Looking back on 30 years: Remembering Alisa Flatow, beloved daughter - opinion

I know Passover is coming when Rosalyn, my wife, announces, on Purim, “No matzah until the Seder.” 

Although I’ll miss my matzah pizza for 30 days, her announcement sets in motion another awareness, that of the approaching yahrzeit of our daughter Alisa, who was murdered in a terror attack five days before Passover in 1995.

Thirty years is a long time, but as anyone who has lost a child can tell you, a parent feels the child’s death as if it were yesterday.

I vividly recall the telephone call we received telling us that Alisa and her traveling companions had been victims of a bus bombing. I see myself flipping through the telephone book and calling, first, the Israeli Consulate in New York City (the line was busy) and then the US State Department, for information. I hear the voice of a State Department official telling me that Alisa had been located at Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba – and of ...
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