Doron Mahareta represented everything a Jew could hope to be. He immigrated to Israel from Ethiopia in 1991 in Operation Solomon at the age of eight. After attending yeshivah high school, Doron began to learn Torah in Mercaz HaRav, Israel’s flagship religious Zionist yeshivah.
A student there for nine years, he was known for his sharp mind and kind heart, challenging others intellectually and lending a helping hand whenever needed. Friends related that his face would glow with joy as he studied with them. He also served as a counselor at an after-school program for immigrant Ethiopian children.
Three years ago, Doron joined the army under a special arrangement for advanced yeshivah students, serving nine months in the armored corps, and fighting as a reservist in the Second Lebanon War. With some of his rabbinic ordination exams already completed, he was well on his way to becoming a leader of the Ethiopian Jewish community.
On Rosh Chodesh Adar of this year, Doron was murdered with a Gemara in his hands in Yeshivat Merkaz Harav by an Arab terrorist, along with seven other students.
The students of Yeshivat Lev Hatorah (an American post-high school yeshivah) decided that we needed to do something in response.
We hope to continue Doron’s legacy. We are creating a scholarship fund called Or l’Doron which will sponsor eight Ethiopian students to sit and learn Torah intensively for several years, after which they will then assume leadership positions as rabbis within the Ethiopian Jewish community.
To see if there was an interest for this type of scholarship, the staff of Or l’Doron met with a number of Ethiopian youth who have already begun to assume leadership roles.
They described the very harsh socio-economic situation prevalent in the Ethiopian community. The financial burden is born by these young students, who must support not only themselves, but their parents and younger siblings. The pressure to go out and find work is enormous. Thus, promising young scholars leave yeshivah before they have fulfilled their potential as talmidei chachamim (Torah scholars).
Moshe, a young man from Rechovot, perhaps put it best when he said, “There are many donors who will provide scholarships to Ethiopians who want to attend university. But, no one seems to care about developing Jewish leadership within the community, or funding programs that aim to [provide] the Ethiopian community [a Jewish education]. If this organization succeeds, it will be the first of its kind and desperately needed.”
Can there be a more appropriate response to this tragedy? These boys were murdered not because of a crime they committed, but because of what they represented. Their attacker knew that these students were some of the best and the brightest young men, students who loved Torat Yisrael, Am Yisrael and Eretz Yisrael. The terrorist sought to extinguish the flame, and it is our responsibility to make the flame blaze that much brighter.
Doron need not have died in vain. He represented commitment to an idea—that the Jewish nation can only be complete when it is bringing Hashem’s word to this world, when the Jewish people are in Israel, and when the Jewish people are united. Self-sacrifice was not an abstract concept for him, nor should it be for us.
With thousands of rockets falling on Sderot and now Ashkelon, and increasing threats from Hezbollah and Hamas, it is easy for us in America to feel that there is nothing we can do. But we can and must respond to the attempt to wipe out the next generation of religious Zionist leaders the way that our nation has always responded to tragedy—by re-building.
And to make this dream a reality, we need your help.
For more information, donation opportunities and/or to fund an individual student, please contact Sam Harari at Samharari@gmail.com.
