Rabbi Nehemia Lavi, 41, was celebrating the Third Meal of Shabbat with his wife and seven children in their rooftop sukkah above their Jerusalem Old City apartment. Rabbi Lavi related a teaching of the Vilna Gaon that there are two mitzvot that a man can fulfill with his whole body: Living in the Land of Israel and sitting in a sukkah. (Women, who are commanded to immerse in a mikvah, have three whole-body mitzvot.) He remarked to his family that they are, at that moment, fulfilling both these mitzvot. Suddenly they heard a woman screaming. Rabbi Lavi, an officer in the I.D.F. Reserves, grabbed his gun and ran downstairs to save her. As Israelâ??s Chief Rabbi would say at Nehemia Laviâ??s funeral, he thus was fulfilling a third mitzvah with his whole body.
The Arab terrorist, who had already murdered 22-year-old Aaron Banito Bennet and seriously wounded his young wife Adelle, killed Rabbi Lavi by repeatedly stabbing him in the chest and neck. Then he took the rabbiâ??s gun and shot the Bennetsâ?? toddler in the leg. Adelle, with a knife in her shoulder, managed to run to an Israeli police outpost fifty meters away before losing consciousness. The police neutralized the terrorist.
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