It has been more than three years since our beloved daughter Tova tragically died, and yet there are moments when her presence feels as vivid and immediate as ever. Not only in the memories we hold, or the stories we tell, but in the quiet ways her influence continues to shape how we see other people—and how we try, however imperfectly, to respond to them.

Recently, my wife Sharon asked me a question that at first seemed simple, but quickly revealed itself to be anything but: What single phrase best captures who Tova was?

It is never easy to distill a life—especially one so rich with kindness, warmth, and depth—into a few words. But after thinking about it, and talking it through together, we found ourselves returning to the same idea. Again and again.

Tova had an extraordinary ability to “tune in” to another person.

She seemed to possess an almost instinctive sense of what someone else was feeling at any given moment—not just in the obvious, surface-level way, but at a deeper level that many of us either miss or only recognize in hindsight. And more than that, she knew how to respond. Not with something generic or automatic, but with precisely the right word, the right gesture, the right silence.

Many people........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)