Ripple effect of kindness helps Perez family heal

Rabbi Doron Perez, the one South African father still waiting for his son, Daniel’s, body to be returned from Gaza almost two years since he was taken, spoke for the first time back in South Africa at Chabad House Miracle Drive on Monday night, 1 September.

Perez, whose two sons spent most of their childhood here before the family made aliya, told how for 163 days, his family endured unbearable uncertainty over Daniel’s fate. Their worst fears were confirmed when Israeli forces revealed that he had been killed and his body was being held in Gaza.

“My wife’s suffering was incessant for 163 days. I have never seen such human suffering,” said Perez at the Chabad event, themed “Embrace the Ripple Effect”, which raised R30 million.

He recalled waking up on Simchat Torah nearly two years ago with two sons serving in the Israel Defense Forces, one a paratrooper, the other in the tank corps. Their eldest, Yonatan, was moderately wounded by a gunshot to the thigh, but the family had no news of Daniel. Only on 17 March 2024 did they learn the devastating truth: Daniel had been murdered on 7 October 2023. Hamas continues to hold his body nearly 700 days later.

“Two weeks later, it was confirmed that he was being held captive in Gaza. We didn’t know his fate, and we hoped and prayed that he was alive. It’s the closest I’ve ever been to the depth of human suffering. That 163 days later, when we were informed that our son had been killed, and based on all types of video evidence, we now had to sit shiva, and mourn, although we didn’t have his body.”

During shiva, he asked his wife, Shelley, how she was doing, and her answer shocked him to his core. She said she felt relieved. “I now know that he didn’t suffer, he isn’t suffering, and he will not suffer,” she said.

“During those 163 days, she could barely wash her hands in warm water because Daniel hates the cold. She was always worrying if Daniel was cold. She could barely swallow without crying and saying, ‘Is Daniel eating?’” he said. “Therefore, the 163 days was the closest I had seen of a non-stop, one long night of suffering of a mother, which could only be, so to speak, relieved by the fact that she knew her son was no longer suffering.”

However, Perez didn’t feel the same way. His suffering and mourning started after Daniel’s fate was confirmed.

For the first 163 days, Perez promised his son that he wasn’t going to be with him in Gaza in head and heart, which demonstrated the theme of the evening, the “Ripple Effect”. The ripple, he said, begins in the mind. It meant that while he was doing everything in his power to bring him home, he didn’t watch any hostage videos or think about what he might be going through.

“I knew that if I was always thinking about him in Gaza, I wouldn’t be able to function. I would be paralysed,” he said, “I tried so hard. I called it ‘my hostage deal’ in my own mind. I said to myself, ‘Why worry if Daniel’s being tortured, because there’s a reasonable chance that he’s dead?’ which turned out, unfortunately, to be true. And if he’s dead, I’ve got nothing to worry about. He’s not being tortured for a moment. Why waste time worrying, if in fact there’s nothing to worry about? But if he’s dead, I’ve got a lifetime to mourn.”

On the day Daniel was confirmed dead, Perez broke, but instead of crumbling, he did what he knew best and what he felt comfortable with – he started doing.

“When we got that terrible knock on the door, there was nothing I could do. We still work to bring his body back for burial, and we hope and pray for it, but there was nothing I could do.”

He said he reached a turning point, realising the true meaning of the word “comfort” while reading Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. It was through this book that he realised the power of choice, and how the choices we make have a ripple effect on everything.

“Viktor Frankl, who survived the camps, said that we all have only one ultimate freedom. There’s one freedom that nobody can take away from us. It’s the freedom to choose,” Perez said.

Throughout the evening it was emphasised that every good thing starts with a drop in the water, and one act of kindness ripples out.

Rabbi David Masinter, the director of Chabad House Johannesburg, said that between 1986 and 1992, people would line up every Sunday to go and get a dollar from the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

“The Rebbe believed that the promise of the prophets had to be fulfilled. That one day, Moshiach was going to come. There’s going to be no more war, no more suffering, no more hatred, no more sickness. G-dliness is going to be revealed in the world. The Rebbe said the way we do that is by getting people to increase in acts of goodness and kindness, starting with ourselves. That’s the ripple effect that today, we have more than 5 000 Chabad houses throughout the world.”

Perez said 48 hours after 7 October, he had the immense relief that even though he didn’t know where Daniel was, Yonatan was safe.

“You can hold some light and thanksgiving with so much pain and darkness,” he said. “That shifted my perspective. I realised that comfort can come only when a person is able to rethink, recalibrate, and reframe their life and challenges. It has to be in their time. But it has something to do with our mind talk and how we choose to see the reality we live in.”