It was business as usual at the Kehilat Bnei Torah synagogue in Jerusalem on Wednesday morning following the devastating Palestinian terror attack that claimed the life of four rabbis and a Druze policeman the previous day. The morning Shacharit prayer services were full of worshipers and men studying Torah, as security guards and border police milled around the area.
But even with the cloud of sadness that descended on Jerusalem’s Har Nof neighborhood as the community mourned the gruesome murders and the bloodied synagogue, there was a spark of happiness felt – in the synagogue itself.
Shula and Dov Sorotzkin, Haredi residents of Har Nof, decided to hold the brit mila (ritual circumcision) of their son, Eliyahu Meir, at the synagogue, where the attack took place 24 hours earlier.
“We woke up yesterday to the sounds of gunfire,” Dov Sorotzkin told Tazpit News Agency. The couple, who live right next to the synagogue, decided that despite the bloody attack, their synagogue was the best place to perform the brit mila of their newborn son.
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Dov and Shula Sorotzkin brit mila circumcision of son at Bnei Torah synagogue
(Photo: Anav Silverman, Tazpit News Agency)
Dov and Shula Sorotzkin with their newborn son Eliyahu Meir (Photo: Anav Silverman, Tazpit News Agency)
“We chose to do the brit here today because of the symbolism that this place holds, especially in light of this important religious ceremony for our people. The brit mila is about the covenant and connection between God and the Jewish people,” Sorotzkin told Tazpit.
“The rabbis who were here yesterday were killed in the middle of a conversation with God, but we are here today, continuing that connection,” said Sorotzkin.
Dov, the youngest in a family of nine children, decided to name his son Eliyahu Meir after his great-grandfather Rabbi Eliyahu Meir Bloch who fled Lithuania after his famous Telshe Yeshiva, founded in 1875, was destroyed in the Holocaust. The yeshiva was re-established near Cleveland, Ohio after many of the students and faculty members had fled Lithuania.
For Sorotzkin’s father, Yosef, the brit mila of his grandson is a sign of faith. “We are doing what the Jewish people have done throughout history; every time there has been death and destruction, we keep moving and creating,” he told Tazpit.