7 and a half months after his wife Esther died of the video disease: Jonathan Pollard is expected to marry Rebecca Abrahams-Donin, a Hasidic Chabad widow, mother of 7 children from Jerusalem, whose husband died 7 and a half years ago.
The announcement of the engagement was supposed to be published this morning but was postponed at the couple’s request until after the funeral of Major Bar Falah of the 14th, who fell in an encounter with terrorists.
Jonathan and Rebecca’s engagement announcement:
“What shall I answer to God, all His reward is upon me
With praise and thanksgiving to God, we are excited to announce our engagement
We are full of gratitude to you, our friends and family members and our dear children for the love and hugs and first and foremost to Esther A.H. who in her infinite love even recognized us and allowed this miracle to happen. Her memory will not be fulfilled by us forever.
The wedding will take place with God’s help in about two months, in three legs.
Jonathan Pollard, Rebecca Abrahams-Donin”
Rivka immigrated to Israel in 1996. Her husband, the late Rabbi Yosef Eliyahu Donin, who for many years operated the bustling tefillin stand at the Western Wall and encouraged thousands of Jews to place tefillin, died in the month of Iyar 1995, at the age of 50 – and left behind his wife Rebekah, and seven orphans between the ages of two and 18.
Their son, Mandy Donin, was injured 4 years ago while playing with his campers at a Chabad camp during the days between seasons. He fell on his head from a great height, and lost consciousness. He was admitted to the hospital in serious condition, but miraculously recovered and against all odds, and was released from the hospital.
The grandfather of Rivka, a resident of the Gila neighborhood in Jerusalem, was the late Rabbi Kalman Leib Abrahams – the one who captured one of the greatest Nazi oppressors, Rudolf Hess, in his position in a special intelligence unit of the British military police.
Hess, who served as the commander of the Auschwitz extermination camp, and was responsible for the murder of millions of Jews during the Holocaust. After the war he was tried and convicted of genocide as a war criminal, and was executed by hanging in 1947 inside the Auschwitz camp.
1 comment
Rifka’s grandfather Karl Abrahams was not a rabbi and not a resident of Jerusalem. He lived in Liverpool UK and was indeed a respected member of the Jewish community there. An amateur historian of local Jewish life he did interrogate Rudolf Hess and extract a confession from him. No easy task . I was shown the letters he wrote from Europe to his wife Betty, my aunt, explaining the horror of sitting in front of a monster. These documents are now in Yad Vashem.