Rabbi David Bagno, Rabbi of the community in Ramat Beit Shemesh of fallen soldier Binyamin Meir Airly, who fought in Gaza, tells about his character.
"Just a pure boy. Really. I had a close relationship with him, not on a daily basis, but every time he came home. He study at the Hesder yeshiva in Tzfat, and when he came, we met, a hug and 'how are you and what's going on', a pure boy, a boy who wanted to do what's right. He wasn't interested in other things. He was just looking for what's right," he said in an interview with Esti Perez on Kan Reshet Bet.
Rabbi Bagno elaborated on Binyamin’s character, saying, "He was guided by doing what was right. His mother said that after they were notified [that he fell in battle], she looked for something in his room to hang on to, and she found almost nothing, he was that simple. We went shopping and I told him I will buy him clothes. He replied that there’s no need, that was the kind of child he was."
Rabbi Bagno had difficulty starting the interview with Perez due to his immense pain. "It's hard for me to speak. I have been the rabbi of the community for 13 years, I have been with him and the family since he was a child. The Mishkan Shilo community in Ramat Beit Shemesh is a Zionist Torah community, new immigrants, 90% of the community came from the US, England and other places. Very high quality idealistic people.”
"His father came from England and his mother from the US, a gentle, gentle family, all the purity and goodness that can be put in there. They are really, a very, very special family, with the ideal of being here in Israel and building their home here. Sending their children to institutions that combine army service and doing it as well as possible. That's who he was."
Asked if it was clear to Binyamin that he wanted to be a combat soldier, the rabbi replied, "Yes, his parents must have been worried. I remember that one Shabbat I walked with his mother after shul and we talked. She was very worried. It was clear, though, that this was the right thing to do. We have 30-40 soldiers from the community who are combat soldiers. Until you experience this and are hit with it, you can’t describe it. Everything broke. Literally."
