The eve of Yom Kippur, 5700.
Shari Roth, the political commentator for the Haredim 10 website, came to the grave of her grandparents – the late Rabbi Shalom Galai and his wife Esther, at the Segula Cemetery in Petah Tikva, to offer a sermon.
She was accompanied by a film crew from the series 'Nyes', an Israeli documentary television series that aired on Kan Channel 11, and dealt with the world of Haredi media.
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The piece presented here remained on the editing room floor.
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“Every year, at this time, I come here, on the eve of Yom Kippur. Sometimes I get to come on the anniversary, but on the eve of Yom Kippur, I don’t miss it. The last time I was here was on the 10th of Adar, a day before my son’s wedding. I was very excited, of course, I came with him, with the groom himself, it was on the anniversary of my grandfather’s passing.
It was an emotional moment, I prayed very much that it would succeed, that the child would build a house for himself the way I wanted and the way they would have wanted. Anyone who sees what is written on their graves, understands very well what they wanted.
On the grandfather's grave it is written: 'He studied the Torah with great perseverance day and night.' Neighbors say that they always knew that they would get up in the middle of the night and at the Galai family's window there would be light and the grandfather would be sitting and studying. It was a regular sight in the Halisa neighborhood, there was no one who didn't know it. So when they say about him 'he studied with perseverance,' it really was perseverance. I, every child I had, would take him, get him used to a pacifier and at the same time take his stroller to the grandfather.
Children who are one week old, two weeks old, three weeks old, four years old, then when they were crawling… take it, soak up the air. And that's all, no need to say more. Thank God I succeeded, they soaked up the air and are learning, thank God, steadily.
This grandfather was also a student of the 'Chafetz Chaim' in his yeshiva in Radin, so from there he brought another value with him, the value of not hurting people, not gossiping about people, that was part of him.
He was a very upright man, and all his life he would talk about the 'Chafetz Chaim', and all the stories revolved around this point of 'Don't quarrel,' 'Don't cause a dispute.'.
They lived in a mixed neighborhood, doubly mixed – a neighborhood in the city of Haifa, if you know – both secular and ultra-Orthodox, and also a mix of Arabs and Jews. And they never fought. My grandmother, when a neighbor would say something: "You're disturbing me, they're stepping on me, they're doing this to me," she would immediately tell us, "Holy." We didn't fight with neighbors, we didn't fight with people on the street, we didn't fight with friends. She never told a neighbor that she was dressed wrong or anything like that, they lived in peace with the Arabs too.
Even during the more turbulent times, she would tell me about the riots in Wadi Salib, even then they knew how to get along well with the neighbors. Grandma, when it came to his studies, she really liked to chat and talk, unlike him, but she never bothered him. I have never seen a time in my life, and I was at their place a lot, where in the middle of him sitting and studying she would say something to him or interrupt him. Sometimes, she would actually physically bite her lips, so as not to disturb him. Because she really was the type who wanted to tell him things all the time.
These are my grandparents, I come here every year on Yom Kippur Eve, pray, ask, say the names of all the children, in order. You don't find many people like that today. I think our generation has a lot to learn from the generation of yesteryear.".
