Saying goodbye to Bili and Shugi, the dog she and Mats adopted from a soldier who was called up.

I didn’t expect to write again so soon. I only posted my report of yesterday’s journey to the Gaza Envelope to see the memorials for the Nova Festival-goers a few hours ago.

I am now at the airport waiting for my flight back to the U.S.

But just as the photos of the hostages greeted me in the airport when I first arrived two weeks ago, they were there to remind me on my way out. I am posting photos of those whom I feel connected to because of news reports, or in the case of Keith Siegel, because we had met with his brother Lee at the beginning of the trip.

The posters of those still in captivity line the ramp down to the airport gates. There are big gaps in some places because of those who were released or are known to be dead (though I noticed that American-Israeli Judy Weinstein’s poster was still there, though she was confirmed dead in December.)

Keith’s wife Avivah, who was released from captivity, was on t.v. last night with a few other women hostages who had been released, appealing to Netanyahu to get the rest of the hostages out of Gaza, to make the deal with Hamas that he has refused. Why does he refuse? Because to do so would mean the fall of his government; the far-right in his coalition do not want to make the deal and would withdraw from his coalition. Some may disagree, but I believe his reasons are craven and merely self-serving. 

We met with Keith’s brother Lee in Tel Aviv at the beginning of our trip. Keith’s wife Avivah was released from Gaza and appeared on t.v. last night with other female hostages who had been released.

Noa’s parents appeared on American t.v. often in the early days after October 7

I say Romi’s picture yesterday at the Nova memorial. Last night her father was on Israeli t.v. talking about her and her bravery.

Amiram Cooper, poet and composer. His wife was released from captivity.

When I got to the photo of Hersh Polin-Goldberg, close to the end of the ramp, seeing all the hand-written notes on it, just broke me. American-born to two American parents, his mother Rachel has often been in the media advocating for all of the hostages. Hersh, like so many of those dead or taken hostages were from the peace camp. He was working with an initiative to bring Palestinian and Jewish Israelis together around soccer. I started crying uncontrollably as I made my way to the VAT counter to get my refund for a purchase I’d made. The woman at the counter asked me if I was okay, if I needed a cup of water. I told her why I was crying, that seeing those photos just broke me, even though I’d been reminded of them everywhere for the past two weeks. She said, “We are the strongest people in the world.” Then she, like most everyone else I’ve met here, thanked me for coming. 

When I got to Hersh’s poster, which was close to the end of the “gallery” of photos, I utterly broke, sobbing. Seeing all the notes on his made it so personal, so piercing, and the emotions I’d been holding these past two weeks flooded me.

A few days ago I titled my post “Darom Adom” (“Red South”), the name given to the south of Israel during the season that the kalaniot/anemones bloom –which is now. After October 7, the “red” took on a new meaning. The area of Israel where these flowers bloom is the area where the massacres took place.

Bili and Mats generally go out every Friday and/or Saturday to see and photograph wildflowers. It’s Bili’s greatest joy–her Facebook page is filled with beautiful nature photographs from these tiyulim/trips. Because it was raining the first weekend I was with them, we weren’t able to explore. So she took today off from work so we could go see the fields of red in Darom Adom–and the memorial fields near Re’im for those murdered at the Nova Festival on October 7. On the way we passed the kibbutzim which the Hamas terrorists had infiltrated, and where they killed, kidnapped, destroyed: Be’eri, Kfar Aza, Nahal Oz, Alumim (Alumim was able to fend off the terrorists to a great extent and didn’t suffer the destruction or numbers of dead that the other kibbutzim did–though 8 were kidnapped from there). I didn’t realize we would see those signs pointing out those kibbutzim I’d be reading and hearing about, that I’d be that close. We also passed the city of S’derot, always under attack from missiles, which has been totally evacuated since October 7. (You can read about my visit to S’derot and the situation along the Gaza border in 2018 at https://wordpress.com/post/paminjerusalem.com/2108)

The road we travelled (232) was only re-opened a couple of weeks ago because the cars that were used to escape Hamas (filled with dead bodies, or abandoned when the occupants fled to hide on foot) were only just removed. The road was badly damaged by the Israeli tanks that later came through.

Because of Bili’s work at Israeli t.v. she has a lot of inside information. Her current projects include doing in-depth archival reports on each of these kibbutzim that will eventually be in English and online, a report on the history of women soldiers in Israel, and she’s already planning for the first yahrzeit of October 7, which will include a specially commissioned piece of orchestral music.

This is a shelter (megunia) from missiles on the road outside Be’eri. Everyone hiding inside was killed by Hamas.

It was a bit frightening to head down to the Gaza Envelope. I wasn’t sure I was emotionally or spiritually ready to really face the specter of all of those dead. And there is always the possibility of red alerts, sirens, missiles. I had downloaded two apps on my phone which have pinged rather consistently over the past two weeks–usually with alerts at the north of the country, where things are heating up with Hezbollah at the Lebanese border, and where cities and towns have also been totally evacuated.

But we got to the site of the Nova festival and spent a lot of time enjoying the flowers before we went to the memorial(s). And Bili said to me, “These are flowers for the dead.”

We then walked to the area where the pictures of the dead were hanging, most with messages of love and grief and inspiration from their relatives and friends. There were yahrzeit candles burning, as well, and signs calling for the release of the hostages. At one sign, a crowd was crying and reciting kaddish for someone they clearly knew.

Many of the signs had the acronym in Hebrew for “May their blood be avenged,” which was viscerally jarring for me theologically and emotionally. These were peace-seeking, peace-loving people, and would they themselves have wanted their memorials to assert that vengeful response? I wonder.

After we passed this area, there was another, where saplings had been planted for each of the dead. Again, family members had personalized these memorials with signs and messages.

I was surprised to see Haredim here, a place they might have considered “idolatrous” because the dance party had taken place there and on a holy day (and Shabbat), at that. But, of course, they, too, may have relatives who were OTD (off the derekh/off the path)

These are the shelters that the army had installed before the dance party in case of rockets. All those who hid inside, were killed. Bullet holes riddled the structures, and dirt was on the ground inside to cover the blood

This composite photograph includes pictures of all the dead from the dance festival, a sea of dead.

In yet another part of the memorial, a daffodil flower garden had been planted. The quote from Natan Yonaton says something like, “There are flowers without end that remain as music.”

The flower garden

On our way out and back to the car, we saw the trenches where the festival goers had also hidden.

It was a beautiful and meaningful memorial, filled with so much pain and so much longing, but also so much love. I did not want to see the destruction at the kibbutzim–nor did I feel it would appropriate to do so, but this place was a memorial site and by going there, I feel I honored the loss of life on October 7. It was deep and profound, and I’m so glad I was able to do it with Bili, my dear friend (and penpal) for over 50 years.

I am about ready now to leave for the airport for my trip back to the U.S. I have much more to process and write about– this will not be the last post.

On Monday, I put in over 13,000 steps walking around Jerusalem. First, I walked to Bili and Mats’ friend Lisa’s with whom I’d stayed many years ago. Lisa, an American olah, is herself a poet as well as a translator of poetry from Hebrew to English. We met many years ago long before I considered myself a poet. We spoke poetry, yes, but, of course, we also spoke about “ha-matzav,” the situation here in Israel. She told me that her neighbor called to ask if they should put a shelter in the backyard of the house to protect them. At first, she thought it was a good idea, but then she realized she would probably be just as safe–or no more safe–than were she to hide in her closet. She is not worried about rockets. I’ve heard from several people that the reason Jerusalem is relatively safe without the sirens that blare all the time in the north or the south–or even in Tel Aviv– warning of close rockets, is because no Arab nation (or Hamas, which is not a nation) would dare risk harming Al Aqsa Mosque in the Old City.

From Lisa’s I walked to the campus of Hebrew Union College, where I attended my first year of rabbinical school. It’s a stunning campus of Jerusalem stone, with an exquisite view of the Old City. The offices of IRAC (the Israel Religious Action Center) whose amazing work I mentioned the other day, also has its offices on the campus. What I didn’t say about our conversation with IRAC (definitely an organization worthy of your tzedakah/charity dollars) the other day, is that because Israel doesn’t have a constitution that protects rights, rights can only be protected through the court system. When the Netanyahu government threatened judicial overhaul, it was threatening the only checks-and-balances that Israel has for religion-and-state issues. And the government might have succeeded had they done the work piecemeal. It was the utter hubris of striking everything down in one fell swoop that brought people out onto the streets, week after week, month after month.

Many of the issues that IRAC addresses are about freedom of religion. Some of you will know that Orthodox institutions and rabbis get state money, but Reform congregations have had to fight hard for recognition, for funding, and even for land to build congregations. The congregation in Shoham that we visited last week was one of the only Reform congregations in the country that got its land without a legal struggle.

I wish I’d contacted Hebrew Union College before I left the States about possibly presenting something to the first year rabbinical students as I had done on a previous trip, but I only thought about it when I was already on campus walking around. Apparently about 19 of the 24 American students have remained in Israel (or went back to the US after October 7, but have since returned to Israel). Those who did not return are getting their training via Zoom.

In the evening, Bili, Mats and I attended a play, “The Labor of Life” at the Jerusalem Theater by playwright Hanoch Levin. It was Bili’s birthday present to both me and Mats (his birthday was a few days before mine). We were in the second row, so both Mats and I had to scooch down low in our seats to see the English subtitles that were above the stage. (No, my Hebrew is far from fluent, and I’ve forgotten so much of what I once knew.) Before the play began, an announcement was made acknowledging that Israel is at war, that we are praying for the hostages. But, the sentiment was, after some time of the theater having closed, that “the show must go on.”

with Bili and Mats at dinner after the play

Now that my official tour has ended and I am not seeing evacuees in the hallways and lobby of my hotel, I could, in fact, go about my business here without knowing that a war is going on and that thousands upon thousands of Israelis have been evacuated from their homes. Until you ask the question–and then you hear that everyone knows someone who is serving in the army, who died, who is or was a hostage, who is injured, who had to leave their home. The connections are close.

In anticipation of a war with Lebanon and news that she heard about the infrastructure being disabled, Bili has started to think about stockpiling dry foods, bottles of water, propane heaters, transistors, batteries, etc. “And my elderly neighbors; I have to think about them, too,” she said. Yes, Israelis are tough –and kind and generous. The civil society, we were told again and again, is what ran this country since October 7 when the government was AWOL.

I saw it in action yesterday when I travelled to Tel Aviv to volunteer at the civilian operations center based at the Expo Center. (Here is an article about this amazing mobilization: https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-stunning-response-15000-volunteers-fill-leadership-vacuum-to-help-victims-of-hamas/). While they are about to close up the operation now, I still had lots of work to do there. And yesterday, I walked over 22,000 steps! In another small-world story of there being less than 6 degrees of separation in the Jewish world, Luisa, the woman who I was hooked up to for this volunteer opportunity, knows my town of North Adams, MA quite well–she used to be married to the son of one of my former congregants! (And I know her rabbi.) She is a Peruvian Jew-by-choice who lives in Rockland County, New York, but this is her third visit to Israel since October 7 to volunteer, and she and her husband plan to make aliyah now. She feels that Israel is her home and that she is safer in Israel as a Jew than she would be in the U.S.

Just a small section of housewares at the Expo Center. Requests come in from displaced families or from  soldiers, and then boxes were put together of housewares or clothing, etc.

My job was to sort and clean plastic chairs–many different colors and styles had been donated.

me and Luisa

One of the Brothers-in-Arms describing the operation

Tel Aviv was totally bustling and overwhelming for me. And yet, everywhere are pictures of the hostages, posters calling for their release. Walking down Dizengoff Street later in the day, every bench had a big teddy bear with blood. 

this teddy bear has a sign with a picture of a hostage, now released

After arriving back to Jerusalem, I met with fellow Obie (Oberlin graduate), Josh Shuman who lives in the neighborhood. He had wanted to buy a copy of my first book when it was first published but the postage would have been exorbitant. I gave him both books and told him to make a tzedakah donation to a good cause.

with Josh Shuman

There was a time when I felt I could live on three foods: grapefruit, bell peppers, and brown rice. I’ve definitely branched out into other food groups since then, but today I had the opportunity to return to one of my first loves and pick my own grapefruit.

With so many people in the army and on reserve duty, and with restrictions on Palestinians coming from the territories to work, there is a labor shortage. I decided to stay beyond the time of my organized tour in order to take advantage of  the volunteer opportunities, which are available for field work, in particular. Today I went with Bili’s friend F. to a kibbutz orchard (Netzer Sereni) about an hour from Jerusalem to help them pick grapefruit. I had last done this in 1981 when I was on kibbutz Mishmar HaEmek. They quickly saw that I had very little upper body strength to do this strenuous work, and moved me to work elsewhere. Forty-plus years later and I do have more upper body strength, but it was still very hard work. I was  relieved when the rains came and we ended the day early, as I wasn’t sure I could have done much more without hurting my back and knees.

Filling my bag (slung over my shoulder–VERY heavy)

We dumped our bags into these large crates

This was an elongated grapefruit that I took a liking to.

F. climbed a tree to get some grapefruit higher up.

(And in a country where there are but one or two degrees of separation, one of the other volunteers today –and note that there are many, many places one could volunteer–was the son of an Israeli Reform rabbi in one of the communities our group had visited. He was there with an American friend and the friend’s mother who told me that they had come from the U.S. to both pay a shiva visit and to visit someone in the hospital–both of whom were casualties of this war.)

As for F., she told me that before the war she was out protesting against threat of the judicial reforms every single week. That protest movement was unprecedented in Israeli history and perhaps even on a global scale–every week from January 2023 until October 7, and indeed prevented a total coup by the Netanyahu government. She is a leftist with three sons, one of whom is on the right and lives in a settlement. They don’t speak politics. (One of the rabbis we met with last week comes from a big family with political leanings all along the spectrum. Their solution: they have one What’sApp group for loving contact with one another and another What’sApp group dedicated to their political arguments!) The brother-in-law of one F’s sons has come home from the war without two legs–the vests protect their chests but not their limbs. There are so many dead and so many wounded. F. said she cries almost every day from the news.

F. will only go to a protest gathering now if it is only in support of the release of the hostages. However, the protests are now more and more about calling for a new government, recognizing the utter failure of the Netanyahu regime. As much as she despises Netanyahu, F. said that she doesn’t want to divide the country while soldiers are in Gaza and is more discriminating about which protests she will go to. These are the kinds of nuances I can only learn about here on the ground–not from the black-and-white coverage I’m exposed to at home in the States or from my own knee-jerk reactions.

We also spoke about the hostages and the deal that is currently on the table. It is a high price to pay–to release thousands of Palestinian prisoners (many with blood on their hands as I’ve mentioned previously) in exchange for the hostages, and for a pause in the war to allow for humanitarian aid to reach Gaza–but most Israelis want the hostages to come home–hence the ubiquitous signs and posters of them and in support of them everywhere. There are those on the right, however, who want the war to continue at all cost, willing to sacrifice the hostages for what they consider the greater safety of the country. 

How do you calculate the worth of a life? How do you calculate security? It is harder than 1 + 1, that is for sure.

On Friday (yesterday), I took time away from my group experience to go with my friend Bili to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem to see the painting, “Curving Road” by Ziva Jelin, an artist from Kibbutz Be’eri, the largest of the kibbutzim in the Gaza Envelope. Over 100 of Be’eri members were brutally murdered on October 7 and about 30 were taken hostage. You have probably seen T.V. interviews with Thomas Hand, the Irish father of 8-year-old Emily, who had been abducted from Be’eri and later released. Vivian Silver (z”l), the peace and women’s rights activist who was originally considered a hostage and later found dead, was also from Be’eri.

Adom Darom (the red south) refers to the red fields of kalaniot (anemones) that blossom in the south in January/February — in the Negev and the Gaza Envelope. There is a yearly festival to celebrate the spectacle. But this year, the festival has been cancelled because of the October massacres in the area and because of this post from a resident of the area:

So in one word ‘no’, and in two words ‘don’t come.’

And not because it’s dangerous here, even though IEDs still fall here from time to time, and not because it’s scary here (and yes, gunfire and helicopters are scary), and not because of the destroyed roads , and the scenes left by the tanks everywhere. Don’t come because of the country road. This is a region whose inhabitants are refugees in their own country, whose settlements are abandoned and burned, having a picnic here is like having a party at the house of a neighbor who is in intensive care in a hospital, it is invading a place where the hosts are not, not to mention all those who won’t hold back and just want to see the migonit, or the burnt houses in the kibbutzim, this is our house, and this time we are not inviting.

Despite this strong sentiment from some of the actual residents of the area, most Israelis we speak with have been surprised that our solidarity mission was not taking us to see those burnt houses. Visiting the devastation has been the focus of most of the solidarity missions coming from abroad.

In any case, the art gallery on Kibbutz Be’eri was mostly destroyed on October 7. This painting survived, though with bullet holes in it. The artist Ziva Jelin always did her kibbutz landscapes in red–not only because of the kalaniot that bloom in the area, but also because red, of course, conveys a sense of danger. Little did she know that the painting itself would be under attack.

“Curving Road” by Ziva Jelin, 2010, an artist from Kibbutz Be’eri.

a close-up in which you can see the white bullet holes.

The museum also had an exhibit of art created during or just after the Yom Kippur War, works that speak as powerfully to today’s war as it did then.

Photographer Moti Mizrachi, “Sacrifice of Isaac,” 1973

In Mizrachi’s “Sacrifice of Isaac,” the photographer bound himself like Isaac. In “Burying One’s Head in the Sand,” David Ginton alludes to the government’s unpreparedness for war.

Photographer David Ginton, 1974, “Burying One’s Head in the Sand”

My friend Bili, who heads the film archive at IBA TV in Israel, had just completed a big archiving of documents from the Yom Kippur War, a project she had fought for. Now it is clear how important that archiving is, as researchers try to find relevance of that war to this one. 

Last night, friend and colleague Rabbi Faith Joy Dantowitz (who is on the same CCAR rabbinic mission) and I went to our rabbinical school classmate Susan Silverman’s for Shabbat dinner. Susan (sister of comedienne Sarah Silverman and wife of Yosef Abramowitz, a.k.a. Kaptain Sunshine) lives in Jerusalem and is the founder of Second Nurture (https://www.2nurture.org/). 

Rabbis Susan Silverman, Faith Joy Dantowitz, and moi

But since Susan is a hostess with the mostest, we were not her only guests. The table included a Chinese Jew, an HUC student, a Korean woman here to study city planning–and planning to convert to Judaism, the comedian Israel Campbell, an older woman who had been very active in the Soviet Jewry movement, along with her Filipino caregiver, a visitor from Dallas with her son who is a tour guide, and Susan’s daughter who was home from her army service for Shabbat.

Shabbat at Susan’s

Today was my birthday. I received a beautiful birthday blessing at Congregation Har El, the founding Reform congregation in Israel. After the service, a man came over to wish me a happy birthday. “Thank you. How are you doing?” I asked him. At first he seemed resistant, but he opened up, telling me that his nephew was killed in combat in Gaza in November, that his son had just been drafted, and that he is the bureau chief for the Associated Press and is hitting road blocks trying to get his Palestinian staff out of Gaza. I also heard how disappointed he is about the Israeli t.v. coverage of the war in Israel which he considers unreflective and set on keeping the Israeli public traumatized and vengeful. It was a powerful reminder of what our tour guide had been saying–everyone here is on the front lines or only one or two degrees of separation away from the events of October 7. I was particularly moved by his ability to hold the pain of both the Israelis and the Gazans at a time of such great stress in his own family. 

On the way back to the hotel, I stopped at the tents across from the prime minister’s office.

The number on the blackboard outside the tent changes everyday. Today’s is 120, indicating the number of days the hostages have been in captivity. (I’ve also seen people wearing the daily number in masking tape on their lapels.) One sign reads “We want them alive.” Another reads, “Return them home now.” And inside the tent, are posters of the hostages, which are also posted on bus stops, walls, billboards everywhere.

Families of the hostages camp outside of the prime minister’s residence

“Bring them from darkness and the valley of the shadow of death and return them quickly to the embrace of their families, and we say Amen.”

In the afternoon, we had a study session with Orly Erez-Likhovski, the director of IRAC (Israel Religious Action Center, http://www.irac.org), an important Reform institution in Israel that is dedicated to making Israel a more just nation, bringing legal cases to the courts on issues ranging from marriage equality to racial and gender discrimination to having public transportation available on Shabbat. Then we had a study session with the amazing Rabbi Michael Marmur who taught about “reshit tzmichat g’eulateinu,” the phrase from the prayer for Israel that translates as “the first flowering of our redemption.” He said, however, that Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovitz (the chief rabbi of Britain who preceded Rabbi Jonathan Sacks) had wanted the prayer to read “she’te’hi reshit tzmichat g’eulateinu” (that Israel might be the first flowering of our redemption).

He tied this to a midrash suggesting that Eretz Israel had been given conditionally and noted that Vivian Silver considered herself a conditional Zionist: “I believe in the right of the Jewish people to have a state, as long as we give the same right to the Palestinian people.”

Without regurgitating everything he said here, suffice it to say that Rabbi Marmur offered a hard-hitting teaching about redemption and hope and responsibility to make Israel a just society, not just a society that survives. 

Tonight our group had our final dinner before most of the participants flew back to the US. I returned to Bili’s, where she had a delicious homemade birthday cake waiting for me. When I was here six years ago, it was strawberry, not chocolate. But only one candle each time!

Bili’s birthday cake for me this year

This is the cake Bili made me for my birthday 6 years ago when I was here last

Our tour guide, Uri, keeps reminding us that everyone in this country has been on the frontlines. Ask the barista or the cabdriver what happened for them on and after October 7, and you will understand the collective pain of the nation, and how everyone is only one or two degrees away from knowing someone who died or is a hostage in Gaza.

Yesterday was the day we spoke to the closest front-liners–survivors of Kibbutz Nahal Oz who were hunkered down in their safe rooms while the terrorists tried to get in to torture, murder, rape, or capture them.

Most of the kibbutznikim relocated to Mishmar HaEmek, one of the wealthiest kibbutzim in the country. A kibbutz is about community, so they want to remain together. (We heard of another kibbutz that took over two buildings in Tel Aviv as that was the only way they could stay together as a community.) Nahal Oz had been temporarily housed at Mishmar HaEmek when there were previous security threats, so there was already a relationship.

(As an aside, Mishmar haEmek is the kibbutz where I lived in 1981 when I took a semester off from college and is a place very dear to my heart. There was a beautiful trail on the kibbutz that I would run on, taking me up to a ridge where I would see the entire Jezreel Valley below and cry. When I got back to the US, I never ran again–as nowhere I ran could compare to that regular spiritual heart-opening experience. I wrote about my relationship to the kibbutz when I visited there six years ago and walked that old trail. I’ve been thinking about it again recently because one of my roommates on kibbutz then–Malka– was a young 16-year-old woman from Ethiopia who had walked across the Sudan to get to Israel. For the past few months, I have been tutoring a young 30-something Ethiopian Israeli woman via Zoom, and Malka has been on my mind.) 

Nahal Oz sustained 16 horrendous deaths on October 7, and two of their members are still hostages in Gaza (Sachi Idan and Omri Miran). Of course, the kibbutz itself is destroyed, and it could take 5 years or so to rebuild. We had an opportunity to speak with three of the survivors, Naomi, Danny, and Yael, and the Reform rabbi who serves their kibbutz, Yael Vurgan. The stories were horrifying and gripping, as you would expect. Naomi, the mother of 3 young children, said that the only people who are okay after October 7 are the people who admit that they’re not okay, and how hard it is for her to be around people going on with normal life as usual. She isn’t sure she can go back to the kibbutz even once it’s rebuilt. The Gazans who had worked on the kibbutz with her husband in agriculture were cleared of having any role in passing on information to the terrorists (the maps the Hamas terrorists had were provided by some of the Gazans who worked on these kibbutzim), but he nonetheless says he can no longer work with Arabs. Can such a sense of distrust and betrayal be healed?

Rabbi Yael Vurgan, who serves the entire region (10 kibbutzim and one moshav) spoke about the tzimtzum (contraction) she has been doing in her pastoral work over the last 4 months: she is in the mode of learning and no teaching (because she feels she has no answers) and is only listening and bearing witness.

Naomi sharing her story with us

But Danny expressed the fact that he was and remains a peacenik. He remains committed to his belief that there are good people and that there are bad people regardless of race, religion, or nationality and cited the many stories of Israeli Arab and Bedouin heroism on October 7 to save the Nova concert attendees or people on the kibbutzim.

To be a kibbutznik is generally to be a leftist. They are socialist institutions, after all. And in the Gaza Envelope, the members of the attacked kibbutzim were known peaceniks, some of whom were creating business opportunities with and for Gazans, or were driving them to hospitals, etc.)  Members of Nahal Oz (including Danny) were at the forefront of the protest movement that rocked Israel for close a year to protest this current right-wing government and its plan to decimate its democratic institutions, specifically its judiciary. So there are a lot of complications now of what it is to be on the left, as a two-state solution is now a long, long way off and may no longer even be possible. So many have lost hope in their vision of a shared society.

Danny sharing his story

Some of these solidarity missions to Israel have of course, been going down to the Gaza Envelope to see the devastation on the kibbutzim firsthand. Our CCAR trip for Reform rabbis purposefully decided not to do so out of concerns for security (for a group this size, there would not have been a shelter at any of the kibbutzim that could have held us all in case of missiles), but also out of a sense that they didn’t want to participate in tragedy tourism, to be voyeurs to the devastation while the inhabitants are internal refugees in their own country. Some of our group members disagreed with this reasoning and are disappointed, but Danny himself said he felt uncomfortable knowing that people were gawking at the devastation of his home and community, and I appreciate that sentiment. It was enough to see a couple of photos that were shared, like the following:

This photo on Nahal Oz bears witness to the devastation and also honors the dead.

From the Kfar Aza gate (another kibbutz in the region that lost 46 members on October 7) you can see how close Gaza is.

From Mishmar haEmek, we travelled to the town of Shoham to meet another Reform colleague and to prepare food for soldiers (cakes and vegetable platters).

In the evening, we had dinner with the HUC-JIR (Reform seminary) students who are studying here for the year and had a fascinating study session with Dr. Dahlia Marx on the topic of redeeming captives, which is a very important obligation. The Talmud even says that to be taken into captivity is worse than death.

So that is the debate in Israel today. Most of the country wants the hostages to be released, even when knowing that the exchange would include thousands of Palestinian prisoners, some with blood on their hands. This possibility creates a lot of fear since the mastermind of the Hamas attack on October 7, Yahya Sinwar, was released in a prisoner exchange in 2011 (1026 Palestinians for the single hostage Gilad Shalit). Those who are opposed to a prisoner exchange consider it too big a risk to take and are willing to sacrifice the lives of the hostages.

Such are the complications and the calculations. If you haven’t seen today’s New York Times op-ed by Liat Atzili, one of the released hostages and a Holocaust educator, please do, below. But if you don’t have time, just read this:

“Without tekumah [rebirth], we will only sink further into the cycle of mutual anger and victimhood that has plagued our relationship with the Palestinians for too long. That is not the approach that the survivor generation chose, and in their spirit I do not seek revenge for what I have been through. I am humbled by how my fellow Israelis put their lives at risk to fight my kidnappers, but I do not feel any catharsis in seeing the destruction of Gaza. Instead, I want to focus on building a better future for my three children — and for the children of Gaza.” 

How did she move through her trauma so quickly to get to this place of clarity and vision? It’s quite remarkable.

Today in brief:

1. a visit to the Jewish Agency to speak with Yaron Shavit and Yair Lipstein, two Reform Jews who are making a significant difference in having pluralistic and egalitarian values on the table for these important non-governmental agencies. When we talked about the disaffection of young Jews from Israel, they floated an idea of bringing some of these young Americans together with young Israelis who are struggling with the same issues. (Who has the money to run with this wonderful idea??) They also said that to make a difference, you can’t walk away, you have to step into the game, strengthen the peace-making progressive forces in Israel. Amen to that.

2. a visit to the new National Library, which really deserves its own post, it was so sensational. 

3. free time and a visit with Bili to visit her mother and brother on their moshav. They are my family in Israel, and it was great to see them.

With Bili, her brother Oded, and her mother Yaffa on Moshav Shoeva, my home-away-from-home for 40+ years

And though we likely won’t discuss it until tomorrow as a group, I say Bravo to President Biden for saying “Yesh g’vul/There’s a limit” to the settlers.

Chaim and I spent almost a month in Haifa back in 2018 specifically because of its reputation as a mixed city, a model of relative co-existence in Israel. There was even an Arab-Jewish pre-school downstairs in our very apartment building in a country in which schools are generally segregated. 

So I was thrilled that our CCAR trip itinerary included a full day discussing these issues of a shared society here in Haifa. We began at the Beit haGefen Arab Jewish Culture Center which was opened by the municipality in 1963. They try to keep hope alive through art and culture, creating spaces for open dialogue and encounter. The art gallery featured an interesting installation representing the floor of a house, whose ornamental tiles were  created from local spices (turmeric, ginger, za’atar, sumac, and white pepper!) This is meant to remind us of just how fragile a home can be. The questions for the exhibit include: “Is home more of a place or a feeling?” “What is the smell of home for you?” “Can there be a house without borders?”

Art installation called “Beiti” (My Home)

Beit HaGeffen Arab-Jewish Cultural Center. Note the symbols of the cross, the Jewish star, and the crescent.

Naveen, the Arab Druze educator at Beit haGeffen, shared with us the work done in “The Lab,” an installation of subjective research by information designer Roni Levit. One of the exhibits was a whimsical comparison of the different falafel balls to be found in Haifa, but one encouraged us to choose the most significant characteristics that apply to us from the following list: hobby, work, family role, gender, belief, language, place of residence, food, music and dress.

Naveen honestly shared with us her experiences following October 7, the heated conversations, the holding pain of both her Arab and her Jewish friends, and the real threat to the vision of  a shared society. As a group of 37 rabbis (and a few spouses) who don’t all know each other, she then divided us up in smaller groups to talk about our own experiences since October 7. I was in a group with a colleague who self-identifies as a hawk on Israel. I, as you likely already gather, am a leftie. But our rules of engagement for this entire trip were: 1. to stay curious; 2. to get comfortable with discomfort. And this colleague and I really bonded over the deep sharing and listening. Perhaps we can cross that great divide with respect.

Naveen also encouraged us to think about our status as a minority in the U.S. and her status as a minority in Israel, and how we could help influence Jewish Israelis to not only think differently about the minority voices in their own midst, but also how we might try to understand the majority voices in the U.S.

Assaf (the CEO of the center) and Naveen then presented 7 images that symbolize different ways one might respond to the “encounter” with the other: a deep sea camera (there is more under the surface of an iceberg, for instance, then what you can see above the surface, e.g. don’t judge a book by its cover); a crystal (representing our multi-facets and how the light gets reflected off of us); a blindfold (how and when we might not want to see or hear);  glasses (seeing things differently), a satellite camera (perspective), a magnifying glass, and a kaleidoscope (ability to see lots of perspectives at once).

We concluded our meeting there with conversation with three of our MARAM/Reform colleagues in Israel, a teaching on hope, and a song “Shir haTikvah/Song of Hope.”

When we got back on the bus, our tour guide Uri said he had been living in a one-meter world not seeing much beyond that for the last four months, and that he hadn’t heard the word “hope” uttered in four months as often as he had this morning. And then he read a quote from Rabbi Jonathan Sacks that I’ve been teaching myself in the courses I’ve been offering on Hope  (primarily using the book Choosing Hope: The Heritage of Judaism by David Arnow):

“Optimism is a passive virtue, hope an active one. It takes no courage to be an optimist, but it takes a great deal of courage to have hope. Knowing what we do of our past, no Jew can be an optimist. But Jews have never–despite a history of sometimes awesome suffering–given up hope.”

We also visited the Leo Baeck school in Haifa, learning about the shared society work that they do, including their community garden that brings Arabs and Jews together. (It has been torrentially raining all week so we didn’t actually get to see the garden, however.)

Some of the students at Leo Baeck school learning practical skills

And then, back at the hotel, we met with two other rabbinic colleagues, both from the Ukraine, one who serves a Russian/Ukrainian community in Haifa, one who serves a multilingual congregation in Jaffa. Both spoke of the trauma of their Ukrainian congregants, many who came to escape the war in the Ukraine only to be facing the trauma of the war here (while still having relatives facing the war in the Ukraine)–and some who therefore left Israel for Europe. I hope to post more about their amazing work –and the sensitivities that they both have to face vis-a-vis navigating the discord between Ukraine and Russia –at another time.

Tonight after dinner, my friend Tamar Messer and her husband Omri came to visit. Tamar is a Haifa-based artist (www.tamarmesser.com) whom Chaim and I met in 2018, thanks to our mutual friend Nancy. It turns out that she also knows Rabbi Lenny Thal and Dr. Linda Thal, who are also on this trip, so we had a lovely reunion. Tamar spoke about the volunteer work she did in the first three months of the war. Apparently the night goggles/flashlights that the soldiers had didn’t fit their helmets and they were not using them, a real safety concern. So someone, chik-chok, designed a way to attach them, and she was among the group of seamstresses who connected these two pieces of equipment. She said that volunteer work was what helped her survive.

from left to right: me, Linda Thal, Tamar Messer, Lenny Thal

I’m not sure if I mentioned previously that each of the hotels we’ve stayed at are mostly populated by displaced Israelis from either the north or the south of the country. The lobby areas are filled with people gathering for knitting groups, chess games, or conversation. Children are playing games, doing art projects, riding their scooters, or kicking their soccer balls in the hallways. 

I am aware of my privilege.

First, at Hostage Square, viewing the grassroots art installations that are responding to and raising awareness of the hostage crisis. One day after October 7, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art had already offered the square in front of the museum to be used for this purpose, understanding that grassroots art is art as worthy of display as the collections inside the museum. The first thing we saw on entering the square was a big display with a count-down of the days, hours, minutes and seconds that the hostages have been in captivity. I lost it then and there.

This news ticker in Hostage Square, Tel Aviv, keeps tabs on the number of days, hours, minutes, and seconds since the hostages were taken into captivity

You may have already seen the most well-documented installation on social media—the long, beautifully set Shabbat table with wine glasses and wine, china, and seats for each of the hostages, including some highchairs. Today that table looks quite different. Half of it has signs on the plates saying “How good it is that you came home,” representing those who have been released. The other half, representing those still in captivity, has ugly brown tablecloths, water bottles filled with brown unsanitary water, tin containers filled with a small portion of unidentifiable and unappetizing food, stools of concrete blocks or upside-down buckets rather than chairs, and blacked-out anonymous faces of the hostages rather than the ubiquitous posters seen elsewhere that have photographs with names and ages of the hostages. 

The front end of the table, welcoming the freed hostages home

This part of the table represents those still in captivity

The square is filled with many other installations, including a long, dark tunnel with sound effects of bombs outside that tried to give the sensation of being a hostage alone in the tunnels. You could go crazy there. There are also tents for families, survivors, or communities to tell their stories of loss and survival.  Each installation is powerful and painful in its own way, a truly overwhelming experience.

the opening to the tunnel

these blindfolded chess pieces are the captives

one of a series of photographs with hourglasses, indicating that time is running out

The tent says “Nova”– the music festival–the woman lying there was clearly raped.

(I’m only posting a few of the photos; let me know if you’d like me to send others to you.)

Second, after hearing Lee Siegel, brother of hostage Keith Siegel, speak. Keith’s wife Aviva has been released, but Keith is still in captivity. Lee spoke about the Hostage and Missing Families Forum (“The Forum”), which offers families holistic support and professional assistance and advances the ongoing efforts through all channels, locally, regionally and globally, to bring the hostages and the missing back home to their loved ones. Aviva has become a spokeswoman in her own right, reporting on the sexual violence that occurs every day in the tunnels. (You can google her name to get some of the coverage, including a feature on the PBS News Hour.)

Lee Siegel, brother of hostage Keith Siegel

Third, after a presentation at the Sagol Center for Hyperbaric Medicine and Research at Shamir Medical Center in Tel Aviv in which two doctors spoke of their new groundbreaking work in treating PTSD with hyperbaric chambers. After impressing us with the science, they told us how shocked they were by the denial around the world about the Hamas atrocities on October 7. They, therefore, are planning to partner specifically with Columbia University, a locus of some of the anti-Israel/anti-Semitic/October 7th denial, to do joint research. As Dr. Shai Efrati described his shock at the world’s indifference, I again “lost it,” now being triggered not by the Israeli reality of feeling alone and friendless in the world, but by being reminded of my own fear and loneliness back in the U.S. and the specter of anti-Semitism that lurks there.

(the hyperbaric chamber)

The treatment they offer costs $10,000 per patient. Our busload of rabbis raised over $10,000 immediately to sponsor treatment for one civilian traumatized by the the events of October 7, and many of my rabbinic colleagues will be returning to their congregations to raise more money in order to offer this same treatment to others.

Other highlights of the day included:

1. A presentation from an Israeli human rights organization called Gisha. Founded in 2005, Gisha’s goal is to protect the freedom of movement of Palestinians, especially Gaza residents. Gisha promotes rights guaranteed by international and Israeli law. Their work is quite impressive, as were the two presenters, both from Britain— one who grew up in the Reform movement (Maayan), and the other (Rebecca) who grew up Orthodox. Rebecca would regularly visit relatives on the West Bank, not understanding for a very long time that she was entering occupied territories. Her personal journey to understanding and then advocating for the rights of Palestinians was very moving. You can learn more at www.gisha.org
2. Upon leaving Tel Aviv, we got a red alert on our phones about rockets in the area and pulled off the road. The protocol would have been to get out of the bus and lay down on the side of the road covering our heads, but we were just on the outskirts of the danger area and were ultimately able to proceed. Knowing where safe rooms/shelters are in every building has become routine wherever we go, but if you are in a moving vehicle, you have to pull over and get out. I downloaded two apps on my phone to give warnings about rockets, and I have been getting alerts every day, several times a day, about rockets somewhere. (And by the way, I am here in Israel without insurance because no one will insure visitors to Israel these days.)
3. When we got to Haifa, we met with Anna Kislanski, the CEO of the Israel Movement of Reform and Progressive Judaism (IMPJ), who filled us in about the remarkable front-line work of our Reform rabbinic colleagues here in Israel and the importance of the spiritual message they are bringing to Israel at this critical time, including leading a havdalah ceremony every Saturday night both in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem before the anti-government demonstrations; the officiation at military funerals that had until now only been the domain of Orthodox military chaplains; the mobilization to volunteer after October 7 and the  growing capacity for shared society and interfaith dialogue work.
4. This rabbis’ trip includes two other rabbis who started rabbinical school with me in 1989-99 for our year in Jerusalem. Tonight we met with others who were with us in Israel that year, 2 of whom now live in Israel. It was a lovely reunion.
   

   Evan, Faith Joy, Estelle and I visit with Joel and Lori who now live in Israel. (Their son and son-in-law are both doing their reserve duty in Gaza.)

It’s been a full few days since I last posted. filled with friends, old and new, and deep learning. It will take a long time to process it all, so I can offer only highlights and some scattered thoughts here now.

I visited on Friday day with two rabbi friends and their spouses (and tasted THE best croissants I ever had because, voila! French Jewish bakers moved to the neighborhood). I refer you to this article about one of the rabbis, Levi Weiman-Kelman, that had broken my heart when it first appeared in The Forward last month: https://forward.com/forward-newsletters/looking-forward/574527/takeaways-from-reporting-jerusalem-tel-aviv-haifa/. That feeling of a closed heart was shared by others over the last few days, and in a meeting tonight in my Reform rabbis’ group, Rabbi Gil Kariv, (a Reform rabbi who is also a member of Knesset with the Labor Party) reminded us that most Israelis are not seeing the images from Gaza on mainstream Israeli news.

with Levi and Paula Weiman-Kelman

with Susan Silverman

After a lovely Shabbat with my childhood penpal Bili (with whom I started corresponding at age 10–and who is also struggling mightily with her closed heart and her rage–her job with Israeli t.v., btw, requires her to be viewing the graphic footage from October 7) and her husband Mats and a couple of other guests, I left Jerusalem early this morning (Sunday) to get to Tel Aviv for 9 AM programming with the solidarity mission from Congregation B’nai Jeshurun (BJ) in Manhattan (one of three congregations I belong to).

with Bili and Mats

Rabbis Felicia Sol and Roly Matalon from B’nai Jeshurun (in the middle) with Dr. Rani Jaeger to Felicia’s right and Rabbi Chen benOr Tsfoni and Dr. Sarale to Roly’s left

First we met with a panel that included Rabbi Chen Ben-Or Tsfoni (who was an intern at BJ many years ago and now serves a congregation in Raanana–she spoke of her many relatives who physically survived the attack on Kibbutz Beeri on October 7 but who are traumatized, and how hard she is finding it to maintain or offer hope); Dr. Rani Jaeger, a founder of the Hartman Institute’s pluralistic Jewish-Israeli Identity program, who spoke primarily about his experience these last few months doing his miluim service as a medic; and Dr. Sarale Shadmi-Wortman, an international expert in the field of community building as a process for creating resilient communities and founder of VARDA Institute, which is working in communities all over Israel post-October 7 (including Bedouin and Arab communities). Most memorable tidbits she shared are:

1. the younger generation is very resilient and very motivated to make change in this country and that fills her with hope.

2. there is a political divide about what to do about the hostages. While most of the kibbutzniks and Nova party-goers who were captured come from left-of-center families and communities, the soldiers who are hostages come from a broader spectrum of Israeli society. There are, apparently, 5 families (right-of-center) who do not believe that hostages should be released, who are willing to sacrifice their own children to what they consider the greater good of Israel.

3. Arab Israelis are between a rock and a hard place, as they generally identify more with Jewish Israelis than with Palestinians in the territories. Sadly, current fear of Arabs on the part of Jewish Israelis is not helping Israeli Arabs to feel it or express their sense of solidarity fully.

4. The anti-Semitism that has been unleashed around the world after October 7 convinces her that Israel is the only place that is safe for Jews. She knows this is a paradox.

After this panel, we heard from the group Bonot Alternativa (Alternative Builders), a grassroots women’s organization, whose work on behalf of women totally blew my mind. It was founded after a gang rape of a teenage girl in an Eilat hotel in 2020 and has grown to be a movement that includes women from secular to Orthodox to Arab. The judicial reform that had been protested for weeks and weeks before October 7 would have affected women disproportionately. They often went to protest wearing handmaids costumes (think Margaret Atwood and “The Handmaid’s Tale”) and remaining silent to symbolize the silencing of women. Their  movement was ready and organized after October 7 to respond, as they did, with 50 operation centers around the country to address needs from housing to childcare to cooking. Note that it is not only those southern communities that have been displaced due to the Hamas attacks, but also 150,000 people in the north have been evacuated in anticipation of a war with Lebanon. The hotel I’m now staying at in Tel Aviv, the Dan Panorama, (as are hotels everywhere) is housing large number of these evacuees/internal refugees. (I’ve since heard that there is a rise in domestic violence–imagine being stuck in a hotel room with kids.)

Also note that what these grassroots organizations are doing are, of course, things that the government should be doing but isn’t. While the government was in hiding in those early weeks after October 7, the country was only held together because of its civil society. This is a view shared by everyone I’ve spoken to thus far. (Note that there is also a tremendous amount of anger at the utter failure of  the government, the IDF, and the intelligence community in not anticipating/preventing October 7.)

Lots of great and angry graffiti

A makeshift commemoration for the hostages in Dizengoff Square in Tel Aviv. Photos, messages, teddy bears, yahrzeit candles run all the way around the large fountain.

I brought Sharon a picture of her father z”l that was made by artist Pattie Lipman

When the BJ folks took off after this conversation for the rest of their tour, I went to visit my friends Sharon and Simon at their home in Tel Aviv. Sharon is the daughter of former congregants of mine who has lived in Israel for many years.

And then I went to meet my own Reform rabbis’ group (a group of 36) for its week-long program that officially started this evening, meeting with a number of Israeli Reform colleagues and then a deep dive into Israeli politics with MK Rabbi Gil Kariv.

While I’d love to share my pages and pages of notes with you–Gil is brilliant and compelling — I will not. I do want to say that he scared the daylights out of me with his assessment of what’s happening in the Middle East right now, the specter of Israeli’s having to fight wars on multiple fronts (in which Hamas is actually the least of its concerns as it doesn’t ultimately represent the existential threat that Iran does), the dangers of the Netanyahu presidency in his isolationism from allies in the US and Europe who could help contain these larger threats, and what the left and center-left have to do not only for their own political survival but also to prepare for the Day After this war and moving towards a vision of a two-state solution.

“IT’S COMPLICATED” will likely need be my title every day from here on. This country is filled with contradictions, and the black-and-white thinking about it from the left in the US  doesn’t take into consideration the larger geo-political realities and concerns. MK Kariv believes that what is happening here now is bigger and broader than the Palestinian-Israeli issue alone.

I’m happy to discuss any or all of this with any of you who’d like to know more.