Israeli rabbi marries off fallen son’s ex-fiancée
Nearly two years after Capt. Amitai Tzvi Granot was killed fighting Hezbollah terrorists in the Galilee; his father, Rabbi Tamir Granot, officiated on Monday at the wedding in Caesarea of Amitai Tzvi’s former fiancée, Roni.
Capt. Amitai Tzvi Granot. Credit: Courtesy of Granot’s family. Capt. Amitai Tzvi Granot. Credit: Courtesy of Granot’s family.
In an interview with JNS, Granot described the wedding as a joyous occasion that was nonetheless punctuated by some grief, and a testament to the Jewish people’s capacity for renewal despite catastrophic loss.
The idea of having Granot officiate at the wedding came from the bride, he said, adding that her request surprised him.
“She told us that we’re a part of the story [of her marriage], of the hope for life. And that Amitai is with her spiritually, and that my officiating at her wedding would be an expression of that presence,” said Granot, a prominent Religious-Zionist spiritual leader and head of the Orot Shaul hesder yeshiva in Tel Aviv’s Shapira neighbourhood.
Amitai Tzvi Granot, 24, when he died, asked Roni to marry him shortly before he was killed on Oct 15, 2023, defending Shtula, a moshav on the border with Lebanon, from an incursion by Hezbollah terrorists. The weeks following his engagement “were the peak of his happiness in life,” Rabbi Granot said of his son.
At Amitai Tzvi’s funeral, Rabbi Granot was struggling with his personal grief, that of his wife, Avivit, and their six children. Yet in that moment, he also considered Roni’s future. “I felt a statement, a cry, rising from within in me, that I needed to convey to Roni: I told her then: ‘Choose life’,” he recalled.
Rabbi Tamir Granot
Granot described feeling conflicting emotions at the wedding. He and his family “felt joy” at Roni’s wedding, he said. But there was also “pain, a feeling of terrible loss because it should have been Amitai getting married. Yes, also that feeling was in the mix. But then that gets replaced by happiness for Roni and her husband,” he said.
Roni was introduced to her husband by Tsofia Dickstein, a resident of Eli in Samaria. Her son, Lt. Ivri Dickstein, was killed in action in Lebanon, a little over a year after Amitai Tzvi’s death.
Fighting in Israel’s north began on Oct. 8, 2023, when Hezbollah started firing rockets into Israel in solidarity with Hamas, which had invaded Israel from Gaza the previous day. Out of the 898 troops who have died since that day, 81 fell in the north. Another 326 were killed during the Hamas invasion, along with more than 870 civilians, and most of the remaining troops were killed in the Gaza Strip.
In November 2024, Lebanon accepted the terms of a ceasefire that required Hezbollah to leave the border area and move north of the Litani River. Israel killed 3,500-4,000 of its terrorists, including its top command, before the ceasefire, and another 240 since then in strikes to enforce its terms, according to Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies.
Hamas has also lost its top brass and the bulk of its ballistic capabilities. The Israel Defence Forces are deployed in the Gaza Strip ahead of a campaign to capture more of that territory to dismantle Hamas completely, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, the IDF chief of staff, authorised on Wednesday.
Granot’s joy despite his personal grief is informed by his understanding of Jewish history and destiny, he said.
The word in Hebrew for “crisis,” mashber, also means the place where a woman gives birth, he noted. “So this realization that out of crisis comes birth is reflected in our language from millennia ago, it is part of our DNA and it’s the reason that not only were we able to withstand catastrophes that very few if any peoples recovered from, we were able to leverage them into betterment: They propelled us forward, we built on them,” he said.
This was the case in the Holocaust, which boosted efforts to build a Jewish national home in Israel; the fateful Independence War of 1948, the Six-Day War and “very clearly after Oct. 7, 2023,” Granot added.
But is it natural to celebrate wholeheartedly after marrying off the ex-fiancée of one’s slain son?
“Seen from a certain perspective, maybe not,” Granot said. “But then ours is a people whose path often travels the supernatural. And when you take that into account, then, yeah, it’s pretty natural for us.”
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