Yael Shevach: "I feel much more like a terrorist model than a terrorist widow" Israel today

Almost three years after she lost her husband, the late Rabbi Raziel Shevach in a terrorist attack, Yael Shevach is raising their six children, launching a book and starring on social media • Interview

• "I'm looking to close years of division and longing. Want to get to know, and let them know me."

  Yael Shevach, this week

  Photography: 

  // Photo: Efrat Eshel

It is difficult to describe

Yael Shevach through a text in a newspaper.

You need to hear it.

Her remarks about bereavement burn her ears in pain, but along with a tear, they are accompanied by a giggle.

The humor is black, but the sadness is not repressed.

Hubble is present, but it is not a work plan. 

Luckily there is one moment during the filming, on which the sentence may have been invented one picture worth a thousand words.

Ovadia, 6, lies on his father's grave, spreads his arms to the sides, and instead of crying, a magical childish smile is smeared across his face.

This is exactly how the praise family is run: with pain, sadness and memory, but also with power and a desire to live, a lot of black humor, a new book for Yael, and quite a few pearls, which have made it a network anchor in recent months.

"I can not stand this word, 'widow'," she says, "syntactically it does not work for me either. What is 'widow'? He is no longer there, so how am I his ?! Also in the essence of this word, I Do not like her and do not like this expression, he does not represent me in any way. He presents someone weak, poor.

"The orphan and the widow represent the weak in society, and I do not like it.

I'm not like that.

I find myself supporting people more than people support me.

I decided I wanted to formulate this word differently, so we sat down with some friends and thought of another word, and we did not find one.

Someone suggested 'widower', which is like a widow but smart, a widow with pepper, but for now it does not seem to catch on.

I remained a 'widow', even though I had nothing to do with it. 

"I may have also thought of a 'terrorist model' because sometimes I participate in outreach activities, so I said I 'model terrorism' because I tell the story of widows who have been victims of terrorism. But do not like that I use it. After all, I definitely feel much more of a model Terrorism than a terror widow. "

Yael Shevach lost her husband, the

late Rabbi Raziel, on January 9, 2018 in a shooting attack near Havat Gilad. A week after the attack, one of the terrorists who carried it out was killed, and the other was captured. This murder shook the country, in part because of the chilling recording of the message In the WhatsApp group of medical personnel in Samaria, he was buried at Havat Gilad, the only one buried in the cemetery that was quickly established after the murder.

Yael (35) and her children - Ranna (now 13), Naomi (11), Miriam (9 and a half), Malka (8), Ovadia (6) and Benyahu (3 and a half) - live at Havat Gilad. She is not an ordinary character. Until the attack she was an educator, after which she became independent. She began giving inspirational lectures on her story, completed a medic course at MDA, wrote a book called "A. Widow ", which is being published these days, and has become a network anchor with thousands of followers on Twitter and Facebook and with particularly viral posts.

These days she is running a zoom show called "On Life and Death", which she defines as "spiritual, touching and entertaining".

Photo: Shmuel Buharis

One of her most notable posts was taken from an interview she gave on TV.

She "cut" a screenshot of a sentence that said "I buried my husband here," called on her Facebook friends to add amusing "memes," and received dozens of such.

"When I started with 'I buried my husband here', I wrote: 'Sorry for the one whose cows are too sacred, my sensitivity is buried next to my husband'. I do not want the title 'widow' to be my main color. I have more colors in me." 

"Black," she bursts out laughing.

"I am very confused in my colors, not letting one color take over me. I will tell and write and hurt and laugh. I understand that I am expected to have a shaky moment of pain, and I come 'happy happy' to give contra.

" The truth is that it hurts me, but bad even when it hurts My pain at the wrong times.

If I come to you for an interview and you immediately connect to a painful place, even before you know me, I am alerted.

It's embarrassing to me, I'm not comfortable, and I do not know how to get out of the situation.

"So first of all I want to break down the walls of pain. To show that I'm not scary, that I'm happy, and now you can start talking. I'm not suppressing the pain, it exists, but it also has black humor. I dived for exposure, for publicity. In fact, never. I had a hard time in front of a camera. "

Another viral post surfaced in early November, when she wrote, to mark her 14th wedding anniversary, a text in which pain and black humor are used interchangeably, under the headline: "14 unimportant facts about Raziel and Yael Shevach." 

"For an engagement gift, Raziel bought me a huge Shrek doll," she wrote, and also: "Raziel is less of a goat in gematria than eggplant. I love eggplant. Eggplant in gematria is 'comforting.'"

And there were also jarring statements, like "I never had love before him. Not even after him."

In recent months

, Yael has also become a Twitter anchor.

"It's a great platform to meet people I would not reach anywhere else," she says, "think of Iris Lael from Haaretz, what about her and me? And here, thanks to Twitter, we met, became friends, and there is respect and brotherhood between us in correspondence and sympathetic responses.

" "One day I started talking on Twitter with former MK Ayelet Nachmias-Rabin, from the Labor Party. She asked if I wanted to come and pick up Lego for my children. We met, and we remained friends." 

"not like this". 

"I knew leftists the way they want to be known. When a leftist presents himself as a leftist, he comes up with his agenda up front, and that's what you know about him. You do not know him." 

"True, like us. But in a one-on-one meeting we don't just talk about left-wing or right-wing. There's a different connection. Today I strive to communicate, to talk about other things. Leave my stories and your stories, let's eat something together. 

" Of division, of longing.

Want to know, and let me know.

Twitter is not a stage, it is one big party.

There is an atmosphere of togetherness, as if you are passing by with your drink and encountering people.

I have an option to talk to people who will know me and that I will get to know them.

From my place here, at the Gilad Farm, I could hardly do it. 

"Years have taught us that the political debate is the main thing, and suddenly in the networks we find conversations about mothers, children, food. Not just Balfourists and Bibists, right and left. There are other things. But I am on the extreme side of opinions and the map, I am at Gilad Farm, all "The people around me think like me. It's simple for you, you have friends of all kinds, but when you sit in the hills it looks different." 

And now, when you discover the world outside the farm, if your child tells you, for example, "I'm a leftist," will anything in you change? 

"There is a significant difference between my home and the home of others. I admit I never understood these stupid struggles. Not against 'the Jews are coming' and not against the Pride Parades. I do not understand these arguments, I do not understand what you care what everyone does at home His?

"For example, on the issue of same-sex marriage.

If for me this is not a wedding like the religion of Moses and Israel, what do I care what they do?

I have a house with six children and I am the only parent, how is my house more complete than a house with two parents, between a question father and mother and a question father and father?

The child gets two parental figures who believe in him, who raise him. "

"" I say this from time immemorial, but I will not get into this struggle.

This is my perception, but I understand the claims about family and normalization.

Still, if a person chooses to live his life in some way, who am I to bring him into life?

To be successful in moving forward to the next discourse, I do not have to dwell on irrelevant things.

Just as I demand that others not interfere in my life, so I will not interfere in the lives of others. "

" I do not want to be known, but to break glass ceilings.

That's my goal.

I do not want to be Miriam Peretz, but I want meaningful connections to be made between me and people.

Someone told me that the first Lake is being done to me because I am a terrorist widow, but then it's already because of me.

If this is my way of getting to know the world - turn around. "

" Do not wave in front of a bereaved family.

Do not shout 'shame', do not say horrible things said there, nothing.

It is possible to demonstrate in front of the Prime Minister's House, which is a public figure, but they do not say 'June is ashamed of you'.

It's out of bounds.

The only one who is allowed to use the dead is the one whose dead is.

That should be an iron rule. "

When she remembers the night of the murder,

a great sadness descends in her eyes, but there are no tears in them.

"That evening we were supposed to have a Torah lesson, so I called Raziel to find out where he was, and if he was enough to arrive before the people came and I could stay in my pajamas, or he was late and I had to get dressed to get them. 

" He answers me and says, 'I love You, I was shot, I'm at the entrance to Gilad Farm, 'wounded.'

I probably called right a tenth of a second after the shooting because he answered me quickly, there was almost no dial tone.

He probably already had the phone in hand, to call for help. 

"I got up, went to the room and said to him, 'What did you say? Repeat that?'

He repeated things, and I said 'good bye' and started operating the event. I called MDA, sent a message to the community group, and people immediately went out to it.

Reached him within four minutes.

"Raziel was a senior medic and was a member of a WhatsApp group of medical personnel in Samaria, so he also sent a voice message there in which he said: 'Friends, I was shot, I am wounded near Havat Gilad.' 

" In that situation I did not understand how serious the situation was.

I thought he was shot in the leg or something, he did not sound like someone about to die.

Not that I know what a dying person sounds like, but he sounds fine.

Anyone who has heard the recording he sent to the group of paramedics claims that they hear that he has a healthy hole, because he is panting.

It's a shocking recording that has reached the media, a cry of outcry and conspicuous distress.

It's painful, something hard to hear.

I'm still trying to get her off the network. 

"The worse thing is that someone from this group passed the recording to the media. The shooting was at eight in the evening, and already between eight and a quarter and eight-thirty someone uploaded the recording in a flash on the radio, and that's how his parents heard there was an attack. That's how they heard what happened to their son. And it makes me angry.

"I do not know who passed the recording, and I do not want to know.

I guess he knows I'm angry, and he's probably sorry.

I forgave him already.

In the heart. "

When Yael spoke

to her husband in their last conversation, their young children were asleep.

The big girls understood what was going on.

"For a long time I thought the conversation was about a speaker and that's how they heard it, but I talked about it with Renna, and she said it was not about a speaker. What they did hear was my computer falling, because when I called him and heard what he said, I got up from the couch and the computer fell on me . 

"they realized that something had happened to father, but they did not understand the situation, did not realize it was a terrorist incident.

They left the room and came to me in a panic, thinking that something was happening in the community, that they might be in danger.

I calmed them down, radiated calm.

I said, 'Pray, forces will come to take care of Dad, and everything will be fine.'

"I said to myself, Raziel will come to the hospital, he will be treated, and that's it, it's going to be fine. But then a friend of his, who is a senior medic, came to our house and asked me to go with him in an ambulance to the hospital. I did not want to, but he insisted. They will stay with the children, only I will take Banyahu, because he is still breastfeeding. I agreed.

"On the way to the hospital I still felt that everything was fine.

I even managed to stop at the scene of the attack to take his tefillin, so that the next morning he could pray in the morning.

I met people there who were with him in the last moments, and they did not give me a feeling that he was going to die.

They said he was completely clean, did not see any shots, one said he spoke to him, that Raziel helped to extricate himself from the vehicle.

"When I got to the hospital, Raziel was already lifeless. Everyone around started crying, falling and breaking down, I started running. I tried to run out of the hospital, get out, run away. The mind said, run, go home, you have nothing to do here. Something wrong It can be explained, a woman runs away from the news.

"In retrospect, it turned out that the vehicle snatched 75 bullets.

The terrorists drove behind him, overtook him, and already at the beginning of the detour began firing.

Before he realized there was a shooting, he had already been abducted.

Eight bullets hit him - in the neck, health.

We know they stopped and tried to confirm the killing. "

She takes a deep breath and pauses for a few seconds." I say it with such composure, telling you a plastic description, but inside I'm hard, my heart is pounding like crazy.

I've said it so many times, that something in my mind only goes into technical details. "

" I miss details that drive me crazy.

What did he do until I called?

What did he feel?

Did he know he was going to die?

He was scared?

What song did he hear in the background?

For me, all the worst things happened in those moments.

Lots of things, which I have no way of completing.

"I try to get in his shoes for a few moments, and I have a lot of thoughts about alternative options for what happened. What would happen if we were in the car with him? Could I help? What would happen if I went out to him as soon as he answered the phone? All sorts of things like that. Places where 'time does not do its thing', and sometimes I sink into them. "

"I drove from the hospital to my parents in Kfar Saba, I preferred that in the meantime the children would make my way in my direction. I was offered a psychologist to come and talk to them, but I did not want it to be someone outside they did not know. I sent my sister-in-law, who went with the teacher. . 

"The children were crying, and mostly asked questions.

Then they brought me to my parents' house, and there I told them again, because there are words that need to be emphasized, like 'Shoot Dad, he died, he will not return'.

A child needs to understand that Dad will not come back.

"They asked questions - did it hurt him, where is his body now? A lot of questions of grasping reality: 'What do we do now? Shall we go to school?'

Children are trying to hold on to existing anchors. " 

The new book,

she says, she started writing on the night of the murder.

"At 2 o'clock at night, after everyone had left, even before the funeral scheduled for the morning, I sat down and wrote a song that became the first part of my book. 

"" Just before the funeral I had the token that we would be a different family.

I gathered the whole family, including Raziel's mother (his father has already gone to the funeral), my children and my parents, and I told them, 'We will not be a family that falls, we will be a family that lifts.' 

"I did not plan it in advance, and it was not some fiery speech. I remember saying things to them, but also to myself. I said I wanted to look different from what widows look like. I do not want to be in the falling place, and I will use all the scaffolding I have to keep On this building stands. I will show everyone that we can. A widow does not have to just be sad. A widow is not necessarily lonely, poor, miserable and supported.

"I think my aspiration to be strong was given a boost after the decision to bury Raziel here, at Havat Gilad.

Once I gave meaning to the loss, something opened up.

I did not let the pain pass to me, but took it with both hands and managed it.

I felt I could dismantle the wall and start moving forward.

"In the moments after such a loss you only think how not to die, there is nothing beyond. And burying him here is part of 'not dying.' There is just such a thing. There was no cemetery here. I mean, the meaning was to establish a cemetery, which is something with eternal meaning, the settlement of the Land of Israel.

"But it did not end there.

Even before the burial, I went up to the grave section to see what it looked like, and I remember myself standing there and receiving a message that the then Minister of Defense, Lieberman, had decided to examine the arrangement of the Gilad Farm.

I went down towards the house and told myself that it was a good reason to keep going, to move forward, to be on my feet.

But it's still not enough, I need something more to be here and now.

I sent a message to my brother-in-law, who is a scribe, and I told him that I wanted the Knesset to bring a Torah scroll to Havat Gilad at the memorial service on the 30th. "

"No. Every time they told me they knew where they were, I said, 'Call after they die.' They have no value in my eyes, and I did not seek revenge on my husband. They are subhuman to me, they and their senders. It did me no harm.

"What is it?

The announcement of the settlement of the Gilad farm as a Jewish settlement, three weeks after the murder.

Raziel's burial is here.

Knesset Sefer Torah.

Babies named after him.

These are the important things.

In the image of my life.

"In general, of all my degrees, 'widow', etc., 'Woman of the Land of Israel' is my war on the Gilad farm. To apply sovereignty here, to grow, to develop the settlement Lightning is not happy and takes pictures, but bites nails so that the electricity is not damaged and falls. " 

One of her most difficult moments was before the funeral, during the visit of Naftali Bennett, the then Minister of Education.

"Before he came, they started concentrating on friendships and family. I had a kind of cry, but I didn't fall apart. When he came in, he sat down next to me, and I started screaming at him while crying, I really fell apart on him. I told him who Raziel was, what an educational figure he was. "I was, and I told him, 'What a loss of yours, a loss of an amazing educator.' Poor thing, it's not his fault, I fell for him. I do not know why, but this is a moment I will not forget."

In consultation with the psychologist, she decided to invite Renna and Naomi to come to the funeral.

"At first they said yes, but when they saw all the fuss, they preferred to stay home. In general, there was a great kindness here that the children did not experience trauma. They did not see their father injured and did not hear him moan in pain. I once asked Naomi what she remembers from that night, And she replied, 'Mom said Dad was injured, and then the whole house was filled with people.' The trauma is that the house is filled with people, it scared them.

"In the moments of Raziel's burial, I was no longer completely clear.

I remember myself there, but I do not remember the experience. " 

" There is the night after the shiva days end, where there is no 'limbo'.

Suddenly there is silence in the house.

It took me a long time to get back to sleep.

In the first month I slept maybe 30 hours in total.

I did not fall asleep, I had a strong post-traumatic stress disorder, and I developed sleep paralysis - where you sleep, but your mind is awake.

It would happen until some horror dream came along, like some kind of monster, and I would wake up.

And that's it, the night is over.

I would go do laundry, turn around, write the things that have now become a book. "

" I received precise psychological guidance all the way, so that the children would be harmed as little as possible.

They grow up in a home without a father and in the shadow of bereavement and terror, it's a piece of scratch.

"Ovadia was only 3 and a half years old when the murder happened. Today he is 6 years old, and he already understands everything. He looks at the clouds and says, 'Look, it's like Daddy.' When he sees pictures of people, he says 'It's like Daddy,' or he "I dreamed of Dad." He has a burning ember about his father. It does not run him, he lives his normal life, but suddenly it can catch him.

"Benyahu was ten months old when Raziel was murdered, today he is 3. But he Can suddenly tell me, 'Mom, I miss Dad.'

He did not miss Dad, but apparently heard a friend say something like that, and tried to say it with his lips and understand what it meant.

The word 'dad' catches him, he is intrigued by it. 

"When I tell about Raziel, he turns on, wakes up, listens. Wants to know where he was at the time of the incident I am telling about. If I show pictures he is not in, he wants to know where he was at the time. It is important to him that this father be his. There is. "He also has amazing answers for other children. One child said to him, 'You have no father,' so Benyahu replied, 'Not true, I have a father, he is in heaven.'"

For older girls, the situation is different.

"Renee is starting to go through adolescence and does not share anything with me," says Yael, "but I do know that she is angry. She is angry with God, and she is not happy that she is angry with him because she has a conscience.

Naomi, Miriam and Malka mostly cuddle up to the memories and run pictures.

They have a connection to Raziel.

I do not know where the pain is within it, but I will not toll it.

He will float when he floats. " 

Raziel is present at home.

This is evident in the pictures on the walls.

"He is also present in his essence," says Yael, "and I follow his educational doctrine, one by one, in his own way. It's something I pass on to children - Dad's way. We sing the Shabbat songs that Dad loved, have Rosh Chodesh meals.

" To say of a 32-year-old man who left a legacy, but he certainly left a legacy, and that is to live the Torah.

All you do is for heaven's sake.

Work the name when you get up in the morning, and work the name when you go to bed.

Even when the girls go to action in Bnei Akiva, I tell them, 'Think about how you perform the worship of God.' 

"Besides, I talk about him a lot. I tell girls, 'Do you remember Dad would say ...' When you ride in a car, play songs he liked. I was with the kids at a B&B in Meron, we sat and reminisced about him. It's important for me to keep him, but not just as a memory. "It hurts. I try to give the pain a status and a place, and he is invited whenever he wants, but he does not take over. Dad is not an issue that is avoided from being talked about, and if sadness has arisen, it's okay."

"At first it was a difficult question. I would get up on Sunday and get anxious from Saturday. Start looking for where to be, or who would come to us. At first we invited family, friends. There are also three yeshiva students, Raziel students, who have adopted our house and do Shabbat with us. They The children's big brothers in everything related to the spiritual envelope, and they are my second educational hand here, it's a great favor.

"There was also Oshi, a girl who lived here next to us and started helping us as an 'Social Security' and became part of the family.

And we have a lot of help from the family and the community.

Communality is insane resilience. 

"By and large, we are already an ordinary family for everything. I do kiddush, I invite soldiers to meals, we sing songs. An ordinary family."

”Yes, and I am allowed to be angry.

It's part of me.

Once or twice a day I get angry, and in Corona it happens even more because harder.

Why do I have to deal with this thing alone?

I did not choose it.

Divorced people sometimes have feelings of guilt, what could I have done differently, maybe I made the wrong choice.

I do not have that guilt.

I did nothing wrong.

A reality landed on me that I did not choose in any way.

I go back and try to think what I did wrong, and nothing.

Maybe I married the wrong person?

Maybe I lived in the wrong place?

Nothing makes me feel guilty. "

" You know what?

Can be.

That's the only thing I can say 'maybe', and take on.

But hello, that's not a good reason.

What's more, Raziel was not murdered at Havat Gilad, he was murdered on the way.

It could have happened anywhere.

There were also terrorist attacks in Tel Aviv.

The person who murdered him was looking for the classic Jewish identity, beard and wigs.

"Every person goes down to the world with a page that says what is destined for him. Here comes the anger. You are a merciful and nerdy god, is that the only way you found to make Gilad Farm a seller? Is that the only way ?! You turn worlds, resurrection, so it ?! ! 

"A lot of times I do not understand why I do.

Even if I chose it and signed it before the soul descended into the world, why did you offer me this contract?

Why should such a thing happen, and why now?

Why not in ten years? 

"In the end, even though I did not choose it, if that is how God manages his world and that is the face price, with all the pain and sorrow, I have nothing but to accept it.

To be clear, it's not worth the price, but I'm not the leader of the world, and I do not know what's going on in his cabinet. " 

" Along with the questions.

I do not strive to get answers to these questions, I ask them with a lot of faith.

The real heroes are the ones who do not believe.

I remove the handkerchief from them.

How do you do that?

I accept the criticism, and do not apologize for this belief and also for this blindness.

He's saving me. "

" Sure.

I do not know how it will happen, but I believe that one day he will return.

This is not a work plan, this is an innocent belief. "

On social media,

she is often asked about the sequel, and more directly - will she remarry, and when?

"I pray that the name will send me the will, if that is what is right. But not right now. I understand why people are interested in it, they are trying to find a broken reality and fix it. The broken reality is a woman who has lost her husband. How to fix? Wish her to find her husband. "He who cares for me does not ask such questions, he thinks what is right for me.

A lot of people send me wishes that I would remarry, that my next project would be a wedding, building a house.

But I have to want it, and right now I do not want to.

I do want to believe that someday I will love, but I do not yet feel free to do so.

I still live what was, and do not know what will be in the future.

What I have is now.

As if there would be no trouble after I remarry. "

After the last sentence, she bursts out laughing, returning for a moment to the cynicism that characterizes her on social media." There was someone, I do not even know who, who came to me before the funeral, hugged me and said: "I think in time You have to remember me, because I have someone to offer you, "she laughs. 

" There was someone after the birth who called her baby Menachem.

I said to her: 'Wow, what an amazing name, that we will receive great comfort,' and she said: 'May you also have another year to embrace a child who will be called Menachem.'

It's the funniest thing in the world, the tactlessness I allow myself to tell, because sometimes each of us is a little tactless in a particular situation. 

"There was someone who did not know me or Raziel, who came and told me: 'I dreamed of Raziel, and he asked me to comfort you and tell you that it was not your biggest pairing, and a bigger pairing will come.' In my life, people with zero self-awareness. 

" Second, I tell myself that people are poor, they are looking for what to say, how to comfort, and when they do not know exactly how, they get creepy things.

Someone came to my daughter at seven and said to her: 'Do not cry, this is a reward for what happened to you.

For one day you will have a Father in heaven and a Father in the earth.

My daughter started crying, she was 10.

"There are also those who wish you to recover. When I lecture, there is always someone who asks 'How do you recover?'

"I do not understand what is not restored in me. I am completely restored."

"I have a horizon in life. I know what I want to be when I grow up: an influential figure when it comes to settling in the Land of Israel and influencing public opinion. Not politics. I do not want to be called a 'survivor'. I am peaceful and whole with who I am, with my crises. The word recovering means 'injured animal' whose wound should disappear, but this is not true.

"There is a sentence a friend told me and I adopted: When a person loses a loved one, he feels the need to live twice, once for himself and once for someone who has been lost. I want people to come out of the experience with me feeling great in life. There are great energies for life, nothing is limited. That one can flourish, and not have to wait for someone to die to do it. 

"On the cover of my book there is a cup with a broken piece.

It is an image taken from the world of Japanese imagery, called 'Kintsugi'.

Take a broken pottery vessel, and reassemble the pieces using gold.

That is, even if they stick the piece back, the crack will always remain, there will be a scar in the cup.

"This pussy is who I am. An injured animal, but with a gold-colored scar. The fracture is a fracture, and it's part of me and I do not want to part with it, because it is also my rehabilitation. I intend to continue to adorn my scar."

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