Ohad's timely email

From: ohad
Subject: hi
Date: February 5, 2007 3:03:26 AM EST
To: tamar

היי תמר,
מה שלומך?
איך הייתה הטיסה, אני מקווה שבסדר, כי זה בכל זאת, טיסה ארוכה.
המון אהבה ונשיקות!!!!!!!!!!!!!
מאוהד וכל המשפחה

[Hi Tamar,
How are you?
How was the flight? I hope OK because anyway, it is a long flight.
Loads of love and kisses!!!!!!!!!!!!!
From Ohad and all the family]

Jerusalem teen Ohad sent this email on my recent return to my "other" home, Atlanta, where I live when I am not in my "other" home, Israel. Other-shmother. Let's just say, my commutes between homes take longer than a short bus ride.

This bright, chipper, outgoing 13-year-old plays, studies, and works hard. He is also realistic, practical, and resilient in battling leukemia while living full tilt despite military incursions and existential threats that imperil him, his family, and our world.

When we meet (shown here at cousin Hillel's marriage to Natalie, in Jerusalem) or exchange email messages and speak on the phone, Ohad beams optimism. He is filled with high hopes and bursting with plans even when he shares openly the harshness of his treatments and subsequent periods of frailty and "time out."

Ohad's ideas and actions offer a healthy, sound alternative — and antidote — to the chaos, conflict, and hatred raging locally and globally. And I can believe my dreams for his generation to survive and flourish — in Israel, throughout the Middle East, and in the rest of this village we call the world.

Genesis 46:10 mentions Ohad as the third son of Simeon. The name means "will sympathize." Oh... Ohad, sympathizer and more, may you continue to go from strength to strength.

NOTE: Read more about Ohad and his family via my previous blog entries here, about Ohad's health crisis and what he says on his becoming bald temporarily, and here, when he became a Bar Mitzvah! Also, here, about Aviyah, his paratrooper brother, and here, where Daniel, his ninth grader brother, shares his powerful commentary on the Akedah (Binding of Isaac).