The returning son

Yeshiva learning for the pre- and post-army boys ends this week all around the country.

My son came home today.

But Dvir Sorek did not.

As my son walked through the door, I could barely contain my emotions. I couldn’t help but give him an extra tight hug.

We gathered all of my boys together and we went to dinner to celebrate my younger son’s 11^th birthday. And to celebrate my oldest son’s accomplishment of finishing an entire year in yeshiva (no small feat, learning Torah 10 to 12 hours a day or more).

But Dvir’s family gathered together and went to the cemetery to bury him.

I’ve been holding back tears all day since I read the absolutely-impossible-to-believe-news. Because as I heard about the traffic problems on my route to work this morning, I quickly learned that it wasn’t traffic for traffic’s sake. It was a memorial, a murder scene, an active investigation. Dvir was murdered only a number of feet, a few steps, from the road that I take to work each day. He was murdered along a road that people from Migdal Oz walk every single day to go from Efrat to Migdal Oz, from the yeshiva where Dvir learned to the bus stop, from the grocery store to their houses, from the eateries to the yeshiva. It’s a constantly used path, right in the middle of Gush Etzion.

Dvir’s crime was that he was living his life as a Jew in his country.

Period.

He was returning from Jerusalem, from buying books as a thank you gift to his teachers.

Because this week ends the yeshiva learning for the summer and he wanted to say thank you.

He was thanking his teachers before departing for home today where his parents should have enveloped him in an enormous hug and taken him to dinner for a year well lived, and a life well directed to learning and growing before the army.

But my son walked through the door tonight, and Dvir, oh Dvir, Dvir did not.

And there is nothing to say.

Nothing at all.