In life, Natan Rosenfeld made everyone feel included. Now, his parents are encouraging others to do the same

ON

a sunny Sunday morning, the third of Tammuz, June 29, 22-year-old Eliora Rosenfeld answered a knock on the front door of her family’s home in Ra’anana. She knew immediately who was at the door and what they were doing there.

“It took me a minute to figure it out,” says her mother, Sam. “But then I understood.”

The somber strangers were bringing the news that the Rosenfeld’s second child, 20-year-old Natan Hy”d — serving in Gaza as a combat engineer — whad been struck by an RPG and killed by the impact.

“When you make aliyah, or when you have a child in the army, you know in the back of your head that it could happen, but I didn’t really think about it, didn’t really believe it could and would,” Sam says.

The Rosenfeld’s youngest daughter, 15-year-old Atalya, had woken up just a few minutes before, a bad feeling in her chest, having just dreamed she was attending her brother’s funeral. Then she heard her sister Eliora screaming, “My brother’s dead, my brother’s dead!”

“I’m very spiritual,” Atalya explains, “and I just sensed that he was gone.”

Natan’s father, Avi, wasn’t home at the time. “I had to call him up and try and very casually say, ‘Hi, darling, do you think you could just drop home for a few minutes? I need your help with something,’ ” Sam recounts. “Once Avi walked through the front door, he realized what was going on.”

Even as the family was reeling from the unimaginable news, they sensed the Hand of Hashem directing events.