The widow of Rabbi Yosef David and their four children, raging from age 1 to 10, were recently issued an eviction notice.
By Rachel Avraham
Rabbi Yosef David was a Torah scholar who had recently taken a job as a prayer instructor at a Haredi elementary school, the ultra-Orthodox news site JDN reported. According to the site, David was murdered in the recent Jerusalem terror attack when he was waiting for the bus from his job to the yeshiva where he pursued his own Torah studies. Witnesses told Hebrew media that he was murdered clutching his books.
His family described him as a pious scholar who rose early every morning without fault in order to pursue his Torah studies and always had a wide smile on his face, JDN said. Rabbi Yosef David, a 43-year-old prayer teacher and father of four, has children aged 1,4, 7 and 10, Arutz Sheva reported. Now, his widow and four children are left reeling from the sudden loss. According to Arutz Sheva, “Their mother has no income for rent, food and utilities.”
In the wake of the tragedy, community leaders have launched an emergency fund to help the family through the coming months, Arutz Sheva reported. Their expenses — rent, food, schooling, and daily life — will only grow, and Mrs. David cannot carry this burden alone. “Daddy promised to buy me shoes tomorrow, but Daddy isn’t coming home,” 7-year-old Chaya uttered, not understanding why terrorists murdered her father. The family was already issued an eviction notice following their father’s death.
Speaking as someone who is a widow and mother of three children, the widow of Rabbi Yosef David will need far more than funding for “rent, food and utilities,” as Arutz Sheva claimed. She will also need for both her and the children to get therapy, extracurricular activities for the children in order to boost their broken spirits following their father’s death, tutors to help the children with schooling, as children who suffered a traumatic experience often need more support academically in school than regular children, clothes and toys for the children, etc. The list of her needs is likely to grow with the time.
If the widow does not live near relatives who can help her with childcare, a 24-hour per day seven day per week nanny to assist the mother in raising the children is also needed, as it is mission impossible to raise four children alone without help. And if the mother does not have the skills needed in order to enter the workforce immediately, she will have to undergo professional training so that she can enter the workforce at the soonest possible date, so that she can be given the tools to be self-sufficient.
In my humble opinion, the State of Israel should step in to help the widow of Rabbi Yosef David, so that she and her children are not left destitute. No widow of a terror victim should be in a position where she and her four children, still weeping over the loss of their main bread-winner in a brutal terror attack, are issued an eviction notice and do not even have the money needed to buy food. If the State of Israel does not help this family to stay afloat, then it will be a victory for terrorism, as the terrorists would not just have murdered the rabbi, but also succeeded in forcing a mother and her four children out onto the streets right before Rosh Hashanah. And for this reason, the State of Israel must simply step in to help them.
Photo from NBC News: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETz5iNmIT64
