I know one reason why Hashem created diamonds.
Whoever said that the whole world is a stage, could have
similarly said that the world is one big parable (but he was
a gentile, and might not have understood that kabbalistic
concept). Diamonds, I believe, were created to serve as an
example of the human soul, of those special people who work
at polishing up their inner essence so that it glows and
shines. And sometimes, not always, we are able to see -- this
facet or that facet, this sparkle or that gleam.
I met Sora Gitta when she was already busily buffing her
diamond soul with one mitzva in which she excelled and
which she exemplified in her brief life: visiting the sick.
At the age of thirteen, already, and I don't know how far
back it went even before, she was a regular visitor in the
Shaarei Zedek children's ward, which was walking distance
from her home in Bayit Vegan. This is how she met my son,
hospitalized for a month for burns from a Lag B'Omer bonfire
when kerosene had spilled on him.
She visited daily and did her utmost to cheer him and all the
others on the ward with her genial, outgoing personality and
cheery, breezy optimism. A breath of fresh air. A caring
person whose every visit removed another sixtieth of the
patients' suffering.
Another facet of her personality was a staunch determination
coupled with a fiery love for Torah. At the shiva, her
mother related that as a private kindergarten teacher, Sora
Gita had realized immediately that there was a flaw in the
accepted practice of releasing children on Rosh Chodesh at
twelve. Everyone did it, but it usually meant that husbands
would have to leave kollel early since their wives were not
released from work at twelve. She would not stand for that!
And so she immediately increased the Rosh Chodesh schedule to
the regular one o'clock.
And do you know what? Now, in Kiryat Sefer, all kindergartens
study till one on Rosh Chodesh, all because of her Torah-
loving precedence.
I don't presume to do justice to a unique person whose
sparkle I saw only briefly. After all, who can confine,
define, delineate the marvel of a diamond? Only its Creator.
Fortunate are we who came in contact with its unique beauty.
It can now shine beneath the sapphire of the Heavenly
Throne.
May her memory be blessed.
