Seven children, ages 5 to 16 and who were victims in Saturday’s tragedy in Brooklyn were buried in Jerusalem Monday afternoon after their bodies were flown to Israel.
“Why seven?” Seven beautiful lilies, so pure. So pure,” their father Gabriel Sassoon cried out in referring to a verse from Solomon’s Song of Songs (6:2).
The fired occurred on the beginning of the new month of Nissan, and Sassoon called his children “seven unblemished lambs,” referring to the commandment in BaMidbar (Numbers) 28:11, which states:
And on the beginning of your months, you shall offer up a burnt offering to the Lord: two young bulls, one ram, and seven lambs in the first year, [all] unblemished.
Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi David Lau said at the funerals, “Each one is a flower in God’s garden.”
Elian, Rivka, David, Yehoshua Moshe, Sarah and Yaakov Sassoon died after a malfunctioning hot pate used on the Sabbath sparked flames in the Sassoon family home in Brooklyn, where the children were sleeping in their bedrooms upstairs. An eighth child, 14-year-old Tzipora, survived but is in critical condition, as is her mother Gayle.
The Sassoon family moved from Jerusalem to New York two years ago.