In addition to her family and her dogs, Danielle Waldman loved her boyfriend—and she loved to dance.
Born in Palo Alto, Danielle moved back to Israel when she was 4 years old; her father, Eyal Waldman is a tech-founder known for attempting to foster peace between Israelis and Palestinians through his factories and hiring practices. She met Noam Shay six years ago in the army, and they have been inseparable ever since. With their dog, Noam and Danielle moved into their refurbished apartment just a few weeks ago.
On Friday, October 6, Danielle and Noam drove south to attend the Supernova Festival, which was billed as a festival of “unity and love.” As her father said, “Danielle loved to dance. She danced in every opportunity that she could and Noam joined her.” And dance they did, throughout the night, until that fateful morning. Danielle and Noam were murdered; they were killed in their car as they tried to escape from the Hamas terrorists who turned the festival into a killing field.
Later, Eyal received a note from another festival goer—one who was injured but survived. That victim told him that Danielle had stopped to attend to her and make sure she was safe before attempting to escape.
In an article for MarketWatch, Eyal Waldman said that the death of his daughter and her boyfriend, and even the devastating scope of the attacks have not changed his ultimate hope for peace in the future—but not the near future. He believes this time, the violence “took us back several years, if not decades.” He also said, when interviewed by a Bay Area news station, that “We must make sure the message is clear: This will never happen again. We must come even with the people that have done this. We cannot leave this unresolved.”
Waldman said, at the same time, he wants to live in peace with his neighbors.
“We want to stop killing each other,” he said. “We want to stop making this grief, sorrow, loss — from both sides. The Palestinian side and the Israeli side.”
“They loved to celebrate life,” Waldman said of Danielle and Noam. Instead, they were buried side by side.
May their memories be for a blessing.
Rabbi Sari Laufer
