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HINENI I read online a posting written by a grown man wishing to be an ostrich. Photos in his morning newspaper of another father writhing in agony on the floor of his murdered sons' bedroom, made the grown man want to hide his head in the ground. He was disheartened to accept politicians' promises were, still, being made, too little, too late, ringing empty. "Go tell the father who is burying his two boys tomorrow peace is near," he wrote chastizing politicians campaigning they would be the leader to deliver peace to his homeland. Refusing to abandon his desire for peace, the grown man wrote, "Fools promise the impossible." "It's just that I don't think a human being exists that can deliver us from the dangerous hell we are now living in." The photos the grown man looked at were not the last unbearable pictures published of a family's tragic loss from terrorism. January 30th, photos of the grown man, who wished to be an ostrich, made front page news around the world. The day before, January 29th, he was brutally murdered. In Israel. Thursday morning. He was commuting to his Jerusalem office for a 9:00am meeting with a client. He was a psychologist quite famous for easing troubled souls. 8:38am. A high pitched whine. A searing white light. In a flash, eleven men and women were sacrificed. The roof of the grown man's commuter bus was shredded from its supports. Witnesses say as he looked up from the Psalms he was reading, Death stared down into his eyes and laughed. One survivor says she is haunted her every moment, envisioning the murderer's white gleaming teeth. The grown man is my brother. I cannot be an ostrich. I will tell you the horror wracked on his home in Beitar Ilit. This time, instead of a father wailing for his infant sons, my brother's seven young children, ages 18 months to 16 years old, sobbed on their family home floor, mourning their Abba, their father, brutally torn from their lives. My middle son had located me, by mobile phone that afternoon, on site at the Woodrow Wilson Museum in DC. He begged me to sit down. Surrounded with historians and researchers waiting for our meeting, not understanding his request, my son, noting my hesitation, asked again, "Mom, please sit down." My heart breaks every time I relive hearing his sob engulfing his words, "Chezi was murdered on the bus bombing in Israel this morning." In a room full of strangers, my knees buckled. Desperate to hold my grown child, thousands of miles away from my arms, mourning his Uncle, my heart broke. All I could do, was weep, alone in DC. I had seen remains of the commuter bus on the early morning news. I saw the twisted carnage of Bus 19, its roof flung a ways up the street. And I had said to my oldest son who had just called, "I hope to God the dead did not suffer." I can tell you, firsthand, it is the living who suffer their lifetime, struggling to understand the senseless of hate. A lot has happened from January to June. Chezi's children are six months older. He is forever 41. Shifra, his wife, is learning to be both a dad and a mom. Days come and go. Some are good. Some, well, I told you, the horror never goes away. There are holidays. There are memories. Like Fathers Day, they bring sadness. I want to know how not to weep when I hear my nephew, Tzvi Yehoshua, crying, for his Abba, his dad, in the arms of my niece, Chanah. The best I could do, from the distance of a transatlantic call, was to play the musical on/off tones of my cellphone, that transfixed him when we were together in Israel, the mourning week following Chezi's murder. Spitting image of his dad at the same young age, Tzvi quietened. Chanah whispered, "he keeps grabbing for the phone." I can give him the memory of musical solace. What I want to give him, our family, I cannot. I want January 29th to have never happened. Ever. That Thursday morning, Death came disguised as a 24 year old Palestinian Policeman, Ali Jaara. He stood beside my brother as Egged Bus 19 neared the Jerusalem residence of Israeli Prime Minister Sharon. It was a lovely morning in the Holy Land. Men and women were going to work. Sharon was meeting, that hour, with John Wolf, the US envoy on the Roadmap to Peace. Wolf was airlifted out of Jerusalem, within thirty minutes. It took ZAKA, the volunteer body rescue recovery group, much longer to clean the site of blood, guts, arms, legs, heads severed from bodies. It took the Abu Khabir, the body identification facility, ten hours to identify my brother to my waiting sister-in-law. You see, her first call came from their family dentist, wanting to know why he was being asked to release Chezi's dental records. That evening, eleven commuters were returned to their families in pine boxes. Now, their neshamas, their souls, are travelling Bus 19 throughout America. The rules of war call murdered civilians collateral damage. But this was not war. This was a bus. In a neighbourhood. Near a private home. Across the street from apartments. Kitty corner to a café. Directly in front, a beautiful movie poster of a sad eyed maiden, "The Girl With a Pearl." This was suburbia, not a war zone. Hatred promulgated this act of insanity. January 30th, communities of eleven families in six different countries mourned the tragic loss of loved ones. France, Ethiopia, Russia, Rumania, Canada and Israel. And in a seventh country, a community celebrated. The day after the bombing of Bus 19, nuptials were rejoiced throughout the Territories. A wedding was announced in the newspapers. Notices read, "Blessings will be accepted immediately after the burial of Ali Jaara" and "With great pride, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad marries its hero, Ali Jara, and member of its military wing, to the black eyed," as the promised 72 virgin brides are called. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Ikrima Sabri, a Voice of Palestine Radio boasted in interview about one young man eager to share in the reward of the Jihad. Gleefully, Sabri told his interviewer of the private talk he had with the young man the night before he became a martyr. "Do you know," Sabri said "the martyr told me "I want to marry the beautiful women of heaven." "The martyr is lucky," he continued, "The angels usher him to his wedding in heaven. The younger the martyr, the greater and more I respect him." Leaning forward for emphasis, Sabri shared something, we must listen to. "Inasmuch," he said, "as you love life, the Muslim loves death and martyrdom." The Chassidim share a parable of a man asked by a rabbinic leader, "For what did you come here?" The man answered, "To find God." The Chassidic leader answered, "Then you came for nothing. You're wasting your time." "Why?" the man asked, The Chassidic leader responded, "God is everywhere." "Then, tell me, master, why should I have come?" The answer the Chassid gave I think is a lamplight on the dark road of tyranny we are navigating today. The rabbi said, "To find ourselves." If we lose sight of who we are, the infidels win. Chezi, when asked by my birthday niece Devorah, was he afraid of dying, said, No. He was afraid of not living free to express his passion for Hashem. For God. Eight years before his murder, Chezi moved to Israel, accepting God's invitation to Avram, to "Walk in my presence." Chezi, figuring the invitation was open ended to the descendants of Avraham, took God up on the offer, to "inherit the gate of their enemies, all the nations of the earth shall enjoy blessing through your seed." God had asked Avram "Where are you?" Avram answered, "Hineni." January 29th, when God asked the grown man who wanted to be an ostrich, commuting on Bus 19, "where are you?" Chezi, along with ten other commuters, answered, "Hineni, I am here," Offered by Ali Jaara as human korbanot, sacrifices, to Allah, Chezi had written when the bullet with his name on it found him, it was time. He was being called Home to God, along with our other tzadikkim. The righteous ones. Almost one thousand, so far. Bus 19 stands outside your door to inspire compassion with which to fan the fire of solidarity burning brightly here today. In Avram's day, it was a burning bush that lit the way. Today, just a bus of murdered jews. Maybe, Chezi's 12 year old son Yitzchak, along with all children of God around the world, will be able to live freely, without fear of terrorism. This Father's Day, Chezi's legacy is reflected in the hearts of 7 fatherless souls. My nephew Yitzchak's Bar Mitzvah, symbolic coming of manhood, is in September. January 29th, he decided he must become a man. Terrorism's promise of 72 virgins in the afterlife robbed Yitzchak of his childhood. My heart breaks knowing little can detract a boy feeling he must assume his father's mantle of fiduciary duty. Daily, God tests Israelites faith as He tested Avraham's belief by asking him to sacrifice Yitzchak. Emails I received from Israel on Yom Yerushalayim, tell me Israel is stronger than ever. A renewed Ruach, a spiritual wind, sweeps the Land. A little bus with a big message beckons. No more murders. Please. So, "Hineni," I am here, in Denver, a bridge, a gesher, between two worlds building a foundation for a peaceful future, borne out of chaos, that began with the phone call, "Mom, Chezi was murdered this morning on Bus 19."