Thousands of people gathered at the Ofra cemetery on Thursday evening, where 19-year old Dvir Sorek, who was killed in a terrorist attack in Gush Etzion on Wednesday night, was laid to rest.
Sorek is survived by his parents – Yoav and Rachel, and six siblings: Shahar, 24, Noa, 23, Ruth, 21, Binyamin, 15, Eitan, 13, and Uri, 9.
Dvir, a hesder student at Ohr Torah Mahanayim, was the son of journalist Yoav Sorek, editor of the Hashiloach publication, and his wife Rachel, and was grandson of Rabbi Binyamin Herling, who was murdered in a terror attack on Mt. Ebal.
Sorek left his seminary in the West Bank settlement of Migdal Oz Wednesday to head to Jerusalem to buy books — a gift for a teacher. He never returned.
“He was found clutching the books that he’d bought,” Rabbi Shlomo Wilk, the head of the Migdal Oz seminary Machanayim, said Thursday morning, as word of Sorek’s murder was met with shock and sadness by those who knew him.
“He was an amazing man, very sensitive, smart, modest, who fused wisdom and quiet… This is a man who at the beginning of the year saw an Arab walking around the area with a donkey that looked unwell, sick, so he offered to buy the donkey. He bought it, treated it, and sent it away,” Rabbi Sarel Rosenblatt, who taught Sorek, told Channel 12 news.
“I wanted him to be a man of standing in Israel, who would contribute a lot of his light to Israeli society, and his light was taken from us,” he added, describing him as a “sensitive man with a heart of gold.”
The Sorek family has decided to donate Dvir’s organs, and his father Yoav said: “If we could ask Dvir it would have been his wish.” His corneas will be transplanted in the coming days.
May the family and friends who knew him be comforted and may there be no more bloodshed in this horrific manner ever!
Truly heartbreaking!
HaShem should give the Sorek family strength and chizuk to deal with this incomprehensible tragedy. Only smachot for the family and Am Yisroel