Thank you

A letter from Zions family in Israel

Community of Angels
from Gilly

Photo's from Israel

Acknowledgements

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A letter from Zions family in Israel

25th January, 2007
Jerusalem

Dear Friends and all those who cared for Zion Asaraf (z’’l) – my late brother!

On behalf of Zion’s family in Israel – His mother, his sister (me) and his brothers, I wish to express my deepest feelings of gratitude and appreciation for all the assistance – moral, spiritual, financial and medical – given to my brother during his illness and afterwards.
I am deeply grateful also for the dignified way in which you treated him in his last moments, after he passed away and especially for your respect of his last wish, to be buried in Har Hazeitim – in Jerusalem, near our father.
May G-d recompense you for your noble and generous treatment of my brother by granting your wishes, in the spirit of the Jewish saying: “He who makes a request for his friend is answered first”.

G-d bless you!

Annette Asaraf –
Zion’s sister on behalf of Zion’s family in Israel.

"Community of Angels"

Was it in Zions (z’’l) merit that everyone has and still is helping the way that they are?
Zion (z’’l) stayed with a family 24 hours a day for three or four months to make sure that the family was stabilized while their husband and father (z”l) was struggling with cancer, passing away on exactly the same english day (12.12.2000), six years before Zion (z”l) was niftar (12.12.06). Zion (z”l) made sure that child welfare didn’t take the kids from their mother when things were emotionally out of hand and he was with them in the hospital when the father became niftar, he also made sure that they were sent to camp to distract them and give them a good time for a few weeks. He helped them with their school work so that they could settle into a new school and become successful in the working world. One of them is now studying to become a lawyer and the other is studying engineering. He did all this for the sake of heaven and because of this merit and the merit he acquired from helping many other people in the community, I believe Hashem sent all of you, a “Community of Angels” to help us.

I was telling a dear friend the other day, who has known both Zion (z”l) and I for many years, that I was speechless about the way the community were so absolutely unbelievably supportive before we went to Israel and that I thought when we came back, we would be able to slip into obscurity because I felt so indebted about everything that has been done for us. This however is not the way things have turned out. Even in the week before Purim I have had people stopping their cars in the street to give us money and another person made a collection for us which came to a large sum. Then there was a morah from Beth Rivkah who had collected money from the class last year and had held it in her hand bag for three months just on the off chance that if she saw me she could give it to me. People are ringing all the time to see how we are and Baruch Hashem we are booked out one month in advance for Shabbat dinners. And these things appear minor in comparison to what was being done while Zion(z''l) was in hospital. So I was telling my friend how can you possibly say something that would do justice to the things that everyone has done for us? She said that she doubted whether it could be done but said to "just keep on being the special person that you are". I said I don’t even know who I am anymore and she said "you are someone who is carrying herself with dignity and hope despite your difficulties". It reminded me of another friends letter where words like "role model" and "devotion to the family" were mentioned, which, when the tears just refuse to stop falling, I stare at the letter in bewilderment, and ask myself who are they really talking about? I thought to myself what would I be if I wasn’t myself and I guess the answer would be a bitter, twisted and faithless human being like I was before I met Zion (z''l). This is who I was when I was growing up, I could not find my place and was struggling with the environment I was living in. I was desperately unhappy and as a nine year old girl I wrote a poem called "The Hour of Darkness" which depicts the frame of mind that I was in.

The Hour of Darkness
When you cry over something or
Someone you love
The sadness and tears
Come from buckets above
The loneliness gathers
Till it rings in your ears
The corner gets darker
And brings out more fears
Then one day you see
Through your hour of darkness
A glint of bright sunlight
To soften the hardness
It floods right through your tears
And right through your sorrows
To brighten your life
and fill in the hollows.

By the time I was eighteen, just before I met Zion, my life felt so empty that I wanted to give up on it. It was Zion(z’’l) who, with the help of Hashem, reshaped my mind, my emotions and most importantly introduced a spiritual dimension to my drowing neshama. For me, he and Hashem represented that glint of bright sunlight mentioned in my poem. For many years he trained me like an army officer to cut off negative thought patterns that caused negative emotions as soon as they came into my mind. He did this to stop me from falling a victim of emotions that were swallowing me up and causing me to despair. Maybe my notes in this area can be of use to help others elevate themselves out of their hour of darkness and cause more living products of Zion(z’’l) to grow in their journey through this world. When I met him I did a painting of a figure lifting another drowing figure out of threatening water, while nearly being pulled down in the process, he always said that it was symbolic of our situation at that time.

So, who am I? I am a product of Hashems love and care through Zion for the last fifteen years. If anyone sees anything in me, it is because they are identifying with the insight and the effort that Zion put into me. Many of you didn’t know what he was capable of because he was always hidden away like a diamond, in his books and paintings. So for me to continue being the person I am, means that I should not alow myself to get anywhere near where I was before I met Zion (z''l). It also means to continue being what I have been trained to do by Zion and that is to remain hopeful, faithful and loving Hashem and uphold Zion’s effort so that it doesn’t go to waste. Also, having been not Jewish, I understand the stark contrast between a life dangerously painful from emptyness because of the abscence of neshama and Hashem, to a life filled with the richness of nourishment for the neshama through closness to Hashem. For me there has never been the option of turning back, this is why when people ask me about reconnecting with my family I say this community is my family and move on to the next topic. I have often wondered how I would have coped with this type of situation if I had never become Jewish. I can't even begin to imagine how people who don't know G-d can get their thoughts around a situation like this without knowing that there is Hashem who is directing everything in the world and that when there is nothing else, Hashem is still always there regardless of what you are experiencing.

While I am now in a position to know how to bring out my emotions so that they can be worked through, I still have the skills to be able to cut them off if they start bringing me down to a level that is not acceptable. And what is my definition of not acceptable, it is a place where negative thoughts and emotions begin to dictate your mental and physical state of well being, so that you can not function and do the things that are required of you in a normal everyday situation. Yes, everyone has bad days once in a while and when it happens to me I choose to distract myself initially and hope that it is just a passing, temporary physical state that will go within a day or so. 99%of cases it does go within a day but if it doesn't then I declare war just the same as Zion did to save myself from what he would call the yeitzer hara, or negative force and I would cut it off the same way that he did by not allowing myself to think, feel or deal with it until it goes away and leaves me alone. Usually just the declaration of war is enough to disintegrate it because I have had alot of practice. This is where I fulfill my responsibility, not only for Zion's effort and the growth of the girls, but also for the aspect of not wasting everyones investment in kindness towards us.

I have to admit, however, that it is extremely difficult for someone who has basked in the warmth, brightness and love of a great neshama for so long, to now grasp the concept of a lifetime that seems like an infinite chasm of coldness and misplacement being in this world without him. But the fact is that as each day goes by, and some are better than others, I am begining to realise that even though it is against my wishes to remain here without him, continuing on with life just happens whether I like it or not. Zion (z''l) always used to quote something from PirkeiAvot-the last mishna in chapter 4 (thanks to the person who gave me the correct reference) that "we come into the world against our wishes and we leave the world against our wishes". He used to say that "life in this world can be likened to a bus trip, some get on here and some get off there, some stay on the bus for a long time and others get off after a few stops. I don't know who'd want to be a bus driver given that this one already has a broken arm for letting Zion (z''l) off far too early and forcing me to stay on and I am threatening to blow the bus up if he doesn't let Moshiach on at the next stop? Now I am riding that bus by myself, supporting two girls on my own, I feel like a baby who is just learning to stand on her own two feet. But if I fall Chas V'Shalom, it won't be that far, nor will there be any falling back to where I came from because I am not in the same position that I was in then, I have Hashem, I have two beautiful girls and I have fifteen years of wisdom, love and warmth to hold me up. And in my hour of darkness, when I have exhausted all of my positive thinking skills and feel like I just want to hide, safe in Zion’s (z’’l) arms, protected from the pain the way he protected me from negativity all those years ago, you will find me reading this article and all of the tributes written about how everyone helped, to remind myself of how much I feel held in the positive, beaming warmth of our “Community of Angels” that Hashem has sent in Zion’s honor, G-d bless his soul and may G-d truely bless all of you!

P.S. It appears that we are all on the same bus together, now where's that BUS DRIVER?!

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