The golden heart pendant being worn by a wedding guest. Lital has been given a special gift: a heart transplanted from a victim of a Hamas terror attack.
By Paul Martin and Andy Lines
British rabbi Leo Dee is marrying again, more than two years after his British wife Lucy and two of their four daughters were gunned down by Hamas terrorists.
Invited as a special guest at the ceremony on Sunday August 31 2025 is Lital Vilensa, 53, who carries within her one vital part of Lucy: her heart.
Lital will be wearing a pendant engraved with the donor’s smiling face alongside her own — made in tribute to the woman who saved her life.
Interviewed by Cap-Rep, she has praised the bravery of Leo for agreeing to made Lucy’s heart, lungs, liver and kidneys available for transplant. In death Lucy saved the lives of five people — including an Arab-Israeli carpenter.
On April 7 2023 the family was shot 28 times as they lay dying after a shooting that forced Lucy’s car off the road as they drove towards a planned family holiday at the Sea of Galilee. Her husnand and her three remaining children were not in that car, so a family fo seven became a family of four, as Rabbi Dee siad at the funeral cemremonies.
That was exactly six months before the Hamas assault on southern Israel that left 1200 dead and 250 people taken hostage. The war that ensued in Gaza is still continuing.
Lital says being a guest at the wedding, where she will renew her acquaintance with Leo, and will meet his Canadian-born Israeli bride Aliza Teplitzky for the first time, is a huge privilege.
“Lucy’s soul is inside me,” she told Cap-Rep when we visited her. “I feel freer and happier, more spiritual and more giving. I feel that I receive messages from her. After five years of feeling so ill, now I can laugh.”
Leo later told Cap-Rep: “There is some spark from Lucy’s body or soul that now has some effect on Lital, and that’s wonderful.”
Leo is a Cambridge University graduate and an investment advisor who became a modern Orthodox rabbi in two synagogues in London before moving to Israel.
Besides Lital, Leo and Aliza are believed to have invited other transpant surivors to the wedding.
One of them, former football player Mati Aguzi, had been struck down with inoperable lung disease. Now, after receiving Lucy’s lungs aged 59, she said: “I’ve been able to dance again. That’s my biggest passion.”
A young man who received Lucy’s liver aged 20 recovered well and last year Leo attended the young man’s own wedding.
The Arab-Israeli carpenter, Ahmed Suleyman, now 41, is not attending. It’s thought the tense situation caused by the current war may have made it too sensitive within his community.
Though Leo has called for reconciliation between Jews and Arabs throughout the region, some people in Ahmed’s village, near Nazareth, had previously experssed discomfort about him receiving a ‘Jewish’ body part.
When Leo visited him in Cap-Rep’s company a year after the murders and the transplants, Ahmed said he rejected any such pressures. “We are all humans, built in the image of God,” he told Leo, in a conversation recorded by Cap-Rec.
The carpenter expressed his gratitude in a sentiment he had engraved on a plaque he presented to Leo. It read: “If you save a life, it’s as if you have saved the world.” That statement is found in both Jewish and Muslim holy writings.
At his home in Efrat Leo stands in front of a banner of his dead wife and their two dead daughters remains, stretched out across the front fence.
“Lucy and I had the equivalent of one-and-a-half blissful lifetimes as a married couple.
“Because we spent so much time together, travelling, working, doing loving and lovely things.”
The wedding will inevitably arouse some feelings of sadness, Rabbi Dee acknowledges.
““When I think about her I can only feel joy. And that’s the emotion I must carry with me all my life.
“But of course I’ll always feel so deeply sad that neither Lucy nor I will see two of our beloved girls grow up to their full potential, never see them get married and flower,” said Leo. He was speaking to Cap-Rep during a previous visit to the colourful graves for the three, designed by his remaining two daughters and son.
In advance of the wedding to Aliza, Leo said: “It was a tough but right decision to get married again. It emphasises what I have told myself and my remaining three children: From now on we must all look forward, not backwards.”
Leo is writing his second book, which he is calling “The Seven Facets of Healing”.
Leo feels that despite the ongoing conflict there is hope for the future of his region in forging peace.
“There are evil people out there who need to be eliminated. But the vast majority of Arabs are good people. I meet them and we have so much in common.
“We need to show the Arabs we love them. Yes, love them — it’s just the terrorists and their terror regimes that cause the trouble. And we need to help the Arab people to get rid of their terrorists and their awful rulers who use their vicious battle against Israelis and us Jews to help them stay in power and suppress their own people.
“We also need the Arab people to understand that after 75 years of our state, we are guaranteed to remain here and flourish. Now we must tap into their decency and our own.”