Hila was Rebecca’s foster mother during her first years in the army.

Rebecca, our beloved and dear, How strange it is to be here like this. In the midst of a war on our home, which was also your home. While we have been outside our home for over three months, living in a hotel, in uncertainty. While our kidnapped ones have not yet returned home. While you are in military service defending the north. While your parents happen to be visiting the country. While a strange legal process is happening a few streets away from your home in The Hague..

It is still so hard to believe that this is happening. Unfathomable. All of this feels so unrelated to you. It’s customary to ask for forgiveness at the end of the eulogy, but I feel compelled to ask you now. Forgive us, Rebecca. Forgive us that in the last three months, we did not have a home for you. In a time when you might have needed a home the most. Forgive us that amidst my survival, I didn’t see that you were also surviving. Burials of soldiers and friends. You joined the war, experienced what could have happened to us in Sa’ad, and tragically it happened all around us. Perhaps you didn’t want to burden us with what you were going through in the chaos of the hotel, and I didn’t ask. How happy we were when, two months ago, you received an exemption and a message that you were coming to our hotel by the Dead Sea. I tried to argue with you that by the time you arrive from the north, your exemption will expire, but there was no point in arguing with you. You said it would be fine and you would come by hitchhiking (of course). And you came, and the kids and I were so happy to have you. Tzvika was still in the military and didn’t get to see you. We went out to eat at the only restaurant in the area, and we were together again. Then in the morning, we received the heartbreaking news about Rose. See how it shakes you. How the greatest fear becomes real. Who thought then that we would be in the midst of such a strange and painful tragedy. Who thought that we would bury you here next to Rose and Michael. Three fallen whose lives are intertwined with the life of Saad, two of them core members who fell in the battles on the house.

Our Rebecca, we met five years ago, and you became a part of our family. And we loved you so much. From the beginning, we understood that you were something special. A brilliant girl who knows everything about everything, wins every game and every challenge. Endowed with talents that need to be discovered patiently, involving various things simultaneously: Deep and quick thinking, capable of easily engaging in complex philosophical conversations, but also playful, enjoying the smallest and silliest things. It’s hard to find a picture where you’re not making a funny face or sticking out your tongue. Serious and perfectionist, doing everything professionally and with dedication, almost not wasting time on sleep due to a work ethic like no other, with peak performances, but also capable of canceling days in pajamas, sleeping, eating terrible snacks, and watching Netflix.

A soloist and an independent thinker who doesn’t always care about what people think of her and what society expects from her, but also someone who repeatedly chooses meaningful group activities – in Kibbutz Dror, in the Mechina, in the core, and in the army.

Hating kitsch and clichés, pulling a face at cheesy slogans, but for her, there is no such thing as kitsch in values. What she believes in, she says it with the utmost purity and honesty. Reminding us of what is important and maybe we have already forgotten to say to ourselves and the world so clearly – being Jewish in the State of Israel is a right. Fighting to defend the people and the homeland is a duty. How simple it was for her.

A combat officer in regular service and in reserves, leading soldiers, but also a civic activist with deep humanistic liberal values that she fights for. Not seeing a contradiction between things, quite the opposite. And again, for her, it was clear that there was no need to explain.

Having a natural universal identity, feeling at home in every language and country, apologizing for every inconvenience to walking the city on foot, but also having a deep and rooted Jewish identity out of choice, from a deep inner feeling. From a connection to roots and purposes.

So many complexities in a young woman. And Rebecca knew how to hold all these parts in herself in a completeness like that. Each of us met Rebecca a bit differently. In the past two weeks, we could cross the different perspectives and gather them into a shared experience because we all knew how to recognize this special quality that characterized her.

I remembered a song by the poet Rivka Miriam, who, like Rebecca, is named after an older Rebecca. In one of the lines of the song, she says, “I am built from many possibilities. During long winter nights, I can pull out different threads entwined within me, see them separately. For every possibility in me has its own string, even though my body is one.” Rebecca was built from many possibilities. She knew how to pull out different threads, stand on their unique quality, and enrich her life with various aspects. Even if from the outside, they seemed contradictory.

I wish we could learn from Rebecca the secret of complexity. Not to surrender to superficiality and one-dimensionality. How much beauty there is in the multiplicity of faces, how much richness there is in the diversity of voices. In each one of us, but also as a community, as a society. As a people.

We are constantly busy with a categorizing gaze that perceives differences as threatening to one another, focusing on emphasizing internal contradictions, apologizing for what is better or worse. If only we could live our lives in complexity, to understand that we are built from many possibilities. The Israeli society needs a fresh look at the tensions within it. I think Rebecca had a lot to teach us about how to do it.

And I think about all the many possibilities that were in Rebecca, and yet were not fulfilled. About the other lives she could have lived in Holland or anywhere else, and how touching and yet incomprehensible her choice to live here, in this land, was. And I think about all the dreams she still wanted to fulfill. The trips, the studies. A young and talented woman with so much life ahead of her. And all this will not happen now.

Orly and Ronit, friends and neighbors and Garin Tzabar coordinators – thank you for the match. Because of you, Rebecca is a meaningful part of our lives. Thank you for the support and the listening ear you gave her, and for the infinite investment in each and every one of the core members. Each one of you, the new immigrants who come to join and become a part of it, is a world and its own unique story. Rebecca knew that she was always welcome and loved in Saad. Many friends who came to Saad today can attest to the restaurant where we are today. They came for Rebecca, who entered their hearts as well.

Sasha, Robbert, Margalith, and Asher, beloved. We love you so much. We have met over the years, but the last two weeks have brought us closer and connected in a way that probably could have not happened.

You raised her so well. You are the reason she grew up to be the brilliant, stubborn, independent, and wonderful woman that she is. In the last two weeks, we stood in awe of the nobility, the depths of your souls, the strengths, and the love between you. Getting to know you is getting to know more about Rebecca, to understand her better. To comprehend how she grew and developed in light of the blessed complexity she witnessed at home. Differences that are acknowledged and given their rightful place.

In the midst of all the difficulty and turmoil, oscillating between despair and hope in these two weeks, there was so much humor, so much life, and so much compassion. I know that you will continue to live full and good lives, even for Rebecca.

Margalit and Asher, you both carry so much of Rebecca within you, both beautiful and talented. We are here for you, for anything you may need. Our homes and hearts are always open to you.

On behalf of our family, all Garin Tzabar members, and Kibbutz Saad, we promise that we will share Rebecca’s story, as it is a story that deserves to be told. She will not be forgotten.

יהי זכרה ברוך

May her memory be blessed.