Part 1 of my perspective on the recent Memphis Jewish Federation Israel solidarity mission:
Moshav Netiv HaAsara, Gaza Envelope, 27 February 2024:
They paraglided into the moshav/cooperative village. Three paragliders, two pilots each. Two Tuesdays ago, Harel led us through Nativ haAsara, his former moshav, in the terrorists’ footsteps. He looked like a movie star with Paul Newman’s build and height. Wearing suave sunglasses and Swiss-style hiking boots, Harel led us past grasses like Germantown planted last season, and which bordered the back yard of one of the houses, where one family was murdered.
Over the grasses, in the not-too-far distance, we saw a northern Gazan city.
How did the paraglider pilots know where to go? Harel said the Gazan worker of one of the families, who worked for them for many years, told Hamas where to find one of the top leaders of the community, and according to this video shared in our mission’s Whatsapp group, shared the names of his wife, kids, cat and dog, except the dog wasn’t even theirs, but their neighbor’s, and the dog just always hung out in their yard.
What would it have been like to be one of the six pilots? Could I put myself in his shoes, in his harness? Could I imagine what he was thinking, wishing, planning? I could try:
Allah-forsaken infidels! Stealing the land! Building fancy houses! Living like royalty! We’ll shoot ‘em, but save their kumquat trees. We’ll rape ‘em as the opportunity arises. We’ll show ‘em who’s boss.
I’ll take what’s mine, their homes, their wives, daughters – I don’t even like women, but I can never let on. If I have to rape a couple yahudiun whores along the way to throw my brothers off the scent, I will. No one can ever know I’m gay. I’m the toughest of the bunch. They don’t realize I have the most to prove.
Hey, here’s an aquarium to shoot up! Yahudu’ fish’ll be squirming all over the floor. We’ll turn the village into a ghost town. Make ‘em never want to return. No more working for them. No more of them at all.
Here, or at another war-torn Israeli locale, Rabbi Jeff Dreyfus of Memphis’ Temple Israel invoked Ell Persons. If I remember correctly, Rabbi Jeff compared standing in Memphis, where a mob murdered Ell Persons on 22 May 1917, with standing where Hamas massacred Israeli families and individuals on 7 October 2023: “An eerie feeling….”
I didn’t know the gruesome Memphis story, and then felt glad, learning how the rabbi of Temple Israel then, Rabbi William Fineshriber, “…called a congregational meeting to protest, convinced the membership to endorse a public condemnation, and acted as secretary to a group of clergymen who issued a statement, copies of which appeared in local newspapers on 25 May” (Source: Wikipedia link above). What a terrific ally!
I wonder which ally of Jews and Israelis will appear more than 100 years from now in a Wikipedia article or its equivalent, speaking up about October 7th.
Not long after October 7th, one of my Israeli relatives said, “We worry about you. Why go to synagogue and make yourselves into targets?”
My response might have been, “Why live in Israel and make yourselves into targets?” but I knew not to bother with such a counter.
As Jews today, they say they feel safest in Israel because there’s an army to protect them.
In my circles, we were all being brave with each other, initially. Israeli family and friends didn’t want us to worry about them. We didn’t want them to worry about us.
All of us do worry, though, and we’ve stopped hiding our fears from one another. Some mix of the need to show them, and myself, they are not/I am not alone, and of “seeing is believing,” and of needing to witness, then “pray with my feet,” compelled me to join Memphis Jewish Federation’s Israel mission last week....
I'll post Part 2 tomorrow/Thursday. Meanwhile, for a lucid summary of our time in Israel, day by day, by Rabbi Sarit, click these links:
Part 2 of my perspective on the recent Memphis Jewish Federation Israel solidarity mission:
Hostages Square, Tel Aviv, 29 February 2024:
On Thursday, last week, the last day of our mission, a childhood friend met me at Hostages Square in Tel Aviv and here are highlights of our conversation:
He said, “You look the same.”
I responded wistfully, “That’s nice of you. We’re not 20 anymore.” But I sort of believed him, based on my oldest sister Deb’s theory that people always see you as they remember you.
“Your arms are still good. I can’t see the rest of you, but I felt them [when we hugged]. I remember when you did pushups on your knuckles [at 15].”
“Ah, pshh. I just had some back surgery.”
I show him my uterine cancer scar across my midriff. “But I’m fine now, really, it was just Stage 1A….”
“My kids are 24 and 22. My daughter’s gay.”
“C’mon!”
“She has had a girlfriend for a year.”
“Where did they meet?”
“In the army.”
“You know, your daughter could apply for that [LGBTQ student] scholarship that Pat & I put together at Hebrew University.”
He shook his head.
“It’s not need-based.”
“No, she wants to go to art school.”
“To Bezalel [Academy of Arts and Design]?”
“Yes, she does painting and photography.”
“Wow! Does she have an Instagram account?”
“Yes, but it might be private, Send her a message and tell her we’re friends.”
I want to ask, “Did you ever tell her about me?” but I don’t. At 20, he & I experimented, tried being more than friends over a weekend in Eilat.
“My son is a big boy, but he strained his back and so is not being called up to the army right now, thank God.” I remember my friend sharing that as an only child, the army excused him from front-line combat and he didn’t tell his parents when he chose anyhow to go into Lebanon on a mission. Ironic and touching how now, he’s on the other side.
“Show me pictures of your kids.”
“Here’s my son.” He shows me two photos of a handsome young guy, who looks like he could star in the ear-worm song, I couldn’t get out of my head a couple days earlier, “I Don’t Want to Be a Player No More.” Delightfully, when I mentioned it at our big Israeli hotel breakfast that day, Rabbi Sarit chanted a snippet, “I’m not a player, I just crush a lot.”
“Wow, gorgeous,” I answer sincerely as I look at the photo. He looks powerful and confident, just like my friend.
Then he shows me his daughter and she’s appealing, too. “Lovely. She reminds me a little of you.”
He nods.
“She’s in Gaza now. Netflix is my best friend. I don’t sleep. I just wait by the phone.”
“Oh, oh. Is your aunt [-- and my mom’s (z”l) dear friend since 1950 --] still alive?”
“No, she died a few months ago.”
“Before October 7th?”
“Yes,” at 100+.
One of our group, John, who has photographed >1,000 Holocaust survivors worldwide, and who helps his wife run KAVOD walked by and I stopped him. “John, I’d like you to meet my childhood friend. May I bug you to take our picture?”
My friend squeezed me into him and I leaned my head toward his. We still love each other. The way people do when they have sweet history. And we do. Drawing together in Tel Aviv at eight; attending a Maccabee basketball game in Tel Aviv at 11; Hosting his friend Yehudah and him after their English language immersion program in our Stamford, CT home when we were 15; our experimental weekend in Eilat at 20; and news of each other via his aunt (z”l) and my mom (z”l) until Facebook’s emergence, when we connected online, at least. But we have not seen each other in person since the Eilat trip nearly 38 years ago….
“Do you agree,” I ask him, “that this might be an ultimately bad time for Jews?”
“The people on campuses in the US are so stupid. They don’t even know what ‘From the river to the sea means.’”
“My mother died in her sleep peacefully at 88—”
“So did mine, at 90—”
“But she was right. Dementia had just started a bit and once she thought she saw the word, ‘Hebe’ inscribed in her bathroom vanity, a pejorative expression in English, like Kike. Well, my mother used to write on her hands to remember what she needed to do and I took a photo and showed her, “Mom, look, it’s just your handwriting.” She feared antisemitism her whole life, and she was right.
My friend just nodded….
The PA system distracted me, “Oh, it’s, it’s –”
“Yehudit Ravitz,” my friend filled in the blank, a popular Israeli singer and songwriter.
“Yes, Yehudit Ravitz!” I gushed. I didn’t even know the lyrics, just recognized her voice and the tune. I wondered why such a cheerful melody played at Hostages Square and then I read the lyrics while writing this part. The title is “Four in the Morning,” and it’s all about wishing the missing person would come home, and now, it also applies to the kidnapped hostages:
אני לבד - כלום לא עוזר
אני כמעט על סף משבר
מתי אתה חוזר?
I'm alone - nothing helps
I'm almost on the verge of a crisis
When are you coming back?
But instead of being sensitive to my friend’s feelings about the song, since he has a daughter in the IDF in Gaza right now, and because I didn’t catch the double-entendre of what I was listening to, I effused:
“I love Yehudit Ravitz. You know, she came out as lesbian. And when I lived in Israel at 20, I listened to the song, “Derech HaMeshi,” and it seemed like a pun. You know what a pun is?”
He nodded.
“I mean, ‘Derech HaMeshi,’ (“the Silk Road”) sounded to me like another way to describe a woman’s…parts.” (After we said goodbye, I realized I meant to say “double-entendre” in this case, too, and not a “pun.” And I had pompously asked my friend if he knew the English word, “pun.” Oy!)…
My friend had waited for me from 4:30 pm till a bit after 5 pm. At 5:37 pm, still smiling, he said, “I have a 6 pm Zoom, so I’ll just catch a taxi.”
“OK, but let me introduce you to my rabbi, Rabbi Sarit,” and I called over to her. Rabbi Sarit came over and I introduced them.
When he left, I watched his back, turned away, and then turned back, and so did he. Old friend. Later, as with all my family and friends, I realized that I should have asked him, “What do you want the world to know about Israel from your perspective right now?”
I asked him afterward, electronically, and he replied simply, “Too complicated.”
What selected Israeli family and friends want the world to know about Israel right now, 29 February-6 March 2024:
Here’s how the other friends, family, and a Hasidic rabbi from Jerusalem, on my plane back to JFK, responded to the question, “What do you want the world to know about Israel from your perspective right now?”
High tech product manager:
wow big question. I guess there's big dissonance between how we feel we're perceived in the world: big, strong, aggressive, confident and how we really feel: great pain in what feels like a war for existence and extreme lack of hope for a peaceful future.
Attorney:
I would like the world to know that we want to live in peace with our neighbours and the rest of the world.
Another childhood friend, and a consultant:
Israel is a people. Israel is a Jewish people rooted and acting in love, peace and belief in the higher power of G-d. We are living in excruciating pain yet in spiritual knowledge that the world’s perception of us is indeed an inversion of what is divine light.
Tour guide:
Challenging times, war over our own existence here. Back to seminars, studies, zooms, volunteering projects that help also make my days significant. Barely have time to myself. huge uncertainty over professional future, and in general. Looking for alternative options for a living. North is a war zone in the past couple of months. The land is like an explosive bomb…threats from within…and yet, we are grateful to be at home, in warm bed, and together. We stand for our people. Hoping for better days.
Professor:
Oh wow. That’s a good question. And a big one too. That it is a nation in trauma. That we are not monsters. That in spite of our many faults, the calling into question of our country’s right to exist is uniquely wrong and preposterous. That there are many shades and colors of Israeli society. That my university and others in Israel are havens of tolerance and liberalism. And so much more.
My second cousin Nitza, who’s also a Museum Curator:
It’s a complicated question for me now, I will think about it and try to summarize for you. Tomorrow I plan to join the march of the families of the abductees to Jerusalem, or to go to Caesarea to demonstrate against Netanyahu.
Sarah, were you able to read my article? [I found the version that’s translated into English.]
It is what I felt on May 2021, now, It's much worse
Perhaps it’s simple.
▪︎The world should know that we don’t have any other place.
▪︎That we live in a very violent neighborhood.
▪︎And that we struggle to continue to be a just and democratic society, because its seems we've lost it.
Sarah I don’t know about your group and your host’s political views, the country became very militaristic.
So for now I will fight for my views, while trying to keep my sons safe at home!!!
The grandchild of Avi, Mayshi's neighbor, I grew up with his mother and aunt, he was killed this week in Gaza.
I can’t bear the talk about "being united and that it's not the time for demonstrations," again, it looks that Israeli society will not stand boldly to deal with our true existential questions.
The war just makes the country more militaristic and more arrogant, it's unbelievable.
Husband of the childhood friend who’s a consultant, who’s also a businessperson:
The concept of the Palestinian people is a misnomer.
There is no occupation, Israel is the rightful homeland of the Jewish people.
The world is demonstrating pure anti-Semitism, whether it is vocal or silent/accepting of the misjustice and warped views.
Israel is defending itself with the highest, most ethical morals, in a war, where the enemy is the most ruthless and barbaric.
The moment has come for humanity to choose between right and wrong, … there is no midway point between the truth and a lie.
Another relative:
All we want to do is live peacefully and enjoy our lives here…what everyone wants.
Since Israel came into being, I don’t think anyone has had any more wars than we, and we never initiate it….not that we’re perfect – that we do hold onto the land in the West Bank. When people feel occupied, they don’t look at us very favorably.
If they wouldn’t have given us any reason to be aggressive…they could have lived peacefully, but because they’re constantly initiating some kind of attack whether by individuals or groups, trying to hurt or kill as many Israelis as they can, we have to give some kind of an answer….
And if they form terrorist groups where they’re planning to do harm inside Israel, like Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, we have to stop them before they cause harm. It’s like a game of cat and mouse, constantly trying to stop them before they kill anyone.
The point is, basically, when it comes to Gaza, we left I don’t know how many years ago, we left Gaza and took out the Jews…but they didn’t do anything. They had the whole Gaza Strip to themselves and could have become an independent state they could have flourished and built things….They were free, with different countries constantly pouring in relief. They didn’t invest it in the population. They invested it in tunnels and any sort of munitions to fight Israel. People were starving but they poured millions into a whole Gaza beneath the ground — the whole tunnel system with air and water in order to be able to survive underground for a long time, and it cost a fortune, which they buried there instead of investing it in the people….
Basically, they used the population as human shields. They keep people from food when the convoys come and then say Israel shot the people.
It’s a lot of hard work, countering their propaganda...because people want to believe them.
We do have quite a lot of Israeli Arabs putting [positive] things on the Internet, including one woman, talking about how she went to college and did this and that, and in many Arab countries she wouldn’t be able to. She contradicts the Apartheid accusation. So many doctors and nurses in Israeli hospitals are Arabs.
Years ago, when the kids were little, most pharmacists were from Eastern Europe, and now, it’s mostly Arabs. So it’s not that they are kept away from professional positions. I’m not saying that they’re not discriminated against, but even if you’re a Moroccan, Ethiopian, Ashkenazi, Religious, Leftist, Rightist Jew, everyone likes to hate everyone else….
By the way, not a lot, but there are also Arabs, serving in the [Israeli] army. Yosef Haddad is one — you can always see him on the Internet putting out clips. He’s an Arab Israeli who was in the army, who lost a leg, and he’s more extremely pro-Israeli than Jewish Israelis.
If you look at the world map and you paint all the different Muslim countries in the world in one color and then you paint Israel on the map, you realize the extent of the vast lands and this little, bitty piece of land that was allotted to the Jews, and even that, they want to take. It’s our historic homeland and the UN gave us this piece of land when no one wanted us, especially after the Second World War.
At the same time, the Arabs were offered the same thing, but they didn’t want it. They wanted all or nothing, and it’s been that way ever since. They don’t want us here, altogether. As long as we are here, there won’t be peace, and if someone thinks otherwise, they’re mistaken.
Let’s put it this way, I’m very, very pessimistic and I can’t see things turning for the better in my lifetime, or in my grandchildren’s lifetime, if Israel will even still exist for them because of what Netanyahu is doing to the country. He’s willing to destroy the country to save his tuches (posterior) so he doesn’t have to go to jail. He’s been living life as if he’s above the law and one of his sons has been living the same way.
People have started protesting again because it’s too much, we need to get Bibi [Netanyahu] and his idiots out of the Knesset…. It’s unbelievable that there’s no kind of law that can drop him out and send him to the moon, to sit there instead. Or Gaza. Even they don’t want him.
Hasidic rabbi and cantor, on the plane from Tel Aviv to JFK:
We don’t want anyone dead. We’re just fighting a war to defend ourselves.
Part 3 of my perspective on the recent Memphis Jewish Federation Israel solidarity mission:
“Thank you for staying with us,” 27 February 2024:
I’ve experienced personal war-zones, like when I had cancer, but never an actual war zone, until now. I’ve been a teenager, an 18-year-old young woman, but never an IDF soldier, though I sampled Basic Training by the Lebanon border ahead of the semester at Hebrew University’s One Year Program. Broke my ankle, jumping off a small hill onto a loose-rock pile; went to an army hospital, where they wrapped my left leg in a cast; then got sent home to Jerusalem. Mission aborted. Worse than “Private Benjamin.”
How would it be, growing up in Israel, doing compulsory military service? On the way to meet with Yossi Landau of Zaka Search & Rescue, our Memphis Jewish Federation delegation came upon a group of young soldiers with an older army instructor, who spoke lovingly and with great enthusiasm. Was his army role the same as my cousin Nitza’s? Effectively, for her army duty, she served as a tour guide, helping the soldiers understand the history and importance of the area they were defending.
When we met the day we landed, two weeks ago today, Nitza explained, in her Eretz Yisrael Museum curator role, she traveled to the Gaza Envelope with an Israel museum alliance, so they could collect and catalog artifacts from the ravaged kibbutzim. She showed me photos. What a grim duty that no one ever signed up for!
Israel and Egypt had established diplomatic relations when Nitza and I were 15, in 1980, and I also got to spend the summer with her family. Roller skating to George Benson’s “Give Me the Night” on the street in front of their Moshav Bet Herut home in Central Israel, we felt relatively care-free…well, Nitza would serve in the army in a few years, and her older brothers already had served, but none of us predicted the October 7th tumult.
Visiting Israel in wartime might have seemed brave, but I just “parachuted in” and then left four days later. My relatives and friends live with the war 24/7. While visiting Zaka’s car graveyard, we heard artillery blasts and gunfire in the near-distance. Alan Harkavy, our tour guide and a native Memphian, who made aliyah with his family seven years ago, said, “Don’t worry. They’re ours and they’re pointing the other way." Gunfire, I recognized, as Pat and I’ve heard shots from time to time in our own neighborhood in Memphis, but the sound of artillery was new.
After returning from the Gaza Envelope, our group learned that we had missed a rocket alarm in Ashkelon by seven minutes. When the rocket-alarm goes off near Gaza, you have 15 seconds to seek shelter, compared to Jerusalem, where you have 60 seconds, and Tel Aviv, where you have 90 seconds.
It’s easier, writing about rocket-alarm logistics than about the soldiers. They still had baby faces! The young, apparently female commander to whom Rabbi Sarit handed cards -- hand-drawn by Memphis Jewish day school kids -- had a tender smile. Initially, I had to look away when we saw their circle because they didn’t need to see my stricken features. They needed pure encouragement for their Gaza mission.
When Rabbi Sarit handed them the students’ cards, one of the soldiers said in English, “Thank you for staying with us.” Perhaps, she meant to say, “Thank you for standing with us,” as our T-shirts read, “Memphis stands with Israel,” but instead, her statement made me sob tearlessly, and think, Oy, but we’re not staying with you.
אֲשֶׁ֤ר בָּנֵ֨ינוּ ׀ כִּנְטִעִים֮ מְגֻדָּלִ֢ים בִּֽנְעוּרֵ֫יהֶ֥ם בְּנוֹתֵ֥ינוּ כְזָוִיֹּ֑ת מְ֝חֻטָּב֗וֹת תַּבְנִ֥ית הֵיכָֽל׃"
For our sons are like saplings,
well-tended in their youth;
our daughters are like cornerstones
trimmed to give shape to a palace." – Psalm 144
Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum taught me to look to Psalms for inspiration and consolation, but this snippet only upsets me further as I think about the soldiers in the prime of their life. Their service as my strong, youthful proxy devastates me – and that their families might lose them.
Meanwhile, I sit in our lovely Memphis house, tapping my keyboard while Israelis might be sitting on another time-bomb. Of course, all of us (Jews) sit perilously, but for the moment, denying our potential bomb from where I sit feels easier than dismissing their potential, next one.
The soldiers’ youthful beauty radiates off them even as the war robs their teenage years. What if war and more terror happens here, in the States, either soon, or when I’m even older and not at all able to defend myself?
What about psyche self-preservation versus being present for Israelis’ current tragedy, including for the lovely kibbutznik I met, Ronit Bart, who serves as a den mother to lone-soldier cohorts, who make their home away from home at Kibbutz Sa’ad? And one of whose actual daughter’s getting married next month, and whose rock collection needs cobweb removal after her recent return from months of Eilat-hotel displacement?
The gorgeous young people in uniform head to, or come back from, the fighting, or don’t, as in the case of Sgt. Elisheva Rose Ida Lubin (z”l), 20, a lone soldier of Kibbutz Sa’ad and a Border Police Officer, who died in a terror attack in Jerusalem in early-November. Ronit Bart cared for Rose like a mother, in addition to the four children she had organically.
Nathan and Alla Lubin, fellow delegates on our mission, were Rose’s actual grandparents. How could someone, who was both an Atlanta high school wrestler and cheerleader, someone so strong and so enthused, who a friend called, “the best of us,” come to such a tragic end so soon, at 20? Rose’s was the voice I craved the entire mission.
During her Mt. Herzl Military Cemetery memorial service in Jerusalem, I felt lucky, hearing a recording of Rose’s stirring voice, singing the Israeli national anthem, “HaTikvah/The Hope.” Greedily, I searched for a YouTube recording, too, but of course, to hear Rose's rendition, you had to stand at her decorated grave among her grandparents, aunt, uncle, and cousins, including a blissfully clueless infant, as an infant should be, compared to Baby Kfir, who was kidnapped by the terrorists.
Instead, I found a combat soldier, from before Covid, accompanying an Israeli pop star. I pray for the singing soldier and the soldiers behind her.
“How is your English so good?” I asked one of the young, native-Israeli medics we met at Kibbutz Sa’ad.
“One Direction, and Taylor Swift – she has a great vocabulary!”
One Direction was a British-Irish boy band whose hit, “What Makes You Beautiful” even I knew. Oh, God. They’re so young!
Part 4 of my perspective on the recent Memphis Jewish Federation Israel solidarity mission:
“A Very Broken Hallelujah”
I don’t think I have done justice here with this series. Being a reporter was the best I could do, including editorializing.
When I got back to Memphis, I bopped along to 88.5 FM’s best R&B tunes and kissed the ground with my eyes while driving down Poplar Pike. The roadside became dotted with purple clover in my absence and pink magnolias burst into bloom. I love being American and the comforts of home.
And…I feel akin with my Israeli family and friends and Jewish people everywhere, especially Israel, where almond, mustard, anemone, and orange blossoms flourish right now. I have five generations of family Moshav Beit Herut, and I pray nothing ever happens in Bet Herut like what happened to Moshav Netiv HaAsara. With my other home, Israel, ravaged by war with no end in sight, I feel despair. And anxiety. If it could happen there, it could happen here, God forbid.
They gave us a dog-tag replicas imprinted with a message about freeing the hostages, but I feel like Hamas holds all of us hostage now. The Hebrew half of the dog-tag reads:
“הלב שלנו שבוי בעזה” / “Our hearts are captive in Gaza” and the English half, “BRING THEM HOME NOW!” They also gave us a dog-tag-style heart necklace, representing partners of Israeli soldiers.
On his last day in office – opting to return to the Israeli Air Force and not run for another term – the former Mayor of Shoham, Eitan Pettigrew, told our group that he felt that October 7th was, “…just the beginning.”
And when we met with Yossi Klein-Halevi later in the week, he said, “October 7th was the start of Israel’s war with Iran.” Cheerless sentiments, but hard to contradict.
British-Israeli journalist and publisher of “Israel Times,” David Horovitz, told our group, “I don’t need them to accept my narrative. I want them to understand it’s what I believe.” He also said, “We need the US. It’s fantastic that you’re here and that’s not my being polite. We’re all in this together, so we need to understand each other.”
I asked him, “Imagine you’re writing an article with the headline, ‘We Finished the Job.’ What does the article cover?”
“In a perfect world, Hamas is no longer governing, has no more hostages, can’t do anything from Gaza. The Lebanon border is calm.”
Harvey Milk (z”l), the assassinated American politician and first openly gay man in public office in California, said, “You gotta give ‘em hope,” and typically, I subscribe to that message, so…I’ll say that music, the arts in general, humor, invention, and innovation, plus Jewish ritual and prayer keep me hopeful about Israel today and in the future, but it’s challenging.
In the realm of please-leave-Jews-alone-so-we-can-keep-innovating-ways-to-help-the-world, Shamir Medical Center’s Dr. Shai Efrati and Dr. Keren Doenyas-Barak run a program, treating PTSD through hyperbaric oxygen. The Israel Ministry of Defense supports the program because soldiers report a reduction of nightmares from eight times per month to twice. Dr. Efrati said he hopes Gazans can take advantage of the treatment in the future, too.
“For the first time this week, I feel positive awe,” I told Dr. Efrati. Considering the morale boost later, though, I felt sad: The most hopeful moments of the week were visiting this PTSD lab and the Magen David Adom headquarters, Israel’s equivalent of the Red Cross, where we learned they collected 3.5 weeks’ worth of blood in three days, following October 7th.
Never did I imagine I’d witness the aftermath of current-day pogroms. Sure, Jew hatred simmered in France, the UK, the States, and elsewhere, but I believed that with more and more Arab countries normalizing relations with Israel, things were looking up.
I’m just human, and also anxiety-prone, but so far, not requiring medication, and I had two enormously macabre thoughts during my journey:
A massive crowd, including me, waited in Miami to board the giant, Tel-Aviv-bound El Al plane. Looking around at what seemed to be Jews of all denominations, I wondered, Are we all heading to our death, like Holocaust-era Jews in cattle-cars?
My other sickest thought, unvoiced until now, happened while watching the excellent choir of older Jewish Israelis from the former Soviet Union:
Are we visiting a modern-day Theresienstadt – not because of the marvelous philanthropists who have housed the singing seniors, but because of Hamas’ murderous goals?
I had a third thought that I shared with others on the mission at one point:
Maybe, from many Jews’ perspectives, the current catastrophe’s pain will dull in 20+ years the way the September 11th tragedy did for many metro-New Yorkers. I went to work in Midtown-Manhattan that day and felt compelled for the first 11 years afterward, writing a remembrance annually because the grief was still raw more than a decade later…but not as raw since then.
The 9/11 analogy offered only a temporary salve, though, because I recalled, although garden-variety, 21st-century Americans were unaccustomed to massacres on American soil, Jews worldwide were all-too used to being targets. Nodding to Leonard Cohen (z”l), although out of context, at times like this, Jews sing “a very broken Hallelujah,” I guess, but a bunch of us will keep Hallelujah-ing for as long as we last. So far, we've lasted for 3,000+ years, weathering similar storms.
