Daniel Wultz (1990-2006)

For those who knew him, up close and from afar, Daniel Wultz's spirit, tenacity, and devotion to Torah shone through.

Wultz, 16, succumbed Sunday to injuries he received in the Passover suicide bombing in Tel Aviv last month. He is the 11th victim of the Palestinian suicide bombing at a Tel Aviv shwarma stand. Eliyahu Anidzar, 26, who was critically wounded in the same attack, died of his wounds a day before Wultz.

Wultz’s family was accompanying his body home from an Israeli hospital to south Florida for a funeral Tuesday at Chabad-Lubavitch of Weston, where the teen was traveling a spiritual path with Rabbi Yisroel Spalter.

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Spalter, who had known Wultz since his Bar mitvah, and spent many hours with him in the following three years, described the young man as a “spiritual youth, outside of the ordinary.”

The two spent a great deal of time learning together, and when they weren't together Wultz would call – as many as four or five times a day – to ask questions of Jewish law and to talk, said Spalter.

"He was a very, very spiritual boy," the rabbi said. "He used to ask me many questions of how to live as a Jew. He just ate it up. It is important to note that he had started to observe Torah and the mitzvot meticulously, and no one told him to do it. He had the most lofty attributes.”

According to the rabbi, the two became close in the last year and a half.

“I saw his personality develop in front of my eyes,” he said. “He asked his questions about halacha with his characteristic innocence.”

Innocent or not, Wultz was clear about what he wanted, and what he believed.

“He had a steadfast personality, and if he decided from this day onward to be precise in his observance, or something else, he would stand by it,” said Spalter. "All the time, he wanted to learn more and more.”

Those same attributes had endeared him to his school and teachers, Debbie Gober, vice president of the David Posnack Hebrew Day School, told the Sun-Sentinel of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on Sunday.

"Daniel really put up a fight because he really wanted to live," said Gober. "This was a tragedy. It's not the news you want to hear on Mother's Day."

Wultz's fellow students spent time at his bedside in Israel, praying for him and with him. But his plight touched people around the world. Web sites, e-mails and synagogues added Wultz to their prayers.

In the weeks since the attack, Torah classes were started in his honor in the hope of helping him get well from his injuries, said Spalter. Likewise, charity funds and other programs, including those to raise funds for terror victims, were started.

"Now, all these wonderful things will exalt the raising of his soul to the next world," the rabbi said. “Not a day has passed here in Florida that Daniel wasn't mentioned in newspaper articles or on broadcasts. Daniel sanctified the name of G-d in life and in death. Daniel's blazing belief in G-d was clear to all."

At his bedside last month, as his classmates had done, Spalter put tefillin on Wultz and repeated the Shema. Daniel fluttered to consciousness briefly in the following days, but then slipped back into a coma from which he never awoke.

Two weeks later, when he received the call saying Wultz had died, Spalter said he felt shocked.

“I didn't know how to digest this. I thought I was hallucinating,” said the rabbi. “Daniel, such a special student, had gone from this world.”

Wultz is survived by his parents, Sheryl Cantor and Yekutiel (Tuly) Wultz of Weston, Fla., and sister Amanda Wultz, in addition to grandparents Marjorie and Ronald Cantor of North Miami Beach, Fla., and Leah and Yechiel Wultz of Jerusalem; and great-grandmother Alexandra Kaufman of Aventura, Fla.