Gai Herdof and his wife Tama, the sister of fallen soldier Amitai Zvi Granot, Hy"d celebrated the brit (circumcision) of their son today and named him Tzur Shalom.
Amitai was the commander of a team in the IDF’s 75th ‘Storm from the Golan’ battalion, and the son of Rabbi Tamir Granot, Dean (Rosh Yeshiva) of Yeshivat Orot Shaul in Tel Aviv. He was killed in action on the Lebanon border approximately a week after the war broke out by an antitank missile fired by Hezbollah.
A statement from Yeshivat Orot Shaul declared: “Despite the enormous pain and the empty space that Amitai left behind, the family has merited to fulfill the words of the Jerusalemite Talmud: ‘Rabbi Eliezer says, 'if a son is born to the family, the entire family is healed.'’”
Rabbi Granot, who works extensively to promote unity in the nation and has done so with renewed vigor since his son was killed, spoke at Amitai’s funeral and called for great unity and expressed his confidence that it was possible. “Darkness hovers over the depths, but there will be a recovery, and there will be light,” he stated, paraphrasing Genesis 1:2-3.
Avivit, Amitai’s mother, likewise made a heartfelt cry to love and mend the gaps in the nation, and to once again see the good in each other.