Watch: Rabbi Doron Perez tells how joy and pain collided at his son Yonatan’s wedding in a new interview with JLI YouTube.
It was the first Thursday after October 7, and Rabbi Doron Perez, Executive Chairman of the Mizrachi World Movement, faced an impossible dilemma. His son Daniel was missing in Gaza, and his son Yonatan, wounded fighting Hamas terrorists in the war’s first hours, was to be married to Galia in five days. “We didn’t know what to do,” Rabbi Perez says.
In a new interview with JLI YouTube, Rabbi Perez tells his family’s story of how great joy and bitter pain sometimes coexist.
Yonatan’s commanding officer, a traditional man from Tel Aviv, came to visit. “What are you going to do?” he asked. “What do you think?” Rabbi Perez asked. “I say, get married tonight in your uniform. The Jewish people have enough difficulties; we need simchot.”
The family resolved to go ahead with the wedding. “I saw that it is possible to hold both a blessing and curse,” Rabbi Perez says. “There was trembling, angst, and a lot of pain, but at the wedding, there was simcha.”
After the wedding, a friend said, “It was the holiest, saddest, happiest wedding I’ve ever been to.”
Watch JLI’s full interview with Rabbi Perez:
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