While Israel’s war of survival is raging on seven fronts, and the entire nation is dealing with anxiety and loss, Avital Salzman and her husband, a fighter in the IDF reserves, were blessed earlier this month with triplets, a gift from the Divine promising a bright and happy future for the Jewish people in their homeland.
Speaking to Channel 14’s Naomi Rahelis, Avital, who cared for her three other children during the pregnancy, while her husband fought on the front, declares: “The attempts to harm us will only bring new life into the world.”
“In a year when the people of Israel lost so many heroes, a year when we sent our husbands and children to fight to preserve our lives, I was privileged to bring new lives into the world,” she says.
ב״ה זכינו להפוך מהורים לשלושה להורים לשישה, זה לא עצר את בעלי מלחתום על התנדבות ולחזור למילואים, עד הניצחון??
אביטל זלצמן
מקור: חנוך דאום – Hanoch Daum pic.twitter.com/nf0jpyLfZ1— חרדים10 (@charedim10) December 6, 2024
Avital spent many months at home with her children while her husband fought at the front until she was hospitalized to preserve the three fetuses. “But we don’t look at it as if we were in danger, God forbid,” she says. “On the contrary, all along we thought about what we were winning.”
According to Avital Salzman, their children benefit from their father being strong and heroic, from their mother protecting their new siblings on the way, and from their being raised on the values of the Jewish people according to Jewish law in the Land of Israel.
“The longings we had for each other, the longings for the children, the longings of the children for their father who fought and their mother who was hospitalized, these are good longings, not easy, but the reasons are good and, God willing, the results are good,” says the new mother of triplets.
Avital, a frequent guest on feminine spiritual podcasts, adds a mystical note to the triple birth: “When our triplets, a daughter and two sons, were born, the neighborhood talked about how on our street we lost a daughter and two sons in the war. One of them was Amichai Oster Hy’d, after whom we named one of our sons. Also, my husband’s reserves battalion lost three heroes, including the battalion commander, Nati Alkobi Hy’d,” she says, adding, “So we really felt the right not only to fight for life on the battlefield but also to fight to bring new life into the world, a life that we received as a gift from God for the merit of our nation, with the responsibility to protect them, give birth to them, and raise them to be part of the future generation that is already here.”
She adds that during the Maccabees’ time, we fought for family purity, to continue having Jewish children: “That’s how it is on all the holidays, and that’s what all the Holocaust survivors say, that our victory is the continuity of the Jewish people.”
Avital believes it started even earlier, when we were slaves in Egypt, they worked us hard and threw our firstborn boys into the Nile, but the righteous women of the Jewish people did not give up, and “the more they were oppressed, the more they increased and spread out (Ex. 1:12), and we continued to give birth.”
