Grief, memories, pride and a Torah scroll

A father's love for his firstborn son. Is there anything so pure?

It's affection, of course. And pride. And support for the young man's dreams and aspirations.

So, when that son is taken from father and family by war, what remains?

Bottomless grief. Memories.

And pride.

All were on display Sunday, Feb. 1, as Yechiel Leiter, Israel's ambassador to the United States, came to Tucson for the dedication of a Torah scroll in the memory of his son, Major Moshe Yedidya Leiter, killed in combat in Gaza in November 2023.

Yechiel Leiter was born in Scranton, Pa., and emigrated to Israel as a teenager in the 1970s. His résumé is imposing, to say the least: An ordained rabbi, he also has advanced degrees in law, international relations and political philosophy. He was chief of staff to Benjamin Netanyahu when Netanyahu was Israel's Minister of Finance. He was a political aide to Ariel Sharon in the Knesset. He was deputy director general of the Israeli Ministry of Education. He was chairman of the Israeli Ports Authority. He has had multiple academic roles. He has written several books on the politics of the Middle east, and for a time served as a senior policy analyst at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

And for the past year, he has served as the 20th Ambassador from Israel to the United States.

On Sunday, he was all of that, and yet he was one thing above all else: A grieving father, full of sadness — and pride — for a son gone much too soon. The pride, it was clear, is wellplaced. Moshe Yedidya Leiter was a warrior — an officer in Israel's special forces. He was also a doctor, and himself a father. Yechiel Leiter recounted a shared cup of coffee with his son a decade or so before. The younger Leiter had just returned from a rescue mission to the Philippines after an earthquake. Israel had sent doctors and engineers and they had scoured the rubble for survivors, and Moshe Leiter was part of the security contingent that accompanied them. On that day, over coffee, he told his father, 'I'm going to go to med school.'

'What were you smoking in the Philippines?' his father asked. 'You're 33. You are 15 years into your career as a soldier. You have four kids. How are you going to go to med school?'

He said Moshe replied, 'I've spent 15 years learning how to take people out. I saw our doctors bring people back to life after they were in the rubble for four or five days. When you see doctors rescuing people, it's a transformative experience. I want to bring life. I'm going to medical school.'

Yechiel Leiter told his son he was behind him and would support him however he could.

He said that while his son was in medical school, Moshe was still doing 80, 90, 100 days a year of reserve duty. 'He was in demand,' Leiter said, 'because he was really good at soldiering.' *** The story of how the Torah came to be dedicated to Leiter is 'a miracle,' said Rabbi Yehuda Palgon of the Tucson Torah Center.

Perhaps the first part of the miracle is the Torah Center itself. Six rabbis and their families from the Rabbinical Seminary of America were invited to Tucson to form an organization to encourage more and deeper learning in the Jewish community about the Torah, the source of Jewish belief, and to help create a community of Jews earnestly interested in such learning.

That was two and a half years ago, Rabbi Yehuda Palgon says.

The Center is quietly doing exactly what it is designed to do — strengthen Jewish education, identity and community connections.

Among those Tucson Torah Center families are two people — brother and sister — Palgon's wife, Tehilla Palgon (nee Leiter), and Rabbi Yehuda Leiter. They are Moshe Leiter's cousins, and Yechiel Leiter is their uncle.

Now the story advances to Chicago, where a Jewish businessman and philanthropist who declined to give his name lives. A few weeks after the October 7 attack, during the first wave of IDF soldiers into Gaza, five soldiers were killed in one bombing. One of those was Moshe Leiter.

The philanthropist immediately flew to Israel with the intention to visit and console the mourning families of those soldiers. He did so, and one of the homes he visited was that of Yechiel Leiter.

The name rang a bell because three decades before, this philanthropist had learned at a yeshiva, or Orthodox Jewish college, with Yechiel Leiter's brother.

So as he visited with the mourning man, he said: 'It would be so nice to dedicate a Torah for your son.'

Nine months passed. That half-promise never left his mind completely, and one day he met two young rabbis visiting from Tucson — one of them named Leiter — and as they talked, he realized he would like to follow through and make a Torah dedication happen.

It is an expensive undertaking — not least because each 'new' Torah scroll must be hand-written in Hebrew by a scribe. It must be written on parchment — animal hide — not paper. It must be written with a quill, and a certain type of ink.

It takes a year of work. So the philanthropist commissioned the Torah, and arrangements were made, and Leiter, meanwhile, became the ambassador to the United States. Finally, when the Torah scroll was ready for completion, the event was scheduled — no easy thing with the ambassador's workload and unpredictable schedule.

Sunday, it all came together. Before a crowd of more than 600 community members at the Jewish Community Center, Leiter helped a scribe fill in the final letters of the Torah, transforming it, in the way of such ceremony, from a mere handwritten book into the most sacred artifact of Judaism.

'It's the holiest object, read from and studied constantly,' Palgon said. 'A Torah scroll is the most blessed thing possible to dedicate to someone's memory.'

But this was not, ultimately, a religious event. It was a human event, a celebration of a life and an honor to a grieving father.

'Beautiful circumstances brought together in Tucson a sitting Ambassador, his family, and hundreds of Jewish community members and friends from across the spectrum of politics, age, stage and Jewish practice,' said Hava Leipzig Holzhauer, President and CEO of Jewish Philanthropies of Southern Arizona, and a partner with the Tucson Torah Center and Tucson J in this gathering. 'We are who we are because of a culture and peoplehood that supports education and values rooted in T ikkun Olam, repairing the world. A communal Torah dedication reminds us of this imperative,' said Leipzig Holzhauer.

Before the Torah scroll was completed, Yechiel Leiter spoke to the crowd. When Netanyahu named him ambassador, he remarked upon Leiter's speaking ability, and that was certainly evident at Sunday's event.

He spoke passionately of another miracle — the miracle of the people of Israel, after thousands of years, returning home, both figuratively and literally.

And he spoke of his son. With pride.

Written by David McCumber

David McCumber is executive editor of the Arizona Daily Star.