The decision to build a playroom inside of Schneider Children’s Medical Center in central Israel in memory of slain Israeli hostages Shiri, Ariel and Kfir Bibas came together quickly. 

The day before their funeral late last month, a delegation from the nonprofit Toys for Hospitalized Children visited the hospital in the Israeli city of Petah Tikva, delivering toys to patients and touring the facilities, including a proposed playroom. Later that day, the group traveled to Rachel’s Tomb — the  burial place of the biblical matriarch — in the West Bank city of Bethlehem.

“I went in and prayed, and when I came out, I got in the van and I said to [Rabbi JJ Hecht II, the president of Toys for Hospitalized Children] that I want to donate to the playroom at Schneider. And I wanted it to be in memory of the Bibas family, the children and the mother,” Michelle Domb, one of the two primary funders of the project and a member of the organization’s board, told eJewishPhilanthropy. “The next day was their funeral, so really everything was orange in the country [in memory of the redhaired children] — people were wearing orange, the balloons were orange, the headlines in the newspapers were orange, everything was orange. And it came to mind that bringing good feelings to sick children — there’s nothing more fitting than that.”

But first, Domb and Toys for Hospitalized Children wanted to ensure that the Bibas family signed off on their plan. “I did not want to do anything without the family’s approval and bracha,” Domb said, using the Hebrew word for blessing. 

The group returned to the United States the day after the Bibas funeral, and two days later Hecht attended the weekly hostage vigil in New York’s Central Park to speak with Shiri Bibas’ uncle, Maurice Shnaider, who lives in Kingston, N.Y., and attends a synagogue led by Hecht’s brother, and regularly attends the demonstrations. “I said to him, ‘Maurice, we have an idea and we want your blessing,’ and he cried immediately and said, ‘Yes, I love it,’” said Hecht, who is named for Rabbi JJ Hecht, one of the closest confidantes of Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Shneerson, who founded Toys for Hospitalized Children and died in 1990.

To ensure that the rest of the Bibas family approved of the idea, Hecht asked Shnaider, whose sister, Margit — Shiri’s mother — was also murdered in the Oct. 7 terror attacks, to speak with them about it as well. He did, and they quickly gave their blessing, Shnaider told eJP. “I informed my niece, Dana [Silberman-Sitton], that’s Shiri’s sister, and Yarden, the father of Ariel and Kfir, and they were so happy about it when they heard,” he said. “They gave their blessing and they were happy about it. And they will always know that [Shiri, Ariel and Kfir’s] memory will be there forever.”

With their approval, Toys for Hospitalized Children designed the playroom, which will be installed in the hospital’s new Glass Building, which opened in 2023. The walls of the playroom show green rolling hills, with a repeating motif of three orange flowers representing Shiri, Ariel and Kfir Bibas, as well as orange butterflies, which are a reference to Yarden Bibas’ eulogy of Ariel, in which he recalled the 4-year-old’s love of chasing butterflies on picnics. The playroom, which was designed by Jack Ovadia, will include a “digital touch wall,” a gaming table and other play equipment. 

“And we have a very aggressive, ambitious timeline. We are hoping that it will be completed mid-June,” he said. 

This will be the third playroom that Toys for Hospitalized Children, which has an Israeli branch, Toys for Simcha, will build in an Israeli hospital. The group has also created ones in Assuta Hospital in Ashdod and another in Laniado Hospital in Netanya, Hecht said.

The playroom in Schneider will cost $150,000, Hecht said. Sruli Anatian, CEO of Fundwell and a member of the board, is the other main donor to the project. 

Hecht told eJP that Sruli Anatian, who was traveling, said that he had decided to support the initiative “to make his mom proud.”

Domb, who initially supported the project anonymously, added that she had decided to go public about her donation “to make my children proud.” 

Shnaider said that while there have been efforts to raise money and give donations directly to the family and other hostage families, he felt that this type of memorialization was more significant. “I saw that there are fundraisers coming up for helping Yarden and my niece, Dana, to help them rebuild their lives, to get their lives back together. And they do need help,” he said. 

“But for me, when I heard that the playroom was going to be created with the names of Shiri, Ariel and Kfir, and how beautiful the room is going to be… that the names will always be up there, with the story of what happened to them and who they were… brought me so much happiness personally when I heard about it. It was hard to explain,” he said, tearing up.