Dimona Holds Vigil at Site of Suicide Bombing

One week after a suicide bombing in the central Negev desert town of Dimona, Israel, claimed the life a Russian immigrant and seriously injured her husband, Chabad-Lubavitch of Dimona and the municipality held a ceremony near the site of the tragedy.

In the hours after the Feb. 4 bombing, officials acknowledged that thanks to the quick thinking of a policeman – who shot dead a second bomber before he could detonate his explosive belt – things could have been much worse.

Hundreds of locals, some of them witnesses of the attack, came to the assembly, which was intended, in the words of Rabbi Yisroel Gellis, "to thank G‑d for those who survived, and to strengthen and support each other." Many of the injured and their family members lined up to write a letter in a Torah scroll that will be dedicated to victims of terror attacks by the Chabad Terror Victims Project, directed by Rabbi Menachem Kutner.

Gellis, director of Chabad-Lubavitch of Dimona, was hanging a new sign to the Chabad House just meters away from the shopping center when the bomber struck. Along with his assistant, Rabbi Nissim Chamo, Gellis rushed over to the site of the attack, and after seeing what he could do to help, set up a table for shaken witnesses and emergency responders to put on tefillin.

Although Arik Ben-David Shayish, 39, an acquaintance of the rabbis who suffered shock in the wake of the attack, has tried to stay away from the site, he said that the ceremony was cathartic.

"It was very good for me to be with people I know," he said. "It was very emotional."

Exactly one week before, Shayish was walking his regular morning route through town when the suicide bomber detonated his charge just "meters away, right in front of my eyes," he said.

He's now in therapy with a psychologist to deal with the trauma.

"Thank G‑d, I was not hurt physically," he said.

At the memorial, Dimona Mayor Meir Cohen, along with Assistant Mayor Eli Brunstein, thanked the Chabad House for its quick response in providing for the spiritual welfare of the shaken community.