Today: 27th Yartzeit of Ari Halberstam

By COLlive reporter

Today, the 23rd of Adar, marks the yartzeit of Ari Halberstam HYD, who was murdered in a terror attack on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1994.

His mother, Devorah Halberstam, asks the public to please do a Mitzvah in Ari’s merit today.

She also asks that people around the world Farbreng in Ari’s merit on his yartzeit. Oholei Torah School in Crown Heights, which Ari proudly attended, will be holding events to mark Ari’s yartzeit throughout the day on Sunday.

Students will hear about Ari, a young boy who was always happy, loved his family and friends, and loved to play basketball. Ari was a proud young Lubavitcher Chossid, who loved the Rebbe and loved to Farbreng, and who died Al kiddush Hashem for the Rebbe.

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The Attack

On the 23rd of Adar, (March 1) 1994, a gunman in a car opened fire on a van carrying more than a dozen Chabad students as it began to cross the Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan, critically wounding two young men and injuring two others.

The lone gunman, driving a blue Chevrolet Caprice equipped with a submachine gun, two 9mm guns, and a “street sweeper” shotgun, pursued the van full of terrified students across the bridge.

He fired in three separate bursts, spraying both sides of the van. He then disappeared into traffic as the van came to a stop at the Brooklyn end of the bridge.

The injured Yeshiva students were among dozens who were returning from a Manhattan hospital where the spiritual leader of the Lubavitch movement, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, had undergone minor surgery.

The attack occurred less than a week after the massacre of Muslims by a Brooklyn-born Jewish settler in the West Bank. The shooting began at 10:24 A.M. on the ramp that leads from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive to the Brooklyn Bridge.

The van that was fired on, a white Dodge Ram 350 carrying 15 students, was one of perhaps 20 vehicles en route back to Crown Heights from Manhattan Eye, Ear, and Throat Hospital, where Rabbi Schneerson was being treated.

Initially, the gunman followed the Rebbe’s entourage to the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. When he found that it was closed to other vehicular traffic, he reversed his course and traveled north to the Brooklyn Bridge.

When the gunman saw the students garbed in their Hasidic dress, he immediately opened fire. In the first burst of gunfire, the gunman strafed the passenger side of the van, striking three of the students and blowing out the rear windows.

The van came to a stop, and two of the students stumbled out as the driver and the others attempted to see if anyone had been hit. Gunfire then erupted again from the blue four-door Chevrolet, this time raking the driver’s side.

The driver of the van then sped off toward Brooklyn, leaving the two students on the bridge. They were later picked up by an emergency medical technician. The gunman followed the fleeing van with shouts of “Kill the Jews,” hailed in Arabic.

He once more fired shots at the passenger side of the vehicle before it swerved off the bridge at the Cadman Plaza exit. The van, with at least six bullet holes in its body and windows destroyed, finally came to a halt at the Brooklyn entrance to the bridge.

The Wounded

All the shooting victims were immediately rushed to St. Vincent’s Hospital. The most severe of the wounded was 16-year-old Ari Halberstam obm who was shot in the head. He suffered from profound brain injuries and died five days later.

Nachum Sosonkin, 18, also shot in the head, underwent surgery to relieve pressure on his brain. He still has a bullet lodged in his brain, but has made a miraculous recovery.

Two other students, Yaakov Schapiro, 17, and Levi Wilhelm, 18, suffered less serious gunshot wounds.

Needless to say, every one of the 14 boys on that van will carry the trauma of these experiences for the rest of their lives.

The Funeral

At least ten thousand mourners gathered in front of 770 Eastern Parkway, the headquarters of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Cries of anguish could be heard as the coffin bearing the body of Ari Halberstam was carried to the funeral hearse.

The hearse drove Halberstam for a final tour of Crown Heights, past the yeshiva on Troy Avenue where he studied, past the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s former home on President Street.

It stopped in front of the Halberstam home on Eastern Parkway, where members of the family made a small incision into their clothing, and Ari’s father, mother and siblings ripped another three inches deeper, saying, as is customary for the Jewish mourner, “Blessed is the True Judge.”

They then put on their coats and walked slowly down Eastern Parkway and knew this funeral would not be private. Their Ari now belonged to history, a history of martyrs, mentioned in the same breath as Yankel Rosenbaum and the Six Million.

Thousands of Jews swelled across Eastern Parkway and down Kingston Avenue. They all came, Reform, Conservative, Viznitz, Belz, Agudah. Dozens of Hasidim watched from fire escapes. Mayor Giuliani and Gov. Mario Cuomo watched from the podium. More than 250 police officers joined in the funeral procession to guard against any incidents that might take place.

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Last year at a Farbrengen, Toronto Shliach Rabbi Mendel Kaplan shared a chilling story that happened with Ari Halberstam HY”D while sitting on a Ferris wheel that suddenly stopped during a Lag BaOmer event, and what the Rebbe said about it:

It was Lag BaOmer 5748 (1988). The Rebbe declared that year as Shnas Hayeled V’hayalda – the year of the boy and girl – that will be dedicated to education.

That year, Rabbi JJ Hecht, the organizer of the Lag BaOmer parades and interpreter of the Rebbe’s talks during them, asked whether they should plan a parade. Parades were usually held on Sunday to allow Public Schools children to attend, but this year it was on a Thursday. Nevertheless, the Rebbe responded in the affirmative.

The parade was held in front of 770 Eastern Parkway (which the Rebbe did not attend) and later the children went to a massive outdoor fair of rides and booths that was set up on Empire Boulevard in Crown Heights (this has been done since 5744/1984, instead of going to a park).

Everyone would join the fair, even those who did not make it to the parade. That year, despite not attending the parade, the Rebbe chose to drive through Empire Boulevard on his way to the Ohel, to see the Jewish children.

When the Rebbe arrived in his car, the entire carnival stopped, including all of the rides, the Ferris wheel, and booths. Women and girls stood on one side, whilst the men and boys stood on the other side of the road, and the Rebbe passed through the entire fair.

I remember quite vividly how Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky drove the Rebbe’s car very slowly with children surrounding the car. The entire time, the Rebbe warmly smiled and kept on lifting both of his holy hands, waving to the children as he looked to all sides.

That night, at dinner, my younger brother Baruch remarked that he was on top of the Ferris wheel when it stopped. He was sitting with a few friends, all young boys, and one of them was his second cousin, Ari Halberstam HY”D.

When the wheel stopped, Ari became very scared. He didn’t realize why the ride had stopped, and so he called out, frightened, “We’re going to die, we’re going to die!” and screamed out “Shema Yisroel!…”

A few days later, while I was studying in Oholei Torah, news came in that someone had written to the Rebbe, questioning the point of the parade and “why so much Yiddishe money was wasted.” At the time, $70,000 was considered an enormous amount of money. The person said that there were so many important Jewish causes that this money could have been used for.

The Rebbe answered a very interesting answer, which most people didn’t really understand. The Rebbe responded that “At the parade, there was a boy, whom I know personally, who screamed out ‘Shema Yisroel!’ with an Emes (truth/sincerity) and for this, it was worth the entire expense.”

Those hearing the answer didn’t understand what the Rebbe was referring to. Which boy screamed out Shema Yisroel? Who is this child that the Rebbe knows personally?

I was able to put the puzzle together. Reb Chesed Halberstam was a Meshames Bakodesh (helper) in the Rebbe’s home, and his family, particularly Ari, would visit the Rebbe’s home quite often. The Rebbe would even sit with him and test him on the Aleph Beis. He was the who the Rebbe personally knew.

The Rebbe knew that Ari Halberstam screamed out ‘Shema Yisroel’ with truth and sincerity, and the Rebbe responded to the Jew who wrote to him, “That a child screaming Shema Yisroel genuinely, made the entire expense and effort worth it.”