In May 2021, tens of thousands flocked to the north of Israel to the small town of Meron to partake in the annual Lag BaOmer festivities. Lag BaOmer is a night filled with much spiritual warmth. Singing, dancing, bonfires and praying.

My husband and I, married just 1.5 years, headed north too. Moshe had been talking excitedly about this night for weeks. I was filled with feelings of foreboding. Something felt off and I didn’t tell anyone we were going. Maybe our souls knew something that we didn’t.

Unbearable crowding caused hundreds to be crushed together in a tightly packed passageway, leaving 45 dead and hundreds of injured. My 22-year-old husband was one of those who passed away.

I returned home 48 hours later – having left my other half and so many shattered pieces of myself in that spot.

So many questions. So, few answers. Five long years have come and gone, and here’s what I’ve learned.

Moshe’s death wasn’t random. Looking back, it’s almost as though his soul was preparing.

Two weeks before his death, I asked Moshe about remarriage after a death; how could one possibly do that to their previous spouse? He brushed me off. I insisted it was important and that we needed to discuss it. We did. A strange conversation choice for a 21- and 22-year-old.

One week before Lag BaOmer, he mentioned some rabbis who had passed away recently and how much he’d love the opportunity to speak to them once more.

The day he passed away, he asked me to accompany him on a walk during his lunch break, something very uncharacteristic; he didn’t enjoy walking. Then I discovered that our walk had a planned route. First, he went to pay off a small debt I hadn’t even known about—just a couple of shekels. It’s not good for a soul to owe money on this earth.

His next stop was to a great rabbi who lived in the neighborhood. “I want to ask the rabbi for a blessing for you.” He explained. That was an unusual choice of words. Why wouldn’t he get a blessing for both of us, and what was special about today that it merited a blessing? He didn’t explain. We got a blessing.

When we arrived in Meron, we split up and planned to speak every hour on the hour, to arrange where to meet up and when to leave.

Forty minutes after we arrived, Moshe called. He just wanted to check in and hear how I was doing. He told me he was having a great time. He died ten minutes later.

The scene was declared a Mass Casualty Event, and utter chaos reigned. We didn’t know anything about Moshe’s last minutes or if he’d been given the chance he deserved to live.

One evening, as shivah hours came to an end, a teen and his father walked in. The young man turned to us and said simply, “I was the one who did CPR.” My body shook and pins and needles overtook me. He explained that he volunteered as a first responder for Hatzalah and hadn’t planned to go to Meron until that day. He’d been right at the scene when the crush occurred. He described how he’d worked on Moshe for long minutes, and how familiar Moshe’s face seemed. He’d been told to move on after a couple of minutes, but he refused and continued attempting to save Moshe again and again.

A few hours later, it all clicked. He’d known Moshe several years previously. Moshe was several years older than him. As a 16-year-old, he’d arrived in a new yeshiva where he didn’t know anyone. He was a foreigner and one of the youngest there. Minutes after his arrival, Moshe (three years his senior), introduced himself, flashed his enormous smile, and welcomed him excitedly. When the boy told him he was from Israel, Moshe hugged him, providing a small slice of warmth to ease him into a new start.

The final piece someone shared with me a couple of weeks later. They explained how each Hebrew letter has a numerical value, and the numeric value of Moshe, 345, is equivalent to that of Lag BaOmer.

Some things are too big for us to understand. Like the way so many family simchas and happy occasions have fallen out on Moshe’s birthday or yahrzeit in the five years since his passing. I don’t try to understand, but I do hold on to these small hugs. Little clues lighting the way. Moshe wasn’t chosen randomly. This was his calling.