Nearly two years after his wife and two daughters were killed in a Palestinian shooting attack in the Jordan Valley, Rabbi Leo Dee remarried Sunday in Jerusalem.
Dee’s first wife, Lucy, 48, and daughters Rina, 15, and Maia, 20, were killed on April 7, 2023, when gunmen opened fire at their car near the Hamra Junction. The attack left Dee and his surviving children to rebuild their lives in the shadow of tragedy.
(Video: Avraham Ovadia)
On Sunday, Dee, a British-born rabbi from the West Bank settlement of Efrat, wed Aliza Teplicky of Jerusalem. The two met about five months ago and became engaged in June.
“I’m very excited about my wedding day. I’m going to marry my beloved Aliza. I’m excited to start our life together,” Dee told Israel’s Ynet news site.
He began the morning of his wedding with a visit to the Temple Mount, where he put on tefillin, Jewish phylacteries. Police removed him from the site and barred him from returning for a week, saying the ban could be extended for up to six months. Dee said he was not troubled by the move, adding that he does not usually visit the contested holy site and went only to mark his wedding day.
The wedding ceremony was set to begin in reverse order, with the traditional breaking of the glass taking place first to symbolize the painful past. “My wife and daughters will be with me in great joy, I’m certain,” Dee said. “After breaking the glass, we will enter a state of joy and expectation for the future.”
Dee said the memory of his murdered family continues to guide him, but he is determined to live positively. “I believe you can’t stand still in life. If you remain alive, you must always move forward,” he said.
In a message to other bereaved families in Israel, he added: “It is always possible to find joy. The sadness over what happened will never leave, but you can still be happy about the future. In life, you can choose to look backward or forward. Whenever I look back, it makes me sad. But when I look forward, it makes me happy.”