To commemorate the one-year anniversary tomorrow (Friday) of the murder of Lucy Dee and her daughters Maia and Rina in a terror attack that took place last Passover, students from the Ohr Torah Stone network's Midreshet Lindenbaum-Lod, where Maia studied, recorded a special song of prayer in their memory. Among the participants in the project was Tali Dee, who began her studies at the seminary this year.
"This is an amazing and beautiful project that simply brings tears to my eyes, tears of joy," noted Rabbi Leo Dee upon hearing the song.
"Exactly a year ago, on Hol Hamoed Pesach, we were all in the midst of preparations for Shabbat when the earth trembled with the news of a serious attack in the Jordan Valley and the discovery that our Maia, together with her sister Rina and their mother Lucy, were taken from us, and the entire festival trembled along with us," wrote the seminary staff in an introduction describing the recording. "Since then, the whole earth has been enveloped in a storm, and our prayer is that the light will illuminate the darkness of night and resonate from one end of the world to the other. Alongside that is our inner knowledge that 'Your light has come. Arise, shine' - a light that illuminates the tunnel on the road to redemption. We gathered together full of love, longing and prayer; seminary graduates who were friends of Maia and current students of the midrasha, to sing the melodies and songs that Maya so loved at the midrasha," reads the introduction.
"The idea was born shortly after the murder, from a group of Maia's friends at the seminary," says Rosh Midrasha Naama Frankel. "Towards the anniversary of their murder, we felt a need to do something that would memorialize Maia and her connection to her friends and the seminary, and maybe to feel her presence a bit. And from there we made the decision to bring the song idea to fruition. Tali's friends currently studying at the midrasha also asked to join the project," Frankel adds.
Frankel notes that the process of producing the song there was a healing process for her and for the students, and a natural connection was formed between Maia's friends, who are currently serving in the IDF or in National Service, and Tali Dee's friends who are currently enrolled at the seminary. "In n choosing the songs that would be appropriate for Passover and the seminary and the eve of Shabbat when the terror attack took place, we tried to choose songs that would give hope in such days," Frankel adds. "We also drew strength from the knowledge that although it is Passover and it's therefore forbidden to mourn the anniversary, we will nonetheless succeed in commemorating the day appropriately. Maia was missing but very much present - the song is illustrated by accompanying videos and pictures highlighting the life, Torah, and joyful friendships Maia embodied.
"In our hearts is a prayer that we will truly see the dawn's light - the light of redemption that will give meaning and understanding to what we are going through now," Frankel concludes.
"Maia, we recorded a song for you - for you, for Rina and of course for your mother, Lucy," wrote Elior, Maia's friend from the seminary, who was among the participants in recording the song. "It was difficult for me to grasp that we would not be able to mourn, that we would not be able to go up to the grave and have a proper memorial. But how befitting of you that instead, we sang a redemption song and were filled with hope.
"For me, the song is dedicated to you and I have so many songs in my head that are dedicated to you, that will forever be attributed to you, and here we added another one to the collection. In our song we were inspired by the gatherings you so loved on Thursdays at the midrasha, and so we sang until the small hours of the night – just like we did then. It was happy just as you would have wanted - we sang, chatted and laughed together despite the pinch in our hearts, and we remembered you. The sweet came alongside the bitter, the good alongside the bad, and we blessed both - just as you wrote in the Haggadah we published during our year at the seminary. I learned over this past year, from you and in your footsteps, that joy and happiness do not come alone - happiness will come but it will always be accompanied by pain. And so too the opposite: sadness and longing are always accompanied by love, because that is what they stem from.
"You were full of love - love for people, love for the land, love for the Torah," concluded Elior. "Everything you did, you did with full force. You decided that you loved and you loved unapologetically to the end. You were so present, and now it is your absence that is present, but the light you left behind is present most of all. In its wake and in your wake, people are striving to shine a bit of your light out to the world."