching at Atlanta Jewish Academy (AJA).
Never could I have imagined however how my shlichut would become more meaningful that fateful Shemini Atzeret morning, when, having arrived late to our Israeli minyan for Simchat Torah, I was greeted with the first bytes of news about what had happened in Southern Israel as we had slept peacefully in our beds only hours earlier. All the shlichim were in shock and we ended our Hakafot early, doing the bare minimum to get through.
The next few days were a haze, trying to contact friends and family to see how they were doing, helping other shlichim from around America try and find flights to go back to Israel having been called up for Tzav 8, absorbing the news and hearing the numbers of victims go up each day with disbelief. At the same time, the wheels of our shlichim minds started rolling – how were we going to incorporate all this into our school, in an authentic and meaningful way for our students.
Some of my other shlichim colleagues were going through much more personal trauma — Tali and her husband Amir had two children serving in the army who had come to visit them for the holidays and they were desperately trying to get in touch with their colleagues to see if they had survived, as well as trying to find flights back to Israel to help the military effort. One morning, as I was on my way to school, Tali called me crying, “I can’t come to school on time today. I just found out that Dekel was killed, and I have to be with my daughter to tell her the news.” That was not the first I had heard of Dekel. Dekel had been a shinshin at AJA in 2018-2019. He had become close friends with Tali’s oldest daughter, and he spent many Shabbatot at their house.
Of course the Atlanta Jewish community mourned for all the lives lost on October 7th, and during a rally one month after the horrible day, Rabbi Adam Starr, the rabbi of Ohr HaTorah (the community we were a part of) spoke of Dekel’s love for the community. As time went on, we heard more about the kind of person Dekel was, and I kept feeling so much regret that I hadn’t had the opportunity to meet him.
Thinking about how to mark the first Yom HaZikaron at the school since October 7th was a really intensive process. On the one hand, the pain was so raw, we were still in the midst of the war, hostages still being held captive, we hadn’t even fully processed the trauma. On the other hand, how do we make this a particularly meaningful Yom HaZikaron for our students? Many of these questions were debated at the Conference for Shlichim Educators run by the World Zionist Organization in February.
The educator gears in my mind started turning and I remembered the Yom HaZikaron memorial the shlichim in Melbourne used to create. They would create an exhibit centered on the lives of fallen IDF soldiers and victims of terror, and they invited the community to a guided tour of the exhibit every year before Yom HaZikaron. I remember the exhibit as a very powerful experience especially because the people chosen to be memorialized were always those to whom the shlichim had a personal connection. I decided that my project for Yom HaZikaron would be to create a similar experience for our students, and that the person who we would commemorate would be Dekel. It was an obvious choice. Even if our students themselves had not met him personally, the fact that he had walked the hallways of their school, taught their brothers, sisters, cousins and friends, meant that there was an automatic connection.
Even though I was inspired by the Melbourne shlichim, I decided to make a few changes. As powerful as it was to be a participant in one of the guided tours, as an educator, I wanted my students to be more active participants. I wanted them to be the guides, them to think of how best to bring Dekel’s story to life – and I was sure that if they invested so much time and effort into this project, it would leave a lasting impression. I wanted them to discover what it was about Dekel that inspired them and be able to relay that to fellow students.
And so, Project Dekel was born. I decided to work with my 9th and 10th grade students. Our first step? Research. We started with browsing the internet and collecting photographs and anecdotes from articles already written about Dekel. We were lucky enough that Dekel’s father, Moshe, and brother, Eden, came to visit Atlanta to talk about Dekel and share his legacy. Students had the opportunity to ask questions such as, what was his favorite color? Were there any foods he disliked? What was his favorite place? What did he like about the army? It’s not always easy talking to high school students and keeping their attention, especially if it’s in another language, and at the end of the school day on a Friday, but, there was complete silence in the room and at times when Moshe and Eden became emotional, I could see the students felt something too. Moshe and Eden also shared many photos and videos of Dekel with us from childhood and until his last days. Some students also spoke with local Atlanta families who had served as host families for Dekel, who shed light on their interactions with him.
During the course of the research, one student even discovered photographs and videos of Dekel with their grade on a 5th grade camp. This brought up memories for some of the students who were reminded that they had actually spent time with Dekel when he was in Atlanta. This really deepened their connection to Dekel.
After the research stage, students had to choose a station in Dekel’s life that they were going to focus on, and then think about how to present it visually. We decided on five different stations in his life. We also decided that we wanted to focus more on his life and the lessons we could learn from the way he lived his life, rather than on the tragic circumstances of his death.
Students worked really hard making our vision come to life, and as the countdown to Yom HaZikaron approached, the room really came together. Staff from around the school pitched in to help, lending us equipment, printing photographs and allowing students extra time to work on the project. Students also worked on a script they would present when guiding visitors around the exhibit. We sent out a form to students and staff, asking them to sign up to visit the exhibit and the reception we received was overwhelming.
Yom Hazikaron was ushered in, and after attending the very moving ceremony, we were told that there were special guests in the school who wanted to see the exhibit. It was Dekel’s aunt, Ilana, uncle and cousins who had come to visit their brother in Atlanta. The exhibit was not fully set up, and the technology was not yet in place, but how could we say no? There was a lot of trepidation, and a little bit of imposter syndrome, we didn’t even meet Dekel and we were telling his family about him!?
But that gave way as soon as his family stepped into the exhibit and saw the lengths our students went to to tell Dekel’s story. It started with the entrance door which replicated Dekel’s room at his parents’ house, in which students told of a young boy who loved playing soccer, the board game Catan, and kept his room extremely tidy and organized. They then moved on to his decision to board at a military academy, following in the footsteps of his father and older siblings.
The next station; Atlanta, the students decided to create a video montage of Dekel’s time in Atlanta, including the photos they had found of their time at fifth grade camp together. They also included an excerpt from a diary he kept in which he wrote about his takeaways from his year of shlichut, including “if you want to do something big, even if it seems impossible, just do it – aspire to greatness. Even if you have to overturn the whole world.”
As visitors rounded the next corner, they saw the Mechina station, and another journal entry from Dekel explaining why he wanted to go to Mechina before enlisting, and why he settled on the Mechina of Bnei Eli. It was clear that Dekel thought very deeply about every decision he made in his life, he didn’t just follow the crowd.
Visitors were then guided to a replica of the dining hall (cheder ochel) in which Dekel spent much time with his soldiers. The students handed out chocolate chip cookies, one of Dekel’s favorite snacks, and showed a video of his message to the parents of his soldiers at a ceremony only months before he was killed. In it, Dekel promises to take care of their sons – and unfortunately on October 7th, he fulfilled that promise; protecting them by sacrificing his life, with many taking refuge in that very same dining hall. It is in this station that visitors heard that when Dekel’s body was found, he was surrounded by seven dead terrorists.
Finally, visitors arrived at the final destination, coffee in nature, in which, while drinking coffee made in the finjan (Turkish coffee pot), they were told about Dekel’s love for coffee (Turkish coffee and black only) and sitting in nature, especially near sources of water, such as springs. They also heard about a coffee liquor that was created in memory of Dekel along with a quote from his journal – “Don’t forget to smile when you wake up in the morning.” To conclude, visitors lit a memorial candle in his memory and were encouraged to write what they learned from Dekel on a post-it, placing it around a photograph of Dekel. Some of their responses were simple – messages like “I’ve learned to be clean,” and others were deeper “I don’t remember meeting Dekel but I’ve heard amazing and inspiring storys and wish I had the honor to meet him.”
As the tour ended, Dekel’s family expressed their admiration of our students and their dedication to bringing his story to the rest of the school community. They told us that they had been hesitant marking Yom HaZikaron outside of Israel, especially this year, but that coming to AJA, attending the ceremony and visiting the exhibit made them feel a warm hug from the Diaspora communities. They hadn’t known how much Jews outside of Israel cared about what was happening in Israel and it warmed their hearts.
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Fast forward to August 2024, I am back in Israel after completing my shlichut and see posts on Instagram advertising Dekel’s Azkara (memorial service). I know I have to be there. I have to see his room with my own eyes, meet his mother and sisters, and see for myself where he grew up. And of course I have to record everything for my students who have formed an attachment to Dekel and his family. Walking past the many cars lining Dekel Street, I hear sounds of many people, and a loudspeaker with Mincha. I walk towards the house, and see a small house with an enormous patio and tens of tables and chairs set up. I begin to search for familiar faces. And then, I spot Ilana, Dekel’s aunt. I go up to her and re-introduce myself, it has been a number of months after all. She recognizes me and immediately echoes the same sentiments she had expressed months earlier — how meaningful our exhibit had been for her family. Ilana shows me a firepit Dekel had made to use when his nieces and nephews came to visit — he doted on them.
She then takes me into the family home, offering me coffee and food, “Of course I will have a coffee, I say, how can I not in Dekel’s honor?!” Soon Gila, Dekel’s mother, enters the house and her sister introduces me. She takes me to Dekel’s room and as soon as I see the door with the bumper stickers he had posted on it, it seems all too familiar. The only difference is that since then, the family added a bumper sticker in memory of Dekel, including the phrase he wrote in his journal “Don’t forget to smile when you wake up in the morning.” She opens the door, explaining that they have kept everything the same, except they have added more sifrei kodesh Dekel had bought that were previously stored in another room.
“In addition,” she points to the top of one of the bookshelves where a gun is encased in glass,
“A little while ago, we received his gun riddled with bullet holes.” She points out pictures around the room, books that Dekel liked, such as Mesilat Yesharim, and notes that a weekly shiur studying the book takes place in his memory. It is a powerful experience, being in the room of a young man, who I never met, but felt like I knew intimately.
As we leave the room, I meet Dekel’s sister, who remarks that they had just seen a photograph celebrating Dekel’s return from Atlanta 5 years prior. I went outside and listened to the speeches given by his father, brother and a local rabbi. All of them speak of Dekel’s extraordinary nature, he achieved so much in only 23 years. For instance, his father mentioned how on his last day of leave before returning to the army, on the second night of Sukkot, Dekel had visited one of his soldiers in hospital, visited his host family from Atlanta who were visiting, went to a shiur, and prayed at Ma’arat HaMachpela.
Dekel lived a life full of meaning and actions and achieved more in his 23 years than some people achieve in a lifetime. His life serves as an inspiration for many around the world, including my students in Atlanta, thousands of kilometers away, many of whom wear the bracelet with his reminder to smile when you wake up in the morning, and think of him daily.
May his memory be for a blessing יהי זכרו ברוך