“A Week Before He Was Killed In Operation ‘Protective Edge’ He Told Me: The Lomdei Torah Cannot Be Harmed”

About three years ago, the IDF was forced into operation protective edge in the Gaza Strip. The threat of the tunnels together with thousands of rockets that were being fired into Israel on a daily basis prompted the IDF to engage in a bloody war with the notorious Hamas terror organization in Gaza. The operation began on Beis Tammuz 5774 and was over less than two months later on lamed Av.

The human cost of the operation was staggering, 68 IDF soldiers Hy”d, and 5 civilians Hy’d were killed on the Israeli side.

When the operation began, I was doing my annual 40-day reserve duty. During the first 20 days, I was stationed at the Jenin area and then in the Binyamin region, like at the well-known Chizmeh and Kalandiyah checkpoints.

For two weeks I was at the same command post as Captain Dimitry Levitus Hy”d of the Armored corps division, who was killed by sniper fire in Gaza on the fifteenth day of the operation.

A the onset of the operation when it was still not clear if there would be a ground entry into the strip, Dimitri and his unit were active in the Jenin region. During those two weeks, I spent a lot of time operating together with Dimitri, we were in charge of monitoring the security fence in the area. The slightest movement at the fence got us both dashing to the area. We spent many nights patrolling together and during those patrols we spent a lot of time talking about Chareidm and the army draft.

From Dimitri’s point of view “enlisting to the IDF was of supreme importance”, from a conscious point of view he couldn’t understand how people refrained from enlisting to the IDF. After I explained to him the topic of Yeshiva bochurim and what it’s all about, he remarked, “a bochur that learns Torah should not be disturbed, we are a Jewish State and the Torah is an inseparable part of us”.

He went on, “I saw on TV how the Chareidim assist in disasters, in terror attacks and car accidents, you can see how the Chareidim scrape bodies. In every incident where there are injured people the Chareidim come out and help. They don’t evade ideologically or out of being parasites, the proof is that they volunteer in the thousands in every possible place, and their Yeshivas are full of bochurim that believe the Torah protects them. We shouldn’t fight them over that.”

A few days before Dimitri was sent down south to Gaza, he told me- “I did a little googling on the topic of Chareidim and the Army and I discovered that specifically the elite fighting commanders understand the importance of limud Hatorah, and those that besmirch you (Chareiedm) either didn’t enlist themselves, or didn’t do much in the Army while they were there.

Dimitri was gold- the two weeks that I spent in his company I learned a lot from him. When he was deployed to Gaza I would get daily updates about him from a soldier in his brigade who stayed out of Gaza and was in charge of guarding sensitive equipment.
I didn’t stop davening for him and the rest of the soldiers in the IDF.

One sad morning a friend of mine phoned me and said, “Dima was killed”. I couldn’t make it to the Levaya, there wasn’t enough time to make it on time. Dimitri’s mother collapsed when she heard the sad news, she didn’t either make it to the levaya.
I made a big effort to come to the shiva. His father couldn’t stop crying, there were mourners from all over the country that showed up, some didn’t even know Dimitri but came out of moral obligation to be menachem the family.

What is left for us to do is Learn mishnayos and recite pirkey Tehillim leiluy nishmas, Dimitry Ben Marina Hy”d
TNZB”H

Translated by Eli B.

'בחדרי' גם ברשתות החברתיות - הצטרפו!