Emotional wedding as British rabbi gets married again after Hamas gunmen killed his first wife
British rabbi Leo Dee – who donated his wife’s heart after she was killed by Hamas gunmen – has got married again in front of family and friends. He invited the woman who received his first wife’s heart, in a transplant, to attend and she accepted the invitation – but she made the emotional decision to pull out at the last minute.
Leo’s wife school teacher Lucy, 48, and their daughters Maia, 20, and Rina, 15, were shot dead while on holiday in 2023. Juat over two years later he fell in love again and was hoping that his first wife’s heart would be there at the wedding – beating inside Lital Vilensa.
Leo and new bride Aliza tied the knot in Israel on Sunday. But Leo told the Mirror: “Lital called me on the morning of the wedding. “She said: ‘I just feel I cannot come’.” It appeared Lital felt it would not be appropriate for the beating heart of Leo’s first wife to be present at the wedding to my second wife.
Actually Leo indicated clearly that he would have been delighted for Lital – and a part of his beloved Lucy – to have been there.
He said: “As my two daughters said under the white canopy when Aliza and I became man and wife: ‘Mummy will be looking down and giving a blessing to both Aliza and my dad’. But I can understand why Lital made her decision.” Earlier Dee, from Radlett, Herts said: “I’m going from grief to joy.” Lital, 53, who received her heart, remains very emotional and very grateful. She was not religious but now she has started a group reciting psalms.
“She’s been looking after a young mother with a kid. She was taking on all these things which she had never done before. Perhaps, heart recipients take on some of the characteristics of the person they received the heart from — my beloved Lucy. That’s spooky.” Speaking under the white canopy as her dad married Aliza, Keren Dee said: “Tonight, Rina would be dancing, Maia would be welcoming everyone with her smile, and Mummy would be pulling people onto the dance floor.
“Their spirits are here with us now —woven into the joy, the music, and the love that surrounds this chuppa. And so, we are filled with gratitude. Gratitude that Daddy chose Aliza. Gratitude for the love and future you will build together. And gratitude that even in our brokenness, we can step forward into joy, into hope, and into life.”
The two men who carried out the shocking attack were later killed by Israeli forces. On the first anniversary of the murders Leo had made a trip to visit all five of the transplant recipients – and even went to the wedding himself of a young man who received Lucy’s liver and recovered. |The woman who got Lucy’s lungs, a former football player, says she was near death, but is now able to dance again.
He insisted his first wife would have fully approved of his new bride. He said: “I feel that life has to go on. When terrible things happen it’s possible to put them in the past and to live your life into the future.
“I feel like I don’t have to be defined by my tragedy. I look at the positive in life and try to overcome the negative and try to make a disaster into something meaningful. He went on: “Life rarely gives us answers wrapped in ribbon. It gives us moments. Quiet, painful, surprising moments.
“Lucy was perfect for me for our idyllic 25 years together – the ideal partner for a young man finding his way as a rabbinical student, exemplary as a mother of five, and the spiritual architect of our home. But tragedy rewrites a person. And the man I am today is not the man that I was.
“Aliza is perfect for the man I’ve become. She brings out the best in me – and she’s the most optimistic person I know. Lucy taught me how to love, how to listen, how to give without overpowering.
“Maia taught me how to parent, how to believe in someone’s potential. Rina taught me how to be a human – how to care for the planet, and even more, for people who don’t think like you do. And tragedy? Tragedy taught me how to see what matters. It stripped away the noise. It left behind only the meaningful: friends, family, purpose.”
Dee is now writing a book on how to cope with disasters and tragedies in a person”s life.