Hi everybody. Thank you so much for joining me here today, and the relief from Grief and Podcasts and today’s podcast is sponsored, L’ Iluy Nishmas Yehoshua Ben Zev. Today, Mr. Hillel Fuld is on here with us. Mr. Fuld has a story of losing a brother to terrorism, so I think it’s something we’re all into these days, so thank you so, so much for coming in.

Yeah, of course, Mr. Fuld, that’s, you gotta not, not call me Mr. Full. Just call me. Hillel. I feel old. As you’re saying that, I’m thinking maybe you want, like, Harav or something like that. Go with Hillel. We’ll go with Hillel. Okay. Okay. Okay. So, I guess, let’s, you know, get straight to it. Well, like, I guess if you could share the story with your brother.

so my brother, Ari was a few years older than me. We grew up in Queens and he moved to Israel by himself before we did as a family. And he had four kids and about five and a half years ago, Erev Yom Kippur, he was walking in Efrat 20 minutes outside of Jerusalem, shopping for his family. And a 16 year old Palestinian kid came from behind and stabbed him in the neck in the main artery. And he was basically, like, dead immediately.

But somehow, Pretty miraculously, Ari ran after the terrorist, jumped over a wall, and shot him in his last breath. And that terrorist was about three inches away from another victim, who basically Ari saved in his last breath, and has since become part of the Fuld family. Her name is Hila. And she had a falafel stand there, and she had just served the terrorist a falafel, not knowing, obviously, that he’s a terrorist.

And he was coming after her, and Ari saved her. And so he became a national hero of the state of Israel, and really, you know, left a legacy of. have a lot of questions, but first comes my weird question. I was looking at the picture of the terrorist that killed him, this 16 year old boy, and I was looking at his eyes, I was like, I want to see the evil, right? When they write about the evil eyes. I’m like, why don’t I see the evil? Why can’t I find it?  First of all, it’s a very important point to mention that he wasn’t some, like, oppressed kid in Gaza who the guy was living a life just as good as ours. Normal 16 year old kid, but he’s a normal 16 year old kid who was indoctrinated from age zero that Jews are pigs and they deserve to die.

And, I don’t know about evil eyes, but you have to understand he is a terrorist and he doesn’t deserve anybody’s compassion, but you have to also understand that, you know, it’s, it’s society rotten to the core where that they indoctrinate their kids from such a young age it doesn’t take away from the fact that he’s an evil terrorist to kill my brother, but poor kids, like really, it’s, it’s such a sad reality that, you know, there’s millions of kids in the next generation who are going to go and continue their parents, you know, heritage of killing Jews.

It’s tragic. So, this boy was living in, in Israel. He was an Israeli kid. That’s terrible. So, what happened to you? How did you find out? So close to Yom Kippur. So it was Erev Yom Kippur. I was actually at work at a company, an office. And I was, I don’t know, I guess I was in between tasks.

So, I opened up, you know, the news and I just. So, there was a terrorist attack in Efrat where Ari lived, and so I instinctively asked in the fuld WhatsApp group, is everyone okay? With a smiley face thinking, okay, obviously everyone’s okay. And Donnie, my older brother was one older than Ari called me and said, it’s him.

He was a fourth degree black belt. He was a big dude. And I was like, he’ll be fine. Okay. He stabbed him. He’ll be fine. So, I started driving to the hospital and on the way Donnie called me again and said, don’t rush. So that’s how I found out actually. I found out watching these, this news report of a surveillance video of a guy killed stabbing a Jew and his Jew running after I watched the video not knowing it was my brother.

Oh my goodness. And your parents, were they still, like, are they still alive? Were they still alive? Yeah. Yeah, they’re still alive. Living in Yerushalayim , living the life here. And they’re heroes. I mean, Ari’s family and my parents are all heroes. But doesn’t get easier.

No, I’m writing a book now for parents that lost children, and I just like I’m still work finishing up the section and losing like an adult child. And it’s just so painful, especially when there’s grandchildren, on the one hand, like, at least there’s grandchildren, but on the other hand, like watching the grandchildren grow up without a parent, it’s just so painful.

Yes, it’s horrible, but you got to move on with life. Otherwise, you know, I have no choice. His wife stayed connected with the family. Like you have what to do with the wife and the children and everything. Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. She’s very much a part of the family. I don’t think that’s nice. Yeah.

Very close. So, I know that you probably never liked Arabs or terrorists, but, like, what happened after? Did it, like, see, it was such a, like, huge, like, I don’t know, like, just such, like, an all-consuming hatred now? No, not at all. I mean, my opinions haven’t changed. I knew before what they were, and I know what they are now.

You know, hatred is a Poisonous, toxic emotion that I don’t need in my heart. I thought I’d walk around hating, but I’m fully cognizant and fully recognize that we’re dealing with a society that is rotten to the core. And I was just talking about this to someone an hour ago.

You know, we talk about the mitzvah of Amalek. And it’s an interesting thing, because Amalek, it says Midor Dor, from generation to generation, and here we are, we don’t know what Amalek is. How could that be? There must be something we have to learn from Amalek Midor Dor, otherwise why does Dor say those words?

Right? So, the question is, again, we don’t know who Amalek is, so it’s not, the myth was not to kill Amalek Midor Dor, so what is Midor Dor? It’s a lesson. I think the lesson that Amalek teaches us is that there’s such a thing as pure evil and there’s no negotiation and no compromise with pure evil, right?

We know what we have to do Amalek. So, you know, are there innocent people who die in war? Of course, you know, you’re dealing with a society that unfortunately is heavily, heavily indoctrinated with a death cult ideology. And I don’t know that there’s anything to, talk to these people about other than.

You know, we have to worry about surviving and we can only survive if they don’t. So, I’m not a military strategist and I’m not recommending any military, you know, operation. I’m just saying that I think it’s a very sad reality that no one in their right mind would have, hesitated or would have debated the validity of denazifying Germany because everyone understood that the Nazis are pure evil.

And there’s no, oh, let’s work it out with them, let’s have a peace deal. No, that was not even part of the dialogue because everyone understood that Nazis are evil and need to be denazified. And that’s the reality we’re dealing with right now. There’s no salvaging, no saving a society that is so deeply rotten.

And it’s very sad. It really is very sad, but, that’s the reality. And I think that’s the lesson we learned from Amalek. What would happen if, like, this terrorist that killed your brother he’s still in jail, I’m assuming, right? Like, what would happen if he would be freed you know, in a swap type of situation?

Like, what, how would your family react to that? I don’t think my family would react, you know, externally in any extreme way. I think it would hurt, you know, our hearts a lot. It would be very, very sad and tragic. I don’t think, you know, there’s nothing that can be done. Obviously, we would fight it in any, any and all legal means.

But not beyond that, we do what we can do.

So, are you, are you involved today with other families that lost family members to terrorism? involved? I mean, listen, in this war, everyone’s involved. I’m sure everyone knows someone who lost someone, you know? So, you know, tons and tons of people that I know lost, lost loved ones. Really? Yeah. Tons. So, could you tell us about that?

I mean, listen, Israel is a country smaller than New Jersey. I mean, you know, that’s why everything that’s happening in this war is so miraculous. How are there rockets landing in empty spaces? Where are these empty spaces? Israel is a tiny, microscopic country. There are no empty spaces here. These are Kriyas Yaf Suf miracles, literally.

Okay. But the bad news is that it’s such a small country that everyone knows someone. And so You know, whether it’s in, yeshivas that my brother went to, whether it’s in Beit Shemesh where I live, whether it’s in, you know, the people who I work with in Maranana people that I work with in tech whose son, it’s all over the place.

I literally don’t think there’s a person in this entire country that doesn’t know someone that was affected by this war. I mean, everyone’s been affected, so, it’s the reality. You know, but it’s our reality. It’s our reality. Every generation. This isn’t new. It hurts, but it’s not new.

It happens over and over again.

 So, did you ever dig deeper into the torah perspective of the, you know, I know you spoke about him early, but what about the Eisav Sonei es Yakov? And like, it’s built into the fabric of the world. Like there are always going to be people that are going to hate us no matter what. Yeah. But here’s the thing.

Everyone quotes that what you just quoted. No one quotes the beginning of that sentence. I don’t even know what it is. Esav Sona l’Yakov. But the beginning of that sentence is, Halachha b’yadua. What does Halacha mean? It means it’s a known thing. There’s no, there’s no like changing it. It’s built in. It’s not, oh, that might happen in this generation.

It might not happen. It is Halacha. It is a known, there’s no other thing that I know of in Jewish scripture. Any Mikor that I’ve ever heard of. What does that even mean? It means, it’s a known thing. There is no discussing this. There’s no compromising on it. There’s no getting rid of it. Going to show its ugly face in every generation.

So yes, That, to me, is the most important part of the sentence that everyone just ignores. Yeah. Why? Why is it the most important part? It’s well known. Because you can’t, yeah, because we have finite resources, we’re human beings. And so, are you going to spend your resources fighting something that will be there no matter what you do?

Okay. So back to when you were sitting Shiva, you got up from Shiva, but you’re not going to be in victim mode. Tell us how you weren’t in victim mode. First of all, Shiva was a day and a half, not seven days. Cause it was on paper. Oh, that’s right. That was, that was intense. Honestly, I mean, if we’re going to get real vulnerable here, I you know, there are real symptoms to trauma, like selective amnesia.

Like I, I, I’m not kidding when I say this to you, I remember the day of, like yesterday. I do not know what happened the day after, or the month after. I have complete black, don’t remember a thing. By the way, side point, I had the same phenomenon happen to me with October 7th. I remember hearing the rumors before I turned on my phone.

I remember jumping into, you know, war mode on social media. I don’t remember finding out at all. Really? It’s like, yeah, it’s a blank slate. And so, you know, I blocked it out basically and I went back to work like a few months afterwards and, I didn’t face it. I mean, listen, my business is a little different than most people.

I’m like my own boss, you know, no, but that’s great. That’s like so healthy. Like you just sat and grieved. I don’t know what I couldn’t even tell you what I did, but, I don’t know. I don’t remember, but you needed the time to really whatever it was.

Yeah, but I don’t, I don’t remember what I did in that time, but either way I didn’t do, I didn’t face it. And I felt like, yeah. You know, I’ll always be distracted. What do I need to face it for? Little did I know that there’s a global pandemic coming and you’ll be, you know, I’ll have to sit alone with my thoughts.

As you can imagine, that was less pleasant. And yeah, I faced emotional mental challenges. A hundred percent. Like my mental health was deeply, deeply affected by it. No question. Wow. So I have two questions. Today, when you go to be Menachem Avel of a family that, you know, lost someone to terrorism, like, how does that affect you?

 I don’t think I’ve ever spoken about this publicly, but I have a very, very hard time going to funerals and shiva homes. Like, unless I absolutely must, I don’t go. I’ve literally not gone to pay a visit to actual, like, friends because I just can’t bring myself to do it.

It triggers me badly. But, I mean, every, and every terrorist attack triggers me like, like it’s nobody’s business. But, I don’t know who said it before me, but someone said something that I think it really kind of hits home for me, which is when something like this happens, you’re pulled into become a club member of a club you never wanted to be a part of, right?

So like, there is that like, unwritten, I don’t know what you want to call it, solidarity that we all kind of, oh yeah, you lost your daughter. Oh yeah, I lost my brother. Oh yeah, like we, like Rabbi D, you know Rabbi D who lost his wife and two daughters in a terrorist attack. Like, like, but when I met him, like, I’d never met him before, but like, we were brothers.

Like, we were in the club together, you know? Right. So, there is that kind of, there is that kind of camaraderie, I don’t know. It’s interesting that you say that about that you can’t go because of trauma. So, I have, I lost my mother very young and my, my friend’s mother was just niftar like just like two days ago.

And it’s the Levaya was out of town, but there was a link. And I said something I know to come into my husband about, oh, I should really watch Levaya. My husband’s like, no, please don’t, please don’t. It’s going to put you in such a miserable mood. You’re going to be so nasty to me and to the kids for the rest of the day.

Don’t watch it. No, it’s definitely triggering. There’s no question. It just brings up all that pain.

So, I mean, you said that because the country is so small that, you know, everyone knows someone, but here in America, like, I don’t think everyone knows someone. I don’t know anyone that lost anyone to terrorists, or I don’t think I know anyone. I know people who have relatives or who know people that have, you know, relatives in the army, but I don’t like know anyone.

So I guess sitting here in America, like, I’m not going to say we’re not feeling the pain because, oh boy am I, and I daven and I do whatever I do as is the zechus for, klal Yisroel but I don’t know, like, I guess I want to hear a perspective that’s, for us, that we’re so, like, involved, except that we’re so involved emotionally, but physically we’re, like, further away.

Sara? 15, middle of high school. With your parents? Oh, your whole family moved, oh. Oh wow. Okay, so since really the topic over here is grief. I guess my question really is any messages to people that really are struggling with.

So, let’s not even say grief because they lost a family member, but just grief because we know that so many of like, you didn’t have a dying and being held hostage and so many people are struggling like what should we do from the not pick up and move to Israel, you know, right. I think the answer is that if we really truly internalize that this is not man made, and it’s not in man’s control, if we truly internalize that, not just say it, really understand that this is Hashem pulling the strings, why He’s pulling these strings, I have no idea.

But if we truly internalize that this is bigger than me and you, and this is not, this is, this is a historical, a biblical, event, in my opinion, we understand that we internalize that then, , your anxiety and your sadness and your devastation will decrease because none of my hands anyway.

So, I’m not saying that to be sad when God forbid someone dies, of course, but I remind myself on a daily basis because I’m in the quicksand of social media where I just nonstop. So on a daily basis, probably more than once a day, I have to remind myself, Hillel, stop thinking about this from a human lens.

This is not human. This is. Hashem doing this for whatever reason He’s doing it, but there’s no way that you can look at the events of this war and think that they’re logical and that they’re man made. Clearly Hashem’s pulling the strings. So if you truly believe that on a really deep level, then you’ll be able to deal and cope with the reality in a much more effective way.

But we still, I know you said this, but I’m reiterating it anyways, but we still have to feel the pain of, we have to feel the pain, but still know that it’s all from Hashem. Right. I’m not, listen, I’m not a, you know, therapist or a psychologist, but I think there’s probably an actual, like in psychology, there’s probably a big difference between feeling sadness, embracing the sadness and like letting it, drown you.

Right? I mean, you could be sad, that’s fine, it’s even healthy, but from that to, like, making it, you know, so intense that you’re paralyzed, that’s, you know, not healthy. Right. And I think that That leap, what will prevent that leap is Emunah. To me, that’s the disconnect if you have Emunah, that you don’t go from sadness to, you know, drowning.

Right, right. What about your sister-in-law? Does she like be Menachem Avel widows? I don’t, I don’t know. I think so. Yeah. She does a lot. Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent. She’s a, she’s a rock. I don’t know how she does it, honestly. She’s really unbelievable. Yeah, she’s unbelievable.

Wow.

Okay, so I’m trying to think if there’s anything else. I mean, that’s like a nice parting message, right? That we have to like remember to, you know, although we’re feeling the pain, but let’s not forget about the Emunah piece because it doesn’t make any sense. That’s the most important thing. I mean, you could listen, you could literally look at the war and say, oh my God, this is so horrible.

It doesn’t make sense. Everyone’s crazy. Oh, you could say this doesn’t make sense. You know, it’s a famous story. Rebbi, Akiva. This is, to me, this is the story, right? Kiva, everyone, you know, those probably know it, but Kiva’s walking by Har Habayis and the Chorban and its total destruction and there’s a fox walking and all the rabbis are devastated and crying hysterically and Rabbi Akiva starts laughing.

They’re like, what on earth are you laughing about? He goes, are you kidding me? We have a, Nevua that’s true, that there’ll be foxes walking on the Chorban Habayis. If this Nevua came true, then the rest of the Nevuas are going to come true. This should be a moment of celebration that the Nevuas are coming true.

But like, , this is all pre written. We’ve seen, we knew that this was going to happen. And we didn’t know how it was going to break out, but we know the script, right? And so, you know, we have to look at this and say, yes, it’s hard. Yes. It’s tragic. Yes. But it’s also part of the process bringing us closer to Mashiach, and we knew it was going to happen.

And if this came true, then the rest is going to come true too. And that, to me is the message of optimism, right? There’s so much optimism to hold onto here. It’s a question of perspective, and you have to look at it from that perspective and not drown in the negativity. Are you involved with a lot of stories, or do you just know a lot of stories of people that, like, really became Shomer Shabbos and stuff like that?

So many. So many. Hundreds of stories of people, like, I mean, this one woman, I don’t remember her name, but she was a hostage. And she just, she said, like, I was witnessing open miracles, like, open miracles. And she, like, yeah, she took on herself to keep Shabbos, and yeah, there’s tons of stories like that. Tons.

She was witnessing open miracles as a hostage? Yeah, like, there’s so many stories about this. This is the guy. I don’t know. He was in a house and as a soldier and he like decided for whatever reason to walk out. He walked out and boom, a grenade blew up like so many stories like that. Really? So many.

Okay, so Mashiach is coming today. Yay. Yesterday.

Okay, well thank you so so much. I think people are really gonna enjoy this because this is what people are, you know, yearning for these days, so I really appreciate you coming on. Of course. Thanks for having me.