Thousands participated in the funeral of Sgt. Raz Mintz, 19, of Kiryat Motzkin, in his hometown this afternoon. He was killed in an attack on the military checkpoint he was manning north of Ramallah, outside Beit El, late Friday afternoon.
Guy Mintz, the deceased\'s brother, spoke with Arutz-7 today, beginning the conversation with, \"Am Yisrael Chai [the People of Israel lives].\" Guy, a recent returnee to observant Judaism who lives in Givat HaTe\'enah in Efrat, said that he had just returned from delivering a Sabbath night talk to the \"holy youth\" of the Ezra youth movement in Efrat when he found four army officials waiting to tell him the news. \"Look,\" he said, \"we are people of faith. Bullets - five of them from short range [in this case] - can kill the body, but they can\'t kill the soul. The soul still remains here, and in this sense my brother is still with us, and I can speak with him... In his 19 years and 7 months here, he was a perfect living example of a world of values that he reflected to all around him... My brother was a symbol of someone who didn\'t wear a yarmulke, but who certainly kept the commandments.\"
Guy said that during his talk that evening, which took place without his knowledge after his brother\'s death, he spent much time talking about him:
\"I was talking about how I came to be in Efrat, and he played a major role in that aspect. What happened was that I came to Efrat because my wife, whom I met in South America, decided that she wanted to convert to Judaism. This we did in Efrat, and when we got married [according to Jewish law], Raz came, and just captured everyone with his humor and general way. When he put on a kippah [yarmulke], everyone thought he was a yeshiva student, because they didn\'t realize that my family wasn\'t exactly observant... In any event, they remembered him from the wedding, and wanted to know all about him, and so I spent about a half-hour speaking about Raz. He was a person who checked himself all the time, to see if his values are correct...
\"He was one of five youngsters who were chosen to represent [a left-wing group] in the United States, and when he came back, he said, \'I checked myself, and I see that my views are not exactly like those of the movement;\' in the last elections, he already voted for the National Union party; he, too, was undergoing some sort of process. Following my return to Judaism - G-d took me all the way to Colombia so that I could discover the treasure that I had under my own pillow at home, using the angel to whom I have the privilege of being married as His emissary - most of my family did not quite appreciate my transformation. But Raz, and one of my other brothers named Ohr [light; Raz means \'treasure\' or \'secret\'], were simply thrilled with it, and used to spend Friday afternoons in my house, where we would talk about Torah, the weekly Torah portion, and the beauty of Judaism...\"
Arutz-7\'s Ariel Kahane interjected, \"Raz will not complete this process in this world...\" Guy responded, \"I have learned that G-d takes a person\'s soul when he completes his mission in this world. So... I will still have to ask G-d why He took Raz from me when I still had so much to learn from him, even though he is eight and a half years younger than me, but now that I think about it, I realize that he left a great legacy to our family, and we will concentrate on this... May G-d avenge his blood, and Am Yisrael Chai forever - no one will break us.\"
Guy Mintz, the deceased\'s brother, spoke with Arutz-7 today, beginning the conversation with, \"Am Yisrael Chai [the People of Israel lives].\" Guy, a recent returnee to observant Judaism who lives in Givat HaTe\'enah in Efrat, said that he had just returned from delivering a Sabbath night talk to the \"holy youth\" of the Ezra youth movement in Efrat when he found four army officials waiting to tell him the news. \"Look,\" he said, \"we are people of faith. Bullets - five of them from short range [in this case] - can kill the body, but they can\'t kill the soul. The soul still remains here, and in this sense my brother is still with us, and I can speak with him... In his 19 years and 7 months here, he was a perfect living example of a world of values that he reflected to all around him... My brother was a symbol of someone who didn\'t wear a yarmulke, but who certainly kept the commandments.\"
Guy said that during his talk that evening, which took place without his knowledge after his brother\'s death, he spent much time talking about him:
\"I was talking about how I came to be in Efrat, and he played a major role in that aspect. What happened was that I came to Efrat because my wife, whom I met in South America, decided that she wanted to convert to Judaism. This we did in Efrat, and when we got married [according to Jewish law], Raz came, and just captured everyone with his humor and general way. When he put on a kippah [yarmulke], everyone thought he was a yeshiva student, because they didn\'t realize that my family wasn\'t exactly observant... In any event, they remembered him from the wedding, and wanted to know all about him, and so I spent about a half-hour speaking about Raz. He was a person who checked himself all the time, to see if his values are correct...
\"He was one of five youngsters who were chosen to represent [a left-wing group] in the United States, and when he came back, he said, \'I checked myself, and I see that my views are not exactly like those of the movement;\' in the last elections, he already voted for the National Union party; he, too, was undergoing some sort of process. Following my return to Judaism - G-d took me all the way to Colombia so that I could discover the treasure that I had under my own pillow at home, using the angel to whom I have the privilege of being married as His emissary - most of my family did not quite appreciate my transformation. But Raz, and one of my other brothers named Ohr [light; Raz means \'treasure\' or \'secret\'], were simply thrilled with it, and used to spend Friday afternoons in my house, where we would talk about Torah, the weekly Torah portion, and the beauty of Judaism...\"
Arutz-7\'s Ariel Kahane interjected, \"Raz will not complete this process in this world...\" Guy responded, \"I have learned that G-d takes a person\'s soul when he completes his mission in this world. So... I will still have to ask G-d why He took Raz from me when I still had so much to learn from him, even though he is eight and a half years younger than me, but now that I think about it, I realize that he left a great legacy to our family, and we will concentrate on this... May G-d avenge his blood, and Am Yisrael Chai forever - no one will break us.\"