York Daily News -
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Drowned sisters' kin reeling
BY ADAM LISBERG
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Tuesday, August 10th, 2004
Friends and relatives asked God to help them cope yesterday after two young Brooklyn sisters drowned on a family vacation over the weekend.
Shterna Esther Shmueli, 12, and Chaya Mushkah Shmueli, 14, were the youngest of seven children from a well-regarded family in the Hasidic Jewish community in Crown Heights.
"Right now there is a void, and the only one who can put this place back is God," said Rabbi Sholom Baras, the girls' uncle. "God is in everything."
One of the girls' older brothers found them at 11 p.m. Saturday in a swimming pool at a Lubavitch center in Henrico County, Va., authorities said.
Rescuers could not revive the girls, who were buried Sunday in Queens.
No one witnessed the girls' deaths, but police believe it was a tragic accident and are not considering any charges, said Henrico County Police Sgt. Carl Mueller.
"They were not known to be very good swimmers," Mueller said. "With only the two of them in the pool, it would just be speculation of what might have happened."
Neighbors and relatives said the girls' father, Ephraim, is a carpenter from Israel, while their mother, Sara, comes from a large family of rabbis.
At the nearby Beth Rivkah girls' school, where Shterna and Chaya were remembered as popular girls who excelled in their studies, administrators established a scholarship fund in their memory.
Adding to the community's shock, an autistic 14-year-old boy who lived two doors from the Shmuelis also died late Saturday after choking on his food.
Community members walked between the neighboring houses yesterday, carrying a Torah and prayer shawls as they said prayers of mourning at both homes.
Neighbor Bracha Friedman remembered the two girls as inseparable companions, and recalled how Shterna walked down the street earlier this year with her hair fixed beautifully for her bat mitzvah.
"I'm just sick," Friedman said. "We've had tragedies, but we really all just believe in God and believe that everything has a reason."
Another mourner, Fran Perlstein, could not hide her tears as she tried to comprehend the tragedies on the block.
"This is a sign that something has to change in our world, in our community," she said. "You have to be good. You have to believe in God."
הטקסט שלך כאן