On the eve of Simchat Torah, an unusual funeral took place at the Yarkon Cemetery in the central Israeli city of Petah Tikva.
Hannah Regev, 91, and her husband David, 93, were laid to rest on the same day, after spending together more than seven decades and passing away within hours of each other.
"Our parents shared a wonderful love - years of mutual understanding and respect," said the couple's daughter Orna Shoval Regev.
"They were always in sync, too. My father could get up in the middle of the night and my mother would immediately wake up too."
Their synchronized love lasted until their very last moments on this earth. "My father went to the mall with his caregiver. At 11:00am, my mother was already very ill and was taking her last breaths at home. At the exact same time, my father began to feel very sick, and asked to go home, where we had to break to him the bad news.
"He put his hands on his head and screamed 'I wanted to go before her.'"
"From that moment on, he kept yelling and was in a lot of pain. We took him to the hospital, where he passed away - less than 12 hours after my mother. He died of heartbreak," Orna said.
For Orna and her brother Dori, it was a double tragedy, since they lost both their parents in one day. "It's terribly sad," said Orna."But having seen I saw my father's pain in his final hours, when his beautiful eyes closed, I realized he found peace.
"There's comfort in them dying together. They talked about it. I was also afraid of the distress of any of them would have had to deal with if only one of them died," Dori added.
The story of the Regev couple is a classic Israeli love story.
David is a native of Tel Aviv, a former member of the elite fighting force Palmach, who later continued to serve in the Israeli Air Force. Hannah, on the other hand, was born in Poland and made Aliyah to Israel at the age of three. She studied at the gymnasium in Herzliya and continued her studies at a nursing school in Haifa.
They met in the midst of the War of Independence, after both of them had been enlisted. They were inseparable since.
They were married in Hannah's parents' backyard in a modest ceremony. They lived in Tel Aviv until 1967, and moved to Givatayim, where they lived until their last day.