With Chabad of Rome: A Shabbat of Healing for Israel’s Survivors of Terror

JERUSALEM, Israel — Dolphinarium, Sbarro’s, Jerusalem Bus 2 . . . To Israelis, these are euphemisms for terrorist attacks; to survivors, they represent the demarcation that tragically reframed their lives into a before-and-after.

Thankfully, there have been less of these now, and while the country bravely marches on, the struggle continues for the children who’ve lost parents, and for the parents who’ve lost children.

Indeed, long after the last of the debris was collected, long after the sites of the attacks have been restored and the routine is back to normal, the victims of terror continue to suffer in every way imaginable. The physical handicaps, the grief over lost loved ones, the shattered families and irreparable losses—are, at least for the survivors, sometimes too catastrophic to articulate.

So they don’t. They keep it in and try to move on.

But it takes one broken heart to know another, and who better to understand and empathize than fellow survivors? The comfort they may offer one another in their shared grief and loss can be invaluable.

That was the idea behind a recent Shabbat (November 16-18) for Israel’s terror victims, sponsored by the Jewish community of Rome, Italy, which worked with Israel’s Chabad Terror Victims Project.

Organized jointly by Chabad brothers Rabbis Yitzchak and Avraham Chazan, respective Chabad community leaders in Rome, Italy and Lod, Israel, the Shabbaton brought hundreds of terror survivors to spend a healing Shabbat in Jerusalem, at the Jerusalem Gold Hotel.

Little children, parents and grandparents—all survivors of one or another terrorist suicide bomber, shared an inspired Shabbat surrounded by the solidarity they found with their fellow survivors.

Article continued (Lubavitch.com)