Amir Leon, father of Staff Sergeant Adi Leon, who fell in the APC disaster in the Gaza Strip, talks to Arutz Sheva – Israel National News about the unique way that the family is commemorating Adi’s memory through his emotional letter.
The special letter that Adi left behind addresses family, friends and the entire nation of Israel, and his father Amir tells about the wide range of emotions expressed in the letter. Each person who has read the letter immediately senses a connection to the unique aspect that concerns his or her personally. The family, as expected, connects to the personal approach and, even so, is proud of what Adi wrote as his last will and testament to the entire nation. “His belief in the just mission that he embarked on and the necessity of the war to defend the people is what captured the attention and emotion of the entire public,” Amir says.
We were surprised that Adi wrote this letter. He didn’t leave any other letters at home. He never wrote a diary and generally didn't write, so we weren't surprised by the text. We knew this was the stuff Adi was made of. We saw him three times after October 7th, and talked to him about what was written in the letter. We knew that he was tough, but had high emotional intelligence. We are grateful for the letter he left us. It's a gift that he left behind."
Amir says that it was clear to the family that he was not given an order to write a letter just in case ... Rather, it was suggested to those who were interested in doing so. Adi chose not to write on his cell phone and asked for a notebook. He sat by himself for a few hours and wrote. “We were told that when he came back, that was the only moment when he was sad during this whole time of the war. He is smiling in all the other pictures, but then he came back serious. He put it in his bag and told his commander that he hoped he would come back and burn it, but if a disaster happened, the he should give it to his parents."
After his death, the letter reached the family. Adi's sister posted it on social media, and the response the family received from the general public made it clear that they could not keep it to themselves and had to make it known on a much wider scale. "We were sure it would go no further than his sister’s private Instagram, but we quickly realized that it had gone viral in a way that we never imagined."
The family decided to publish an educational kit of values and that would reflect Adi’s personality. "We started this project on Chanuka and chose eight values for the eight candles. Then we decided that we couldn't keep it just for Hanukkah. We made some small adjustments and are distributing the kit throughout the year.”
Amir talks of the meetings that took place with the help of the Ministry of Education and other educational forums all over the country, who are involved in preparing youngsters for service in the IDF. The kit was presented to them to use in various programs. In addition, the family has been invited to schools to tell about Adi and one of the video clips shows a group participating in the activity and reading Adi’s letter on the summit of Mount Masada. The family is now preparing an international version of the kit, and after translating it to Spanish and English, hopes to distribute it to Jewish communities around the world.
"At the end of the letter Adi wrote 'I hope you remember me' and we are making every effort that he will be remembered. This is a very positive way to remember him. We are very proud to hear of every place that participates in the program and wants to mention Adi through a message of appreciation for the letter. We are dealing with our own private grief every day, but it doesn't conflict with the desire to expose his personality to as many people as possible, so that they can know what a moral guy he was."
Recently, the family held a birthday party for Adi, also in light of what he wrote in the letter. In one of the family get-togethers with Adi before he entered the Gaza Strip, Nurit, his mother, told him that when he returned home she would close off the street outside their house and hold a celebration for him and all his friends. In the letter, he wrote that he hoped they would celebrate as planned. "On my 20th birthday, there was a crazy party at our house. I’m now 21 and you ask yourself what to do for a guy who has almost no picture without a smile on his face, who was always having fun with friends and at parties. Zohar, his sister, and friends planned a party at a big hall and about a hundred of Adi’s friends came to celebrate. Nurit went there, but I didn’t. It was both happy and sad there. I'm sure that's what Adi is proud of, that they threw a party on his birthday,” says Amir.