Dear Eyal, Gilad, and Naphtoli. הי"ד

It hurts so much to write to you under these circumstances. Eighteen days have transpired since the awful night of your abduction and murder. In the course of these eighteen days, your names have become synonymous with Achdut, Tefillah, and a sacred re-dedication to our Creator that was felt so tangibly throughout every Jewish community the world over. We all tried harder in these eighteen days. We all upped the ante of our Avodat Hashem with the primal hope and prayer that our efforts to better ourselves would result in the ecstatic news of your return, alive and well, to an entire nation that wanted to embrace you and tell you how much you had come to mean to all of us. But Hashem, in incomprehensible Hester Panim, deemed otherwise. I want you to know that while we are all reeling from the pain of your loss, something positive will emerge. The dedication, the promise to be better, and the promise to continue to stand in unity will endure.

Your holy bodies were found in the week that Am Yisroel reads Parshat Balak. Contained within this Parsha is the story of other diabolical madmen who, then as now,  stood poised and ready to destroy us as a nation. In this instance, Hashem granted salvation, and through the process, taught us some crucial lessons about ourselves as a people. The evil Bilam imparted to us the secret of our strength in unity. Bilam, of all people, proclaimed the immortal words, מהטובואוהלךיעקב, "How beautiful are the tents of Jacob" as he beheld the encampment of the Jewish people spread with glorious precision in the expanse below. He beheld how the tents were so assembled as to afford the maximum privacy to each family, with each tent meticulously positioned with its entrance facing away from that of its neighbor. He beheld a nation that lived with the single minded devotion and presence of mind to sculpt their lives around the will of a Higher power, in good times, and even when they stood aghast and confused in the wake of incomprehensible terror and pain.

Dearest Eyal, Gilad, and Naftoli, the senseless brutality and hate with which your murder was committed might have within it the ingredients to destroy our morale.  This will not happen.  I humbly promise you the following: Your lives and deaths will continue to illuminate us as a people.

We will raise the level of our love and caring for each other, and in your merit, allow true Achdut to reign supreme. We will continue to daven and learn with unsurpassed vigor and strength. And last, we will wait with ever greater yearning and determination for the hastening of Moshiach, the ultimate resurrection, and the return of our King to his lofty abode in Jerusalem forever. I envision that great day. Together, with all of your Jewish brothers and sisters, we will all run to hug, love, and embrace you. On that day we will personally express the humble gratitude we all have for you for having been such noble teachers who touched all of us in such defining and meaningful ways. Dearest Eyal, Gilad, and Naphtoli, until that great day, may you rest in the closest proximity to His Heavenly Throne.  

With dreams of Geulah sustaining us,

Knesses Yisroel