On erev Shabbos, some 200 people were on hand to dedicate the cornerstone of the new Federman Farm, which was destroyed without advanced warning a number of days earlier. The participants were not just local Chevron and Kiryat Arba residents, but supporters from Gush Etzion, Yerushalayim and even Ra’anana. Also present were Noam Federman, his wife Elisheva and their nine children, as well as Kiryat Arba Chief Rabbi Dov Lior Shlita, Tzvi Katzover, the mayor of Kiryat Arba, and Rabbi Eliezer Waldman Shlita, the rosh yeshiva of the Kiryat Arba Hesder Yeshiva.

Some of the youths taking part in the ceremony stated they will no longer live in a ghetto, and began tearing town additional sections of the security fence in the area.

Perhaps the most poignant words came from Rav Lior Shlita, who reflected back 69 years to a time when he was a child, explaining the Gestapo came to his home and they were compelled to leave, “only with the clothing on our backs, without being permitted to take anything else,” drawing an analogy to the actions of the IDF force who came, without warning, and destroyed the Federman home.

Over Shabbos, some 50 people remained on the site, vowing the Federman home would be rebuilt despite the tenacious efforts of the government to remove the structure.

(Yechiel Spira – YWN Israel)