On April 14th, 1976, during Valentina’s wedding, Neegil was observing the exchange of rings between her daughter and Binyamin, Valentina’s husband. After the exchange, Neegil came up to her daughter, kissed her, and handed her a dark brown book with a big label “תורה,” which translates from Hebrew as “Torah”. Neegil’s hands were shaking… It was the way her body reacted to cope with extreme happiness and sadness at the same time. She knew that Binyamin was going to take her daughter to Baku, a different city in Azerbaijan, and the first thing forced into her mind by the thought of separation was to give her the “Hudo Tiro,” the family book. It was the spiritual force that kept Neegil and Valentina together, no matter what the distance between them was. The book was the memory that my grandmother kept close to her heart. It satisfied her hunger for mother’s love and care. In 2008, my aunt Berta was diagnosed with lymphoma cancer, and the tumor has already developed to its fourth stage. Valentina would pray for her all day, crying, holding the “Hudo Tiro” in her weak hands and kissing it. At the moment, after more than a year of treatment, Berta is no longer trapped in a hospital bed. Valentina decided to wrap “Hudo Tiro” in a handmade bag-like case that she fabricated out of expensive linen from Israel. She knew that God has protected Berta from terminal cancer, and she felt it her duty to protect “Hudo Tiro” the way God protected her family through this book.

– Lior Agaronov

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