I do not hate my family’s killers, says Rabbi Dee
The Israeli flag, so demonised, is being used as a way to express love
LEO DEE, the British-Israeli rabbi whose two daughters and wife were killed by West Bank terrorists, has said he holds “no hatred” for the murderers.
Rabbi Dee, 52, also said that his wife Lucy would have been “proud” that one of her organs saved the life of a Palestinian and pointed out that “most Palestinians are good people”, with violence promoted by a “small minority”.
In an exclusive interview with the JC — his first with a British newspaper — he revealed he had received messages of condolence from local Palestinians.
The grieving rabbi also lashed out at the Foreign Office, saying its first lukewarm statement about the killings was “typical of their previous policy to blame the victims and placate a public in the UK that has been educated to be anti-Israel”.
It followed the JC’s recent reports disclosing that Foreign Office staff in Jerusalem had taken part in a fun run “in defiance of the Israeli foreign occupation” and had met a cleric who had compared Jews to “apes and pigs”. Rabbi Dee reserved praise for Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, however, who condemned terrorism unequivocally. “The Cleverly Declaration… is a landmark document in the morality of nations,” he said.
The Oxford-educated rabbi, who served at the United Synagogue in Radlett before making aliyah in 2014, told the JC that support from the community in Israel had been overwhelming.
Sitting shiva in the family’s home in the settlement of Efrat, the rabbi said he “only felt a cycle of love”. The Dee family has been visited by several Israeli politicians
including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Isaac Herzog and Opposition leader Benny Gantz.
“There has been a huge hug from Am Yisrael. Every time we sit down to eat there are at least five people on stand-by in the room carrying plates to the table and taking them away when we have finished,” he said. “If we don’t need the food, the community has said it will find people who do. It’s a wonderful idea.
“I’d like to see it replicated in Israel and the diaspora, and named after my daughters and my wife Lucy, who prepared very healthy food for our family.”
One of those dishes was chicken soup. At his wife’s funeral, the rabbi revealed that after keeping the recipe a secret throughout their 25-year marriage, the rebbetzin had disclosed it to him this Pesach. The recipe has since gone viral.
The family’s tradition of discussing a few lines from Pirkei Avot (the Ethics of the Fathers) every Shabbat has also been taken up in Jewish homes across the world, the rabbi told the JC.
His voice strained with grief, Rabbi Dee said he had been very touched by people showing solidarity by sharing pictures of themselves with an Israeli flag. “Particularly poignant are those Arab Israelis and Charedim who’ve told me that before these murders, they had never held an Israeli flag,” he said. The rabbi has also received private messages of condolence from Palestinians living in the West Bank.
“The Israeli flag, so demonised, is being used as a form of love,” he said. Asked how he was able to collect and arrange his thoughts, the rabbi said he supposed he was in “preservation mode. I feel like I’m on adrenaline steroids. When one member of your family is killed, you are distraught. When more members are slain, your system goes into overload. At some point I will crash.”