Father’s Heartrending Hesped For His Son: “You’re Now In Rebbe Shimon’s Yeshiva”

Over a thousand people attended the heartrending levaya of one of the youngest victims of the Meron disaster, 13-year-old Yedidya Moshe Chiyut, z’l, in Bnei Brak on Motzei Shabbos.

The niftar’s father, Reb Avigdor Chiyut, and his 10-year-old brother, Shmuel Meir, were injured in the incident but were released from the hospital to attend the levaya, arriving there in an ambulance.

“I’m telling you Yedidya, this doesn’t make any sense,” the heartbroken father said. “I’m not supposed to be at your levaya. A father isn’t present at his son’s levaya.”

“Yedidya, you were obsessed with shiurim, with learning. I would turn your MP3 off at three in the morning, you would fall asleep to shiurim. You would sleep on top of the summaries you wrote.”

“Yedidya, you were my Rebbe. ‘Abba, why didn’t you open the Shulchan Orech this week? Abba, you didn’t record the shiur clearly enough this week. Abba, this isn’t appropriate for you.'”

“Yedidya, you were accepted to a certain yeshivah but Hakadosh Baruch Hu found you a better yeshivah. I was also part of this test but they didn’t accept me. We were there on the floor. Another 20 seconds and I would have been there with you in the same place.”

“Yedidya, I didn’t know what I had. You only know what a person is after he goes. We’ll be strong, we’ll continue. You didn’t depart from us forever. Already tonight, Ima and I bought chelkos (burial plots) next to you. We’re not departing from you. Either we’ll meet after 120 or we’ll soon meet at techiyas hameisim.”

“Now you’re in the yeshivah of Rebbe Shimon. Get to know all the Rabbanim Kedoshim you spoke about. Halavei that we’ll reach even a tenth of your madreiga. You were a yeled kodesh. You were killed exactly a minute after you were mekabel ol malchus Shamayim from the Toldos Aharon Rebbe. You were killed with the song of Bezuchus HaTana HaElokai.

“Daven for me, for Ima and your siblings. Daven to Hakadosh Baruch that He send the Geulah.”

“Rabbosai, now is the time for us to unite. We endured a long and terrible period of the coronavirus and now this tragedy. Hakakosh Baruch Hu is talking with us.”

“We have to unite – that’s what Hakadosh Baruch Hu wants from us. If we don’t learn from the good thing, we have to learn from tragedies. Now everyone is here. If we were smart enough to do this earlier we could have saved ourselves a lot of tzaar. Yedidya, daven for us.”