Jerusalem – Father Eulogizes Infant Killed In Jerusalem Attack: ‘You Made Us Happy From The Moment You Arrived’

Jerusalem – At midnight, in a small crowded funeral parlor in Jerusalem, Shmuel Elimelech Braun stood in front of the the small white shroud covered body of his three-month-old daughter Chaya Zissel, killed earlier that day in a terror attack.

“Zissla, you were pure,” he said in a tear choked voice. Earlier on Wednesday, he and his wife had taken her for her first trip to see the Western Wall.

“In the last hour, you were by the Kotel. You woke up.We shmoozed (talked) with each other,” the young father said.

“You looked at me and smiled,” Braun said.

“I told you, this is the Kotel, this is Har HaBayit (The Temple Mount),” he recalled.

Braun spoke with his young daughter about the cherubs that had been on the Ark of the Covenant when the Temple existed and described how their faces were like that of a pure child.

“Like you,” Bruan had said. “You looked at me, with a twinkle in your eye, like you knew, like you understood me,” he said.

“You made up happy from the moment you [arrived],” he Braun said.

In the last few weeks they had celebrated the holidays together.

“You were glowing,” he said.

He and his wife who, along with Zissel, had spent the holiday with their parents. Braun recalled how he would hold Zissel on his lap and sing religious songs at the end of the holiday meals. Around him, as he spoke, where male mourners who wore black suits and black hats. His tearful wife, stood together with the women.

President Reuven Rivlin, who eulogized Chaya Zissle, that the baby’s mother, was from the Halperin family, who built the Zichron Meir neighborhood of Bnai Brak.

The baby’s grandfather Shimshon Halperin said that for the last 40 years, he had lived in the US. His daughter had returned to Israel this year, so her husband, Shmuel Elimelech could study.

Halprin had come to Israel with with his wife Sarah for the holidays. He spoke with reporters after the terror attacked and described how his daughter had tried for a number of years to have a child before giving birth to Chaya Zissel.

On Wednesday, his daughter and husband, had taken Chaya Zissel for her first trip to the Western Wall.

“It was her first trip to the Kotel. They took photographs,” Halperin said.

They returned home on the light rail. Just after they stepped of the train, a young Palestinian man from east Jerusalem Abd al-Rahman al-Shaludi drove his car into the group of people standing by the train station.

Police have charged that he did so deliberately and that the incident is a terror attack.

Community members in Monsey said the mother of Chaya Zissel was from Monsey until about 10 years ago.

U.S. Congresswoman Nita M. Lowey, D-Harrison, issued a statement Thursday morning:

“Our hearts are completely broken by yesterday’s terrorist attack in Jerusalem that killed Chaya Zissel Braun,” Lowey said. “Such indiscriminate hatred and targeted violence against innocent civilians, including this three-month-old baby girl with family right here in Rockland County, shocks the conscience and must be universally condemned.

“My thoughts and prayers are with Chaya’s entire family in both Israel and the United States, and all of the defenseless victims who were injured during yesterday’s attack. Their grief from this nightmare is felt around the world.”