When 20-year-old Adi Baruch started working as a wedding photographer after completing her compulsory Israeli military service, she told her parents that she chose that field because it brought new life to Israel.

She was killed a month shy of her 23rd birthday by a Palestinian rocket attack in southern Israel five days after the Hamas-led onslaught on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

The young photographer had lobbied her former commanders to be drafted as a reservist in the Gaza war, so it seemed to her family the most natural thing to commemorate her memory with something connected with weddings.

The image of Adi’s high school sweetheart (who had already bought a ring, intending to propose on her birthday), kneeling ring in hand at her freshly dug graveside two years ago this week, stirred a nation.

A meeting of minds

Among those who heard of the young reservist’s story was an embroidery designer of commemorative curtains for synagogue Holy Arks and covers for torah scrolls, who also felt that she needed to do something in Adi’s memory related to a wedding.

Almost by chance, nearly a year later, Adi’s mother, Orit Baruch, 47, reached out to the designer, asking her if she could make a commemorative wedding canopy with the cloth from Adi’s military uniform, which would be offered to needy young couples.

“It wasn’t just another client,” Ortal Gridish, 41, recounted. “There was complete chemistry and a meeting of minds.” From the very start of the war, when I heard of Adi and saw her smiling picture, it was as if I was connected to her.”

‘She was determined to do something’

The young wedding photographer wasn’t supposed to be called up to reserve service after the Hamas attack.

But when Adi saw her father summoned for emergency military service, she was determined to enlist as well.

“I told her that she wasn’t called up and to sit quietly, but she was determined to do something,” Orit Baruch recounted.

Adi’s former commander got her deployed to the southern town of Sderot. Before she left home, Orit took a photo of her daughter and her husband both in uniform. It was the last time she would see Adi alive.  

Adi told her father, Avi, 49, during their last ride together, how proud she was to be serving her country, he said.

An hour later, just when Adi and her reserve officer arrived at hard-hit Sderot, just across the border with Gaza, a Palestinian rocket slammed into the sidewalk less than five feet from their car.

Adi was killed instantly. The officer was critically wounded.

The sunflower

A year after her death, Adi’s mother reached out to the embroidery designer with the idea of creating a wedding canopy in her daughter’s memory, based on a sunflower—her favorite flower.

They found an extra uniform untouched on her bed. The embroiderer carefully cut from its cloth and, using nearly a million stitches, made a design of a sunflower with Adi’s name and a Hebrew wedding blessing for the wedding canopy.

The commemorative canopy will be advertised for young couples this month.

“An attribute of sunflowers,” her father pointed out, “is that they turn towards the sun. On cloudy days, they turn to each other and share their energy among themselves. This, in essence, is what Adi was.”

A poem by Adi, her family later found among her belongings, reads: 

If I die

Before my time,

I want you to celebrate life

Not mourn my death

I want you to wake up every morning

with a smile on your face and longing in your heart

And don’t let a single second of your life go to waste

See the world for me, appreciate every little moment

And, every once in a while smile at the clouds—I’ll be there.

I’m sorry for the grief I caused,

Know that I’m in a good place.

I miss you,

And I love you very much.

The post Bringing new life to Israel: In memory of Adi Baruch appeared first on JNS.org.