JEWISH PRESS: RIVKAH MORIAH: 'LETTER FROM MOM' By: Prof. Livia Bitton Jackson

"Letter From Mom" was written by Mrs. Rivkah Moriah to her beloved 16-year-old son on the first anniversary of his death in a horrific massacre. Avraham David was one of eight Yeshiva students murdered by an Arab terrorist in the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva overa year ago.

It was on the night of Rosh Chodesh Adar Bet, March 6, 2008. While "Yashlatz" (Yeshivat Yerushalaim L'Tzeirim) which Avraham David z"l attended, was being set up for the traditional Rosh Chodesh party, Avraham David and a number of the most diligent students went to the yeshiva library to continue their studies. As these young scholars were deeply absorbed in their study, an Arab employee of the Yeshiva burst into the campus library and mercilessly slaughtered all the young boys he could reach.

How does a mother cope with the news of her child's murder? How can she bear the impact of devastating grief?

In Rivkah Moriah's letter to her cherished firstborn, I found the answer to my questions. I found out about the coping mechanism of this unique mother who refers to her child's murder as "the tzaddik's death Hashem chose for you..." Rivkah Moriah's remarkable coping mechanism provides an invaluable lesson in emunah - in profound, unshakable faith in G-d.

"I learned what prayer really is," Moriah explains in her letter, "although we ask for something in particular, we are really turning ourselves over to the will of Hashem with the knowledge that He will do what is right in His eyes and will take care of us no matter what, and in the way, He wills for us."

Who is this remarkable woman? What is the secret source of such deep faith?

Rivkah Moriah was born Martha Webb into a Quaker family in rural New Hampshire, in the United States. The Quakers, or "Society of Friends," is an offshoot of Christianity that focuses on ethical values sparked by the Divine Light within the individual believer. I believe for Martha, predisposed by her Quaker upbringing to awareness of human suffering, that a year spent in West Germany as an exchange student in the 11th grade, was the turning point - a pivotal life-altering experience.

"It was my first real exposure to the Holocaust and the history of anti-Semitism that bred it," Rivkah Moriah recalls. "Also, I had to go out of my way to keep my own religion, so I started thinking about religion much more consciously."

Martha Webb's direct contact with Judaism took place as a student at Oberlin College in Ohio, when she participated in a Sabbath social gathering with Jewish students. "I went for the community aspect of Judaism," she explains. For me, her astute comment - "The Jewish rituals sanctifying the mundane really spoke to me"- is right on target.

Having discovered the magnetic core of Judaism, Martha Webb, with her Quaker sense of spirituality, was determined to complete the process of attachment. She went to Israel to study at the "Machon Pardes Institute of Jewish Learning, where [she] coalesced the basics for what [she] needed to be Jewish."

Right after her conversion to Judaism, which took place in the U.S., Martha, now Rivkah, Webb, went on Aliyah. "The Aliyah was, for me, a natural extension of my conversion. I 'should' have gone back for just one last semester to complete my degree at Oberlin, but I was determined to live in Eretz HaKodesh (in the Holy Land)."

Now, 19 years later, Rabbanit Rivkah Moriah lives in Efrat, the wife of Rabbi David Moriah, a teacher - "a mechanech, an educator, in the fullest sense of the word." She is a balanit, a bath attendant in the mikveh, the ritual bath for Jewish women, the loving stepmother of her husband's six children from his previous marriage, mother of her own 12-and-a-half year old Elisha Dan, five-and-a-half year old Noam, four-and-a-half year old Chai and - in a real sense (as she confesses in "Letter From Mom": "I still am your mother ") of 16-year-old Avraham David, z"l.

Over the past year, she has become active on behalf of Avraham David's yeshiva high school, Yashlatz. "This is a nechama (consolation) for me," Rabbanit Moriah says. "I am in the process of setting up a memorial scholarship in his name for Yashlatz students, be"H, Anyone wishing to make a contribution in Avraham David's memory can do so at www.yashlatz.com," she notes.

One more imitable coping mechanism.