Sara Zimbalist, mother of Eli Moshe (Eli Mo), who was killed nearly two months ago in Gaza, spoke to Arutz Sheva – Israel National News about her son, who was always smiling, connected to Torah, and had a special relationship with anyone he met.
Sara Zimbalist relates the events of the Shabbat morning, “They were doing an attack. He was in a combat engineering course. They were in Rafah and a terrorist shot something at their tank, and there was an explosion. All eight boys were killed.”
Zimbalist says she believes that, “the boys are fighting a Mitzvah war. This is something that they're doing for all of us, for all of Am Israel, so that we can live here in peace and raise our kids in peace. Eli Moshe was very connected to Eretz Israel and Torat Israel, and he was doing his part with a whole heart. He didn't think it would end this way. He was very positive the whole time, saying, ‘don't worry about me.’ So, we tried not to worry about him, but Hashem has a plan. I don't know Hashem's plan. We're a tiny little piece of Hashem's plan, but we're the eternal nation. We're here in our land. We're eternal!”
Zimbalist says that, “Eli Moshe didn't want us to worry. I guess he had a lot of faith. We have faith, thank God, because it allows me to wake up every day, get up, get out of bed, take care of myself, take care of my family. We have a lot of blessing in our life, and we have to keep going. That's what he would want, so we try our best.”
Eli Moshe’s family made Aliyah from the US when he was two years old, and his mother admits, “We wouldn’t change anything. We wanted to live here. We wanted to raise our children here. We had the honor to raise Eli Moshe for almost 19 years here, Baruch Hashem, and he made us proud, like our other children, always made us proud, not just with his death. He was a very good kid, very loving, very capable, very talented. This is where we wanted to be, this is our home and nobody would want to be anywhere else, so no matter what, we're part of Hashem's plan. We don't know, but it’s what God wanted. Eli Moshe was supposed to die on the ninth of Sivan, period. He happened to die during a war in Gaza, but his time was up. He finished his job, whatever that is. Hashem wanted him back and we accept that.”
Zimbalist continues, saying that Eli Moshe was a “family guy, friendly, he was a ‘hevreman’ [everybody’s friend]. He had a lot of good friends. He was a good friend to his friends. He cared about them. He helped everyone. He enjoyed giving, he was a giver. He had a golden heart, he had golden hands. He could fix almost anything. I would give him my laundry clips that would fall apart and in two seconds he would fix them. I have no idea how. He said it was easy. I never learned how ‘not easy’ for me was so simple for him. He just had a way with people, old people, young people, he could connect to anyone and everyone. He was truly interested in people. He really cared about people and people that don't always get all the recognition. He was very much connected to those people. He had a lot of gratitude to people making food in the kitchen. He had gratitude to the bus driver, who came to pay a shiva call, because he said, ‘look how many boys come on my bus every day, every week, but I knew your son, because he took the time to speak to me and we connected.’ It's not typical, and he was only 21 years old to make such connections with people. It's really amazing.”
Zimbalist concludes, saying that, “Eli Moshe loved the shul. The shul was like a second home to him. He built some of the furniture, the bookcases. Eli Moshe was very much at home in our shul, so we thought that a really nice way to commemorate his memory and his love for the shul was to dedicate the new Beit Midrash in his memory. We think it's very fitting for him, because he loved Torah. Eli Moshe was walking around Gaza with a Gemara, he was learning Daf Yomi [the daily portion] in Gaza. He had this connection to Torah and mitzvot. He would call his Rabbis from Gaza with questions, questions that were important to him. It didn't just stay behind in the Yeshiva. It was part of his life wherever he went.”