Grieving Bride Faces Wedding Without Father Amid Financial Hardship

A bride in Petah Tikva is set to marry this week, just weeks after the sudden death of her father, Rabbi Yitzchak Levi, who passed away at the age of 53. The family was first informed of his kidney illness during Hanukkah, and he died eight months later at Beilinson Hospital. The wedding date was set in the Hebrew month of Cheshvan, between the diagnosis and his passing.

Doctors stopped treatments about a month before Rabbi Levi's death, recognizing his condition was worsening. He spent his final week saying goodbye to his children, including his daughter, the bride-to-be, whom he had hoped to escort to the chuppah.

Rabbi Levi was the sole breadwinner, working in a kollel in the mornings and as a kashrut supervisor later in the day. His wife works part-time in elderly care, but her income was insufficient for the family's needs. The family had moved to a new apartment in Petah Tikva about a year and a half ago, shortly before the hospitalizations began.

This wedding is the second in the family; the first took place four years ago with the father present. Now, the widowed mother, after months of treatment and weeks of mourning, must bear the wedding expenses her husband intended to cover. The family faces further financial challenges, with five other unmarried children, the youngest being 18 and a half, and future weddings on the horizon.

A public appeal has been made for donations to help the widow and her six orphaned children celebrate the bride's wedding with dignity, as her father would have wished.