By COLlive reporter
This past Friday night, Yosef Zvi Salomon sat around his Shabbos table in the home he and his wife have lived in for 34 years in Neve Tzuf-Halamish, the Israeli settlement located in the southwestern Samarian hills.
Well-known in the community for his pleasant demeanor and sense of humor, Solomon was flanked by his wife Tova and was filled with appreciation to Hashem for the blessings of 3 children and 15 grandchildren.
What is more, that Friday morning a grandchild was born into the family.
The 70-year-old grandfather was expecting friends and neighbors to join them when, instead, a Palestinian, a resident of the nearby village of Kubar, burst into the house and attacked the family with a knife.
Mr. Salomon was stabbed to death, along with his two adult children, Chaya and Elad. Thousands of mourners attended their funerals on Sunday evening in the Modi’in cemetery.
On Thursday, a large crowd of family and friends came together once more in a powerful demonstration of strength and Jewish continuity for the Bris Milah circumcision ceremony of that grandchild.
The baby was named Ari for his mother’s late grandfather and Yosef for his grandfather who was murdered at his Shabbat table as he celebrated the birth of this new grandson.
Leading the ceremony in Elad was former Chief Rabbi of Israel Yisrael Meir Lau.
Through intermittent sobs, the new father Shmuel explained that while they had decided on the name Ari before the attack, it had gained new meaning after his family members fought like “lions” against the Palestinian terrorist last Friday night. The Hebrew word for lion originates from the same root as the boy’s name.
“We have chosen to hold such a public event so that the Salomon family will be remembered as a happy family and united, not mournful and torn,” the father said, as the crowd shed tears with him.
“It was a heart-wrenching bris,” said Rabbi Menachem Kutner, Director of Chabad’s Terror Victims Project (CTVP), who was one of the many who participated in the occasion.
“Tears flowed at the bris – tears of joy for this new child in Israel and tears of pain for those who were so brutally lost,” he told COLlive.com.
Mi Kamocha Yisrael, di golus, it’s way too much Hashem
Bidomayich chayee. How fitting. Netzach Yisrael lo yeshaker. May Ari Yosef n”y be zocheh to greet Moshiach bimhayra byameinu.
(Ari Yosef could not have been born Erev Shabbat because the brit milah could not have been held on Thursday as it wouldn’t have been the eighth day.)
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