As you may know, when we made Aliyah, we lived on Agassi 6 for 3 years. During that time, I used to daven in Kehillat Bnei Torah almost every day and we made friends with neighbors and others in the neighborhood. When we moved to Nachlaot, we kept up with some but not all of our neighbors- out of sight, out of mind definitely is true.
Yesterday was horrible by all accounts- for us, we lost Aryeh Kapinsky, our neighbor 2 floors up from us, Avraham Goldberg who worked with me and our Foundation on several publishing projects, and the husband of one of Rivki's closest friends, Kalman Levine. Rav Twerski we knew from the shul and all 4 were tzadikim in different senses of the term. (Let us not forget the wounded who need a refua shlaima and who we hope will be able to survive this in good health.)
I just wanted to let you know in the throes of such a terrible day, that I can't stop thinking about how many times I have left for shul for shachris without a thought that something might happen, as I am sure these 4 men did yesterday. I cant get the thought out of my head and realize that there are people out there that I would like to acknowledge as friends who I care about and who mean a lot to me who I don't get a chance to talk to or see a lot, but it doesn't diminish their importance to me. I figured that maybe I should let them know.
So thanks for being a friend, and let's hope we never have to experience anything close to what these families did yesterday, and let's pray that we will one day be able to regain a sense of feeling secure again in our land.
Yigal Segal
