Crying, Rena Ariel caressed the blue shroud covered body of her daughter Hallel Yaffa, 13, before uttering her final parting words, to the girl who had been a brilliant student and who loved to dance.
“I am giving you one last hug,” Rena said on Thursday evening as she eulogized Hallel in front of the hundreds of mourners who filled the small public grass lawn, just a short walk away from their home in the West Bank Kiryat Arba settlement.
Just the night before, Hallel had performed in Jerusalem with Harikod dance troop. In the morning she slept late. She was alone in the house when a Palestinian teen, Mohammad Tarairah, 17, snuck in her bedroom through an open window and stabbed her to death.
From Rabbi Ariann
This week our Jewish community and the worldwide community have been shaken again by the now seemingly endless acts of terrorism. We mourn for the 44 murdered in Istanbul and pray for the healing of the 240 injured. We mourn especially for Hallel Yaffa Ariel, murdered in her own bed by a Palestinian teenager on Thursday morning at just 13 years old. Hallel is the youngest victim of terror in Israel in the last year. Our prayers are with her family as they grieve her senseless death.
We pray for a time when all people can walk safely through their lives and have no reason to fear a crowded airport, a subway station, a dance club, and most importantly, their own bedroom.
Let us all resist evil in all of its forms, let us resist a world where teenagers can hate enough to kill other teenagers and where terrorism occupies so much of our thoughts. Let us bring into the world only good, a good that is new and beautiful. May this Shabbat be a Shabbat of peace for all people.
