In a special interview with Israel National News, bereaved father and husband Rabbi Leo Dee, who lost his wife and two daughters in the recent terrorist attack in the Jordan Valley, says that the enormous tragedy of what occurred hasn’t sunk in yet.

“After Yom Haatzmaut [Independence Day on Wednesday], then it will start hitting us,” he says, explaining that with all the media crews coming around and all the love expressed to them by the Israeli public, they haven’t had time to personally mourn.

Speaking of his feelings towards Israel’s Memorial Day [Yom Hazikaron on Tuesday], he says:“It’s a shock to us, obviously, and life changes overnight.”

He adds that he’s been asked to read the Yizkor prayer (memorial prayer) at the Yom Hazikaron ceremony.

“It’s a great honor but I said to them I’m reading the prayer for soldiers who fell in battle as well, and there’s a big difference between them and me because they chose to fight for the state and risk their lives so they’re much greater than I am,” he says. “I think my grief on this day is no difference than my grief on the day before or the day after.”

After calling for Jewish unity and Israeli pride throughout the days of mourning, Dee says that he plans to continue his important mission by encouraging Israelis and Jews to remember that they are one people.

“Unfortunately, one way to [remind us of our unity] is when there’s a tremendous tragedy like the one we’ve had,” Rabbi Dee says. “But I’m wondering if there are other ways to achieve that and we’ll be thinking about other ways to bring Jews together and realize that we are one people.”

Touching upon how to achieve unity when the sides seem so far apart in their differences, such as with judicial reform, he comments that he believes the differences in the case of judicial reform are much smaller than it may appear.

“There's a very good video of Alan Dershowitz, who's actually against the reforms, where he says that as an expert that the difference between him and the pro-reform [side] is 20 percent, maybe less, and frankly even if the reformers went through it would put Israel on par with Canada, New Zealand and most of Europe. We're really not talking about a great rift between the Jewish people. We're talking about people who obviously have a lot of time with their hands to go out to in the streets with flags, in which case I think it would be valuable if they were to go out to the streets and could pray for something much more valuable than judicial reform.”

With politicians taking part in memorial events, and given the possibility that events will be disrupted by protesters, he is calling for ceremonies not to become politicized.

“I think it's very sad that we've come to this point but I guess it's up to the politicians to make sure that this does not become politicized, and to respect the fact that bereaved families just want to mourn with the whole nation.”

He explains that he is not sure how someone in his situation can rise from such a tragedy but the process involves slowly rebuilding their lives.

“We're in the process. We have to rebuild our lives and understand the new structure of our family and the structure of our week and the structure of our month and structure of our year,” he says. “We spent Shabbat with my parents, just six of us, and that was an adjustment because previously we'd have had the table far more open and it was closed… Life has changed in many tangible ways and we'll just have to get used to that.”

He adds: “In terms of how we would like to commemorate that, we are funding three projects in Efrat. For Lucy, who was a community builder, we’re building a community Hall. For Maia, who loved [nature], we’re building a beautiful garden with flowers and trees also in Efrat. For Rina, who dedicated her last year to being a councilor in the Ezra youth movement, looking after 20 girls in the new part of Efrat, we are building a new clubhouse for Ezra there in order to enable them to operate in winter and in the hot summer, rather than the car park which they’ve been operating in. We think these are three beautiful projects and please G-d in the future, there may well be other projects that we will embark upon.”