Rabbi Elli Horovitz and Dinah Horovitz, z"l. (Israel: two e-mail communications).

Teitelbaum, Gerry Segal

Like most people these days, I keep close tabs on the news. On Friday morning, March 7, 2003, in Los Angeles, when I read on the Internet that a couple was murdered by Arab terrorists in Kiryat Arba, my ears perked up because my cousins live there. But so do about 7,500 other persons. We were out all Saturday afternoon and came home for a short time before setting out for an evening concert. But before leaving, I had to check the news once again. There it stared me in the face. The murdered couple was identified. I screamed for my husband. Look, it's my (Dad's) cousin Leah's son, Elli (Elnatan) and his wife Debbie (Dinah). They murdered my cousins.

Sadly, these were not the first of my cousins to be murdered because they were Jewish. About three years ago, April 28, 2000, my cousin Nicky (Anita) Horvitz Gordon (my peer, although my mother's first cousin) was brutally murdered in her Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, home by the lawyer son of the dentists who lived next door. He then torched her house and went on an ethnically motivated killing rampage wherein he vandalized two synagogues and murdered four other persons. Nicky's murderer maintained a hate-spewing website, citing Timothy McVeigh and Adolf Hitler as his heroes. He had recently returned from one of several trips to Europe, absorbing that continent's sub-culture of hate at a time when many of us were still unaware of the nascent antisemitism sweeping Europe. One wonders: was Nicky the canary in the coal mine? The Forward editorialized, on May 18, 2001, at the time Nicky's murderer was sentenced to death, that "the most serious episode of American antisemitism in nearly a decade was brought quietly to a conclusion." The Forward also stated that the incident received little media attention, in spite of the fact that some community leaders saw the crimes as triggered by antisemitism. The broader community, they noted, had failed to see the pattern in this and other hate-motivated attacks, viewing them in isolation. We should, continued the Forward editorial, "stop tolerating intolerance." Nicky, like Elli and Dinah, could be described as an "angel"--beloved by all who knew her. A genuine eishet chayil, woman of valor, brilliant, and artistically talented, Nicky selflessly devoted her time to her family and her community.

I was also reminded that the Horovitzes were not the first people in our family to have been murdered in Hebron. In 1929, my great aunt Chantshe's husband was murdered in the Hebron riots of that era in which the Arabs decimated the Jewish community.

We are an international family. Like many other Jewish families, we are everywhere--Israel, the United States, Europe, Australia, South America. We have such a cohesive bond that, in spite of the fact that we represent a variety of political beliefs and religious backgrounds within Judaism, there is a commonality that binds the family together. That glue is our strong belief in the destiny of the Jewish people and an irrevocable attachment to the land of Israel (Eretz Yisrael). So our family is like a microcosm of the Jewish people.

Rabbi Elli Horovitz (Ray Elli to all his students) was a man of peace, a man of great erudition in Jewish learning, but also a person with a ready smile and a beauty of spirit who loved nature and music. By all accounts, Elli was a very special light, a tolerant person who could relate to all of the Jewish groups ranging from ultra religious, to Zionist religious, and to leftists. For example, Dor Shalem--a group including leftist Meretz political party people--invited him regularly to come down to Tel Aviv to lecture because they felt he understood them very clearly. Dor Shalem tries to establish bonds between the religious and secular in Israel. In turn, in an unusual move for a non-religious group, they rented a bus and came to Kiryat Arba for Succot to be with Rav Elli.

Several years ago, when many religious Israelis decided that there was a closer connection needed between Israeli and American observant Jews, it was Rav Elli who was selected to fly to New York City's Upper West Side to lecture at the Lincoln Square Synagogue over a period of a year, for three days each month, on a project to spread the teachings of Rav Kook in the United States. According to Lincoln Square Synagogue's Rabbi Adam Mintz, his class was attended by a committed group who grew to love and to respect Rabbi Horovitz's knowledge and warm personality.

Both Elli and Dinah were very pleasant and humble, devoid of arrogance. Their hundreds, even thousands, of students, revered them. They were occasionally matchmakers and very often became their students' mentors--often meeting with them to discuss personal problems until late into the night. Rav Elli was one of the founders of Yeshivat Shavey Hevron in Hebron, and he taught at yeshivot in Jerusalem and several other areas. His life combined a love of Torah with an interest in many areas of knowledge--literature, philosophy, and science.

In his younger days, Elli lived for a period of time with his aunt on Kibbutz Hulata, a non-religious kibbutz in the north of Israel, where he came to understand Jews whose religious outlook was different from his, and he learned to love nature, to grow fruit, and to cultivate a generosity of spirit. Subsequently, he chose to live in Kiryat Arba, adjacent to Hebron, not necessarily out of political conviction, but because Hebron was one of the oldest Jewish areas, the place that drew him spiritually and religiously. The flora and fauna of the area also possessed him. Even rare flowers would bloom under the magical guidance of his hands. But it wasn't magic. He studied about growing flowers, too. Both Elli and Dinah loved the beauty of Eretz Yisrael, Just hours before they were murdered, they hiked out to the hills near Hebron to enjoy the beautiful wildflowers in bloom. The last photographs they took of themselves among the flowers radiated the special happiness and love between them.

Dinah had an outstanding musical talent--as a pianist and a vocalist. But she gave up what might have been a fine career for a life of Torah, her family--she raised four splendid children--and reaching out and touching people. A friend since childhood said of her: "She was what you call a gem, because there was a sparkle in her eye, which reflected a genuine enthusiasm about everything she did; everything she did reflected the tremendous sensitivity she had toward people."

Rabbi Moshe Horovitz, now retired, and father of Rabbi Elli, was founder and for many years Rosh Yeshiva of BMT, a yeshiva for American students in Jerusalem. He says of his son and daughter-in-law: "They were cut down at the height of their flowering. So many people said their time had come; their mission had come to an end. They led very short lives, but they were so full of accomplishment, beauty, understanding, and sensitivity." But these words are incredibly difficult for parents to accept.

Just moments before candle-lighting on that last evening, Elli called his parents and told them that it was very strange that tonight would be the first time in years that no guests were expected at their table. Their Shabbat table was always filled with guests from all walks of life, covering the whole religious spectrum, with all immersed in discussion and song.

I have been consumed by this latest horrific tragedy, communicating with relatives and friends all over the world, researching stories on the Internet about my cousin's life and death, and just thinking. I have started a file of the letters I have received from people on several continents who have been touched by this tragedy. As shocking as the story is--the devout couple murdered in cold blood at Sabbath dinner by Arab terrorists posing as Jews dressed in religious garb--people have emphasized one distinctive theme in their notes of condolence to me. They confess that they are anguished even more acutely when they find out that the murdered persons were connected to a friend or relative of theirs, however distant. In most cases, I was that connection for the letter-writers in faraway places. But in Israel itself, all Jews feel somehow related to one another Police estimates placed 15 to 20 thousand persons at the funeral of Rabbi Elli and Dinah. People lined both sides of the road as the cortege slowly made its way up to Jerusalem.

Suddenly I felt the closeness of a family originally called Zines and sensed the unity of all these family relatives in diverse parts of the world. I circled these cousins around me emotionally, and then I reached out to friends who were similarly moved, ultimately to all other Jews. In the final analysis, we Jews are all reminded about connections--how we are all connected to our friends and relatives dispersed all over, and how we are connected to the center of our ancient word in Israel.

One note of condolence said: "The Middle East conflict is a horrible abstraction until someone is murdered who has a direct connection with whom we know at home. I sympathize with your loss and understand the pain that you and your family endure. I also understand that it resonates with the larger pain of the Jewish predicament in the Middle East." Another: "I was so sad to hear of this tragedy, but now that it seems so close to home, it really tears my heart apart. Please, give your family my love, and tell them that many people in the Diaspora cry and pray for them."

My family tree named Zines, to which Rabbi Elli Horovitz and Dinah belonged, starts, as far as we know, with an ancestor named "Dina" (not related to Dinah Wolf Horovitz) who lived in Safed in Israel in the mid-1700s. We don't know how much further back our roots go in the land of Israel, but with the cruel murder of cousins Elli and Dinah in Kiryat Arba near Hebron merely for their devotion to their Jewish roots, it surely goes back to Father Abraham and Mother Sarah.

GERRY SEGAL TEITELBAUM is the founder and president of the Los Angeles Judaica Collectors Club. She is currently writing an article for the Western States Jewish Historical Quarterly. We thank The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles where a shorter version of this article appeared in April.