Hundreds of people gathered on Thursday for a special ceremony, during which a Torah scroll was placed in a school in the community of Givat Ze’ev, northwest of Jerusalem. The Torah scroll was donated in memory of brothers Uriel and Eliraz Peretz, both of whom had died while serving the country as soldiers in the IDF.


Major Eliraz Peretz was killed last March after his unit crossed the border into Gaza in pursuit of a gang of terrorists who were planting explosives along the border, in an effort to ambush IDF patrols. The terrorists got close to the soldiers and were able to shoot at them from close range.

Uriel Peretz was killed in Lebanon in late 1998. He was commanding an infantry force which came upon several roadside bombs placed by Hizbullah terrorists just over the border and two miles from Kiryat Shemonah.

The school to which the Torah scroll was donated is the TALI School in Givat Ze’ev where Uriel and Eliraz’s mother, Miriam Peretz, served as principal for 22 years. During the procession, Miriam Peretz excitedly told Arutz Sheva about both the joy as well as the sadness she was feeling during this special ceremony.

“The best way to commemorate my sons' memories is through the Torah scroll,” she said. “It is the source from which they derived power and belief in righteousness. It is the source from which they acquired their love for the Land of Israel and for our right to this land. The Torah is the light by which they lived and there is no greater way to remember them than placing the Torah into the school.”

Peretz added that “The goal is that the children of Israel know and recognize that our nation is rooted in the Torah.”