The Human Spirit: Empowered by grief  

By Barbara Sofer

We’d like to go back to our lives, says Racheli Fraenkel, whose son Naftali was kidnapped and murdered in June.

She’s on a panel together with Iris Yifrah and Bat-Galim Shaer, whose sons Eyal and Gil-Ad were murdered in the same terror attack last June. Since then, the women, often called “The Three Mothers” or, as one headline put it, “The Three Mothers United in Grief,” have become public figures, called upon to speak in Israel and abroad.

I know it’s unfair to ask, but please stay in the limelight.

We need your voices.

Earlier that week, the three bereaved mothers had lit Hanukka candles in Chabad of Talbiyeh’s public lighting at the Mamilla Mall, with thousands of attendees.

The panel tonight is titled “Enduring the Test of Faith,” and the women are being interviewed by religious journalist Sivan Rahav-Meir. The event is part of the World Zionist Organization’s Center for Religious Affairs in the Diaspora’s annual gathering of Orthodox rabbis, with some 130 such rabbis and community leaders from 42 countries, including the US, France, Brazil, Germany, Croatia, Russia, Spain, Argentina, Greece, India, Turkey, Austria – and of course, Israel.

The music program for the evening features a men’s choir and the IDF’s cantor, although a woman accompanies the singing on the piano.