Widow of Slain Israeli Officer Overwhelmed by Unique Gestures Honoring Husband's Heroics

Though it’s been four months since the terrorist attack on a Jerusalem synagogue that left four rabbis dead, the American Jewish community has been looking for unique ways to honor the Druze police officer killed while trying to protect the worshippers.

One rabbi said his New York synagogue has based its effort to help the officer’s widow on a biblical mandate.

Zidan Saif was the first police officer on the scene of the November attack by two Palestinians wielding guns and knives who killed the four men while they were praying. Saif’s bravery has been widely lauded in Israel where he has been described as one of the “righteous among the nations,” those non-Jews who took great personal risk to save Jews during the Holocaust and other trying times. Thousands of Jewish Israelis joined Druze mourners to pay their last respects at Saif's funeral in November.

A New York rabbi this week brought an envelope containing 125,000 shekels, roughly $31,000, collected from his and other congregations thousands of miles away to help Saif’s wife Rinel, 22, raise her 8-month-old daughter, Larin.

Meanwhile, a Jewish couple in New York named their newborn after Saif. Saif’s widow was overcome with emotion when she met the family and the baby last month in New York.

Rinel Saif, 22, meets the baby named after her slain husband Zidan, a hero who has been called "righteous among the nations." (Image source: YouTube/Times of Israel)

“We felt we had a responsibility for good people who gave their lives for Jews,” Rabbi Hershel Billet told the Israeli website Walla when he gave Rinel Saif the gift. “There is a law in the Torah that says we have to help widows and orphans.”

Walla described the scene at the Saif family home where walls that used to be bare are today filled with honors bestowed posthumously on Zidan.

Rinel told the rabbi that she celebrated her 22nd birthday on Sunday, but “it was a day of mourning.”

“There’s no joy. There’s no celebration. There’s nothing,” Saif’s widow said.

“Though I am only 22, God knows how much I’ve been through in my short life. The embrace from the Israeli people helps a lot and warms the heart,” she said, noting that even months later people she has never met call her every day to see how she is doing and if she needs anything.

Rinel Saif was overcome with emotion as she held the baby named to honor her husband by a New York Jewish couple (Image source: YouTube/Times of Israel)

Rinel said her daughter’s name Larin means “tears of joy.”

She still hasn’t moved her husband’s clothes and shoes from the places he last had them before he was killed, she told Walla.

“I feel he is still with us. His spirit is with us. In our [Druze] faith, we believe in reincarnation and this belief eases my pain somewhat,” she said. “I believe he will return, that in two years a boy will walk into the house and tell me, ‘I’m Zidan. I was your husband.’”

Rinel Saif kissed the newborn Koby Zidan. (Image source: YouTube/Times of Israel)

New Yorkers Alexander and Jennifer Chester who named their baby son after Zidan had an emotional meeting with his widow at a Times of Israel event in New York last month.

The baby, Koby Zidan, was born two weeks after the terrorist attack.

“Mazel tov. May God protect him,” Rinal told the couple. “What God took [in years] from Zidan, may he give to him [the baby Zidan]. May he have a long life.”

Here is video of the moving meeting between Saif’s widow, his brother and the Chester family:

(H/T: Times of Israel)