Hope and Prayer

I’m writing this in the final moments of our downtime before we head to dinner and the airport. I have no clue what day of the week it is, and the last few days are a jumble, but I wanted to get this reflection out before I got on the airplane.

Today was filled with information, one of those days where keeping it all straight required copious note-taking. Last night ended with the Executive Director of Honest Reporting reminding us that this is not a war of Arabs and Jews, this is a war of terrorists and civilians. It was the perfect lead-in to our hour with Libby Weiss, a Portland native, PJA graduate who made aliyah, and now a spokesperson for the IDF. Her talk gave us context for what we’ve witnessed and heard on the news. I want to share all of the data, statistics, and information that she shared with us, and at the same time, I’m still processing. 

The question that was the most thought provoking and upsetting: “Have you noticed no one calls for Hamas to stop their rockets? No one is calling on Hamas to release the hostages outright?” Instead, the world is calling for Israel to stop, to use restraint. This lack of accountability for Hamas implies that Hamas has no agency of their own. Lest we forget, Hamas is a recognized governing body, elected in Gaza. Hamas has agency, and we must demand that they use it. 

Another haunting question: “Why don’t we have numbers of the number of casualties of Hamas militants? How is it possible that in urban warfare only civilians are dead?” The world must reconcile their thought process in order to truly understand the larger context of this war.  

When you call for restraint from Israel, know that they’ve sent over 5 million calls and texts to the residents of Gaza, warning them where strikes will take place. Israel is literally sharing their military strategy with Gaza and Hamas to minimize civilian casualties and putting themselves at an operational disadvantage to spare civilian lives.  

From this talk, we went to Hadassah Hospital on Mt. Scopus to meet with a survivor of the October 7^th massacre. He and his sister were walking home from checking on their brother-in-law when the sirens went off. They ignored the homefront command rule to immediately duck and cover, and instead crossed the street to take cover. Thank God they did, because the rocket landed where they had been standing. They both sustained multiple shrapnel injuries. A group of yeshiva boys came out and saw them, got their rabbi who was a medic, and saved their lives. In the words of this 23-year-old, “There is a creator because otherwise, I wouldn’t be alive. A movement left or right and I would have been killed.” Amen.

Hadassah trains doctors all over the world in mass casualty trauma response. Take that in. They do this so often that they train the world on how to react. Of all things to be well known for, I wish it wasn’t this.

Next we engaged in a day of alphabet soup: the Jewish Agency for Israel, the Joint Distribution Committee, and then United Hatzalah. Each organization doing what they can to protect, support, and sustain life in Israel at this moment. The recurring theme: psychological care is exceptionally important and where resources are being pushed right now so that there can be a healthy future.  

Finally, the Kotel. That old, strong, protective wall that plays a part in the holiday of Hannukah we begin Thursday night. A prayer for hope, for healing, for the strength of stone, and the gentle smoothness of time.  

This is the hope, that nation will not threaten nation, that we can each do our part in speaking up for justice, accurate reporting, love, light, and above all, peace.  

More to come once I’ve slept.

Today was the reason I came on this trip. I came to bear witness to the atrocities of Black Shabbat, October 7. I came to hear the stories of survivors and to see, with my own eyes, the devastation and carnage in the Western Negev region, which is often called the Gaza Envelope.  

Our day began early, on the bus by 7:40 a.m. so we could meet our security window for our visit to Kibbutz Nir Oz, the site of one of the 22 communities targeted on October 7. The kibbutz was founded in 1955 and was a community of 400 people. One in four people on the kibbutz were murdered, taken hostage, or have been missing since October 7. Nir Oz is a business for paint manufacturing, potato crops, and a dairy farm. Many Gazans had work permits as employees of the factories. And still, they came on October 7 to destroy rather than to create.

Our group receives ballistic vests and helmets. We’re told to wear these and duck if the siren goes off while we’re on the bus. You’ve got 10 seconds at most. On October 6, all you needed to go to the kibbutz was a friend. People sat in the fragility of the sukkah sharing wine and joy. But to visit on October 8, you needed protective gear and a soldier.  

Our tour guide walked us through house after house of those who were murdered, burned alive, stabbed, and shot. Houses blackened with soot. Safe rooms covered in blood and bullets. A bottle of wine left on the table outside from a last sukkah party the night before. In this house, a friend, in that house, a young family. Doors with a “Bring Them Home” poster of their owner taped to the door.  

BOOM, BOOM, BOOM. We jumped. “Oh, that’s our IDF. They are now in the city directly across from us.”  At first, my thought was, “Did I miss the lightning? How far away was the storm?” But of course, for this type of “thunder” in Israel, the siren gives you 10 seconds – that’s as long as you have.

Shattered glass and ransacked rooms. A sukkah left up. A jungle gym and toy house in a backyard which we heard “belong to the Bibas family. This was their home.” Those fiery red-headed children, the boy who at nine months old has disappeared.  

This resident used to brag he had the best view from his balcony. His charred exercise bike sits outside the footprint of his home. Come, let’s look. The raised porch is all that remains of his home. SIREN SIREN SIREN. Ten seconds, GO! We rushed to find the safe room, as mortar shells fired from Gaza to Nir Oz. ALL CLEAR.

To another kibbutz 50 minutes away, a kibbutz that has absorbed 400 new residents, doubling their size.  An outdoor laundry room was created. People were displaced from their homes because their beds were too close to danger, not knowing when they would return. Families in one-room apartments, trying to live. They fled under fire. They lived their dream life, then faced the worst nightmare possible.

The rain begins. A flash of light and BOOM! Iron Dome? There was no siren. No, that was actual thunder.  The rains have begun. We stand in the temporary section of a cemetery in Revivim, created for those murdered at Kibbutz Be’eri because they can’t be buried in their home cemetery just yet, or maybe it isn’t there anymore. El Malei Rachamim – we prayed for their souls to be bound up in eternal life. As we reach “amen” a 15-second-long rumble of thunder. Maybe God is crying too.  

Today I was present to bear witness to the aftermath of horrid hatred. We smelled death. We saw homes not only burned and blown up but ransacked for loot after the murders. Today, I saw what evil can do.  

And I also saw the good. We have found the helpers, as Mr. Rogers said we would. The community of Israel has come together in strength and unity to make sure Am Yisrael chai. The nation of Israel will live.  

There’s more, but my words aren’t ready yet.

And it feels like home. That’s what kept going through my mind on the El Al flight to Israel. It was rowdy and full, like the Israel I used to know. I settled in, seeing the tefilat haderech (traveler’s prayer) on the screen, realizing I belong.  

A few hours into the flight, right after I had fallen asleep, the flight attendant woke me to tell me that the empty middle seat in our row would be filled by an ultra-Orthodox man who needed a new seat because the young mother beside him was singing to her baby, thus violating his prohibition against hearing a woman’s singing voice. In true Israeli fashion, my seatmate argued with two flight attendants and saved our cramped legs from having a third person join us.

We landed in Israel, and within three minutes of touchdown, a rocket siren went off, but we were still on the plane with nowhere to go. We could only pray that the Iron Dome would do its job, and it did.  

Arriving in Jerusalem, it didn’t feel like 16 years since my last visit. It felt simultaneously like returning home, and yet like a strange new city. The streets aren’t clogged with honking cars, there aren’t tourists wandering around. Birds seem scarce.  

In the span of three hours, we heard from the sister of two hostages about the hope and prayer she carries for her brothers in Gaza and about the pain over her nieces and sister-in-law who were murdered. We heard from a member of Kenesset. We heard from an author. We ate.  

All in all, I’ve been awake for nearly 40 hours, so I’ll sleep before tomorrow, a day of witness. The wisdom from today from Osnat Sharabi, sister of hostages, rings in me: “I believe in good. I do acts of kindness with the prayer, the belief that ripples will come into the world and bring my brothers home. Bring them ALL home.” So, please, let us all go start a wave of kindness.