Educator Yael Shevah, widow of Raziel Shevah, obm, tells of her decision to bury her husband at Havat Gilead, the connection to the Cave of the Patriarchs and the hope that towns will be founded from the commandment to live, and not only to commemorate the fallen.
Yael Shevah took part in the third Sovereignty Youth Conference at the Oz veGaon preserve in Gush Etzion and shared emotions and insights from her life as the widow of a terror victim and a resident of Havat Gilead in Samaria, with the hundreds of youths who came from all parts of the Land.
She spoke of her shock on the night when her husband was murdered and how she chose his place of burial. In those days, due to the difficulties imposed by the Civil Administration on Havat Gilead, which is defined as an illegal settlement, there was no cemetery at Havat Gilead. Nevertheless, Yael gathered her courage and announced that she wished to bury her husband in Havat Gilead so the council members began to plan the construction of a cemetery.
Shifting from her own personal story, Yael spoke of the decision to bury Sarah in the Cave of the Patriarchs despite the distance from Be’er Sheva, based on a Davar Torah that Raziel, her late husband, delivered, explaining that Avraham, in his great holiness, knew that burying Sarah in the Cave of the Patriarchs would bring about a connection that would never be cut off in the coming generations.
“If a Jewish town seeks to be permanent, it must bury its dead there”, Yael quotes her husband from that Davar Torah. “We will apply sovereignty and we will not only bury our dead in every place in the Land of Israel, we will also live in every place in the Land”, she said, mentioning the hope that in burying her husband in that town, it would become legal, but up until now, this has not happened.
Yael Shevah mentioned the establishment of the town of Eviatar, named after Eviatar Borovsky and Yehuda Guata, obm. “We so not have to die in order for this Land to exist”, she said, noting a long list of names of towns that have been founded in memory of the fallen and now, “we will not wait for the next names in order to establish a town. We must be here not because we die here but because we are living, not because of security but because this is our Land.”