Baruch Dayan HaEmet

I heard about it this morning:

(IsraelNN.com) Just ten day after parents of eight were killed in a car crash near Kiryat Arba, a newly married couple was killed similarly nearby.

Heavy mourning once again draped the Jewish towns south of Hevron, with the news of the deaths of Tzviki (22) and Hadassah Stitskin in a car accident this morning. The couple was married just two months ago.

Tzviki's father, Rabbi Donnie Stitskin, is the rabbi of the community of Maon, from where the joint funeral will set out at 3:30 this afternoon. Rabbi Stitskin is a veteran of a similar bitter experience with his good friend, the late Rabbi Yosef Dickstein; the latter was murdered, together with his wife and son, by terrorists on a Friday afternoon in 2002, and Rabbi Stitskin spent the Sabbath together with the nine remaining orphans.


The mourning also envelopes the Gush Katif-expellee communities throughout the south, as Hadassah lived in N'vei Dekalim, from where her family was thrown out during the expulsion of 2005. Her father, Rabbi Meir Cohen, was the unofficial rabbi of the secular community Pe'at Sadeh, near N'vei Dekalim; the family is now living, with other former N'vei Dekalim residents, in Ein Tzurim.

Details of the accident were unclear at first, but it now appears that the couple's car swerved inexplicably into an oncoming truck at around 7 AM, south of Kiryat Arba. Medics who arrived on the scene first found Tzviki's body, and then realized that two people had been killed when they found that of his young wife.

Just ten days ago, during a brief but heavy snowstorm, the rabbi of the town of Telem and his wife - parents of eight - were killed when the car swerved into an oncoming bus. Maon and Telem are several kilometers southeast and northwest of Kiryat Arba-Hevron, respectively.

Rabbi Dani Stiskin (not Stitskin as written in the article), the Rabbi of Maon was one of my rabbis when I learned in Machon Meir. I had the privilege of being a guest of his and his wife Shlomit many times. Tzviki I remember as a little kid. Since the family moved to Maon I would only see the Stiskins from time to time. My heart goes out to them and to the Cohen family. May they be comforted with the rebuilding of Zion.