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The Torah portion of Toldot opens with the biblical story of Isaac and his struggles to come to terms with his father’s death. Isaac’s story unfolds through confusion and a quest for identity following a profound loss and chronicles a journey from uncertainty to self-discovery. On Saturday, November 18, Jen Airley was in a synagogue in Ramat Beit Shemesh, listening to the reading of Toldot.

“It was Shabbat morning. I was in synagogue, and suddenly, after the Torah reading, I felt I had to leave,” she shared with . “I had to go home and say Psalms.



I almost ran home. I was just crying and saying Psalms.” While Jen couldn’t quite explain what caused her to leave the communal prayers and go home to pray in solitude, she could feel something was happening.

What she couldn’t know was that her son, Binyamin, was battling at the time. Binyamin Airley was imbued with a love for life and the Land of Israel. After making aliyah with his family in 2006 from the US, the Airleys settled in Ramat Beit Shemesh, but Binyamin was searching for more.

He was the kind of boy who wanted to be outdoors, breathing in the holy air of Israel. Binyamin’s parents described their son as a boy who “saw everybody as an equal. He didn’t see anybody as higher or lower than himself,” which sometimes could lead to difficulty listening to authority figures.

“Binyamin was the wildest of our kids,” his father, Rob, told the . “It was a challenge with him. By the time he was 16, he st.

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