Rabbi Leo Dee shares his late wife’s lessons for life

The “7 Fs”, he said, were the topics the couple had talked about when they went on date nights. They stood for family, friends, fitness, frumkeit, function, finances and fun.

Giving his talk in memory of his wife and two daughters, who were also born in the UK, Rabbi Dee said that when it came to his family, he and his surviving three children had been unable to sit down for Friday night dinner in their own home for the first three months following the funerals.

“We had been a family of two parents and five kids, and now we were one parent and three kids. We have one of those table where you can take out the middle part to make it shorter, and when I did that for the first time, it made me so depressed. We couldn’t sit down just the four of us.”

It was a conversation with Yair Lapid, leader of the opposition, which had shifted his mindset, he said. “His father had been a Holocaust survivor and then his sister was killed when she was eight. He said to me that when his father came back from the funeral, he had said: ‘This is a house to live in.’

“Three months after the funerals, the four of us sat down for Friday night dinner together. It was lovely, and I realised that we could do this.”

Rebbetzin Lucy Dee whose life lessons Rabbi Dee shared at Limmud[Missing Credit]

He paid tribute to his friends – “an amazing community” – and that after the funerals, they had rallied round and organised a huge tent for the shiva, a meal rota and cleaning.

He advised the audience that rather than offering to help someone in great distress, to “just jump in and do it”.

“When someone is in trauma, you need to tell them what they are doing since the trauma means they can’t manage their own life at that point.”

Ten thousand people visited the family during the shiva, and Rabbi Dee was quickly thrust into the media spotlight. “Someone helped by organising a secretary to keep track of my arrangements,” he said.

He also proffered that the “most useful” thing someone could say at a shiva is, “I have no words” (or “Ayn milim” in Hebrew). “People would like to say something, but there is nothing appropriate. That’s the reality.”

Discussing the third “F”, which was fitness, Rabbi Dee revealed how after the deaths of his family members, he found himself struggling to breathe, as well as to sleep.

Tranquilizers and sleeping pills had failed to help, he said, so he had sought out an acupuncturist, who “taught me to breathe and helped me release a lot of stress”.

Rabbi Dee, who had been a rabbi at Hendon and Radlett United congregations before making aliyah in 2014, also emphasised his need for routine. “As Jews, we have mechanisms [such as prayer times] which give us a routine”.

In the depths of his grief, social arrangements and walking a couple of times a day, had given him “something to get out of bed for in the morning”, he said.

He conceded that going back to the same routine as before, but without relatives who had been part of that routine, “wouldn’t have been very helpful”, but having a routine – albeit a new one – had been beneficial

Growing up in a Reform community before becoming Orthodox, Rabbi Dee said that when it came to the “F” of frumkeit, he recalled the words of the late Rabbi Hugo Gryn, his rabbi at West London Synagogue.

Often asked if he had ever questioned his belief in God after the murder of his wife and two daughters, Rabbi Dee said: “Rabbi Gryn was a Holocaust survivor, and he said: ‘In God, I can believe. In man, I struggle.’”

Rabbi Dee also said how he had found solace in podcasts. “There were a lot of [grief] triggers at the beginning, so I found that listening to shiur after shiur after shiur [lecture on Judaism] constantly inspired me and would give me tremendous positive energy and push away problems.

“Limmud gives us energy, but it doesn’t have to be just for one week of your life. We spend so much time on social media. Instead, use that time to get inspired.”

Rebbetzin Lucy Dee and her two daughters, Maia (r) and Rina[Missing Credit]

Rabbi Dee revealed that in the immediate aftermath of the murder of his wife and two daughters, despite the accepted wisdom that therapy was necessary to work through grief, he hadn’t found it helpful. “Every time I went, I would say: ‘I know what’s causing the pain. I don’t need to talk about it.’”

Instead, he said that finding a new purpose – a “function” – had proven far more valuable. “I would be so busy that I would have no time to think of my grief. I find that doing things in memory [of Lucy, Maia and Rina] fills me with pride.”

He referred to late Rabbi Sacks’ teachings about the difference between optimism and hope. “He said that ‘optimism’ is believing that things will get better, but ‘hope’ is doing things to make them better.”

Discussing the “F” of finance, Rabbi Dee said that it was emblematic of the fact that we aren’t in control of our lives, and only God was.

“After the tragedy, we could have asked a lot of ‘What ifs’, such as: ‘What if we hadn’t made aliyah?’ But really, there is only one ‘What if?’ What if Hashem knows better than me? This was always the plan.”

The final “F”, he said was “fun”, and Rabbi Dee pointed out that the Hebrew word for fun was “simcha”, which contained the same root as the word “tzmicha”, Hebrew for “growth”. It was through personal growth and change, he said, that humans could find happiness.

He recalled his first Friday night dinner on his own when his three other children went away. “I cried for about 30 minutes because I was all by myself on Shabbat. But I don’t want to be alone on Shabbat, so please God, I could get married again.”

Rabbi Dee said that pain – which he described as “a gift” – was caused when we were lacking something. “I thank God for what I lack as nothing I do in my life is done unless I lack it. The pain you have is something you can change.”