I knew Amir from both Ramaz and Brown, and I still think about him a lot. At Ramaz, I admired his talent, his intellect, and his courage in speaking his mind. He never seemed to be afraid of what people thought. I was scared of what people thought, and I so admired that quality in him. He wasn’t satisfied with accepting the status quo – he wanted to challenge it. What an important quality that so many of us lacked. He was also interested in creative writing and was so smart. At Brown, I saw him around a lot… we both lived on the same campus freshman year. Even though he was a year ahead of me in high school, I think we ended up the same year in college because he went to Israel. I saw him at the computer lab quite a bit. I used to go there to work on papers. We chatted there a lot. He helped me when my computer got a virus that destroyed my paper at like 3 am. I was very stressed out and he was so helpful. We did a Hillel breaks project together and worked in soup kitchens and shelters in NYC. He also had shabbat dinner at my family’s apartment. One of the last times I saw him was in NYC- he was donating blood at a blood drive. That was Amir. Such a good person. And such a great sense of humor and joy for life. Another one of my last memories of him was seeing him riding his bicycle along the path by the Hudson river. It was chilly out and he was wearing a hat that completely covered his face, just holes for eyes and mouth, I forget what those are called. He said ‘hi!’ to me, and I looked at him confused because I didn’t know who it was – I couldn’t see his face. He kept waving and saying hi! I said ‘I don’t know who it is, your hat is covering your face.’ He took his hat off and we both smiled and laughed. I always loved running into him. It made me smile to see him. I can’t do Amir justice with my words, but I really wanted to write to his family. My little brother died this summer and it means so much to me to hear that he is remembered, so I wanted to make sure that I told you that I remember Amir and always will. I’m sorry I didn’t write sooner. With love -freya
