drive safe

The past week has been a tough one for me personally.

I have been reporting for the Ma’ariv newspapers about a number of fatal car accidents over the past week in Israel. 

For me, this is extra tough because when I was young, my best friend, Naftali Zvi Bruer, died after he was hit by a car while he was riding his bike.

I was severely bullied as a kid, but one person took it on himself to befriend me and helped me. Naftali.

We did homework together, played hide and seek in his father’s furniture store, collected together money for our school on Purim and then everything crashed. Naftali was in a coma for over a year and every week I would go to visit him and would talk to him, knowing he wouldn’t talk back to me.

Every day in school we said psalms for him. One day as we were saying psalms, the principal entered the classroom and whispered something to the teacher. Following the psalms, when we say names to be blessed, I noticed the teacher did not mention Naftali Zvi's name. Knowing that he had been improving of late, I thought he had finally woken up. But my dreams were crushed as the teacher informed us that my best friend had succumbed to his wounds and had left the world.

Naphtali Zvi never left me. At my bar mitzvah his mother gave me an envelope with some cash for a gift, which I found out she had put aside in an envelope the week he died for a bar mitzvah present for me.

On the day of my wedding, I went to his grave and invited his soul to the celebration. I also sent his parents an invitation with a handwritten note on how much he meant to me and how he was so special to me.

I always wear a ‘Or Yarok’ bracelet band on my wrist. Or Yarok (Hebrew for ‘green light’) is an Israeli organization that works to raise awareness about dangerous driving and road safety.

I guess what I'm saying here is be careful when you drive, always stay alert as driving can kill.

Naphtali Zvi is always in my heart.

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