The following article appeared shortly after Roi Klein’s death. We are reprinting it in order to reacquaint our readers with this heroic young man who sacrificed his life to save others.
Major Roi Klein.
It is a name that held no meaning to us. He was a complete stranger, about whom we had never heard and whom we had never met.
Yet an image of the last seconds of his life won’t leave our mind.
Roi was a son. He was a brother. He was a husband to Sara and a father to three-year-old Gilad and one-year-old Yoav.
But most of all, Roi was a hero for all of us. He was a face and a name to the many Jewish heroes spanning the generations.
Roi’s funeral was on Thursday (July 27, 2006), the day that would have been his 31st birthday.
Major Roi Klein was a Golani brigade deputy commander. He was killed in an ambush among the houses of Bint Jbail, a large village in southern Lebanon. Hizbullah terrorists killed eight soldiers, including Roi, and injured nearly two dozen.
There were other soldiers next to Roi. A hand grenade was thrown at them and Roi shouted, “Grenade!” He then threw his body over it, sacrificing his life for the sake of his soldiers, who later attributed being alive to his act of selflessness.
In his last seconds of life, Roi mustered the strength to shout “Shema Yisroel,” the prayer that Jews have prayed for centuries, declaring our belief in G‑d and in a better world – the prayer that so many Jewish martyrs throughout the generations called out as they were being led to their deaths.
It was for his loved ones that Roi served in the special units of the Paratroop and Golani brigades. It was for them, and for the ideals represented by the Shema Yisroel prayer, that Roi diligently and courageously pursued his army service, advancing to the point where he would have been promoted to battalion commander.
What a colossal contrast between Roi and his enemy!
Roi was there to ensure a peaceful existence of his people in their homeland. He was there to safeguard the innocent lives of his children and his nation; to ensure that people could live in their homes in peace and tranquility; to guarantee that they could continue their ordinary day-to-day activities – activities like shopping in a mall without being blown to bits, like eating a family meal together in a pizza shop without worrying about flying shrapnel, like praying in a synagogue without having to run for cover in a bomb shelter or like sending their children on a school bus without thoughts of bullets penetrating within.
Roi was there to defend his people against those who vowed their destruction. Even in his death, he sacrificed his own life to ensure that his comrades could live.
Roi’s enemy was willing to die to bring death and mourning to as many as possible; Roi was willing to die to ensure life and liberty for others, to preserve a world in which Jews could pray to G-d in their synagogues, perform G-d’s commandments and make our world a better, more moral and more conscientious place.
This is the third time in this last century that the Jewish people have found themselves on the front lines against those who sought their annihilation.
For the Nazis, the Jew was a racial impurity to be exterminated like insects. For the Soviet communists, the Jewish religion was a thorn in their sides to be eradicated. And for the Islamic extremists, the Jew and his state must be eliminated from the face of the earth.
Less than a century has passed since Jews fell in the Soviet gulag with the chant of Shema in their mouths for the mere “crime” of observing kashrut or Shabbat in their private lives. Over 65 years have passed since the echo of the Shema resonated in the Nazi gas chambers where Jews were suffocated and then burnt to ashes in the crematoriums just because they were born as Jews.
And now Roi Klein follows in the path of these martyrs, dying with the cry of Shema on his lips in the act of defending his people from those who, yet again, wish to destroy them.
A new synagogue being built in Givaat Shmuel, Israel and will be called “Gvurot Roi.” Members of the congregation have already donated $500,000 but $500,000 more is needed to complete our project.
Please send your tax deductible donations to P.E.F., 6 Bellcourt Place, Livingston, N.J. 07039 USA. Please mark on your check: In Memory of Major Roi Klein, z”l.
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