Shalom again my friends. Here is a third note from Israel, birat haMoledet, the homeland capital of the Jewish people, written in New York, birat haGolah, the capital of the Jewish diaspora. The post is pretty long, sorry, but it covers the final two days of Ansche Chesed’s Israel trip.
We spent Wednesday in Tel Aviv, beginning with a visit to “Hostage Square,” where the wider public and especially families of the kidnapped gather each day to advocate for their return. There we met our old and great friend, Martin Sinkoff, former AC President, who has become a full-time Tel Avivi and lives nearby. Hostage Square lies across a big boulevard from the Kirya, Israel’s “Pentagon,” only a couple of blocks from Kaplan Street, where the democracy protests gathered last year and have now resumed.
The Square is filled with images of those captured and the empty chairs and tables of their families’ forlorn Shabbat meals. When I visited last November, the Shabbat table was vivid and colorful. Now it has been painted slate gray, which I take as an expression of the nation’s and the families’ darkening mood.
People say that everyone in Israel wants the hostages back, but some people want them back now. Everyone wants them back, but some – usually on the right, including some hostage families – prioritize prosecuting the war, saying they want them back “but not at any price.” At the square I noticed a vivid poster, asserting what the visitors of Hostage Square believe: עסקה עכשיו בכל מחיר – “A deal now, at any price.”
The Hostage Families Forum arranged for us to meet Yarden Dahan, relative of the hostage Carmel Gat, and cousin to our member Gustavo Bruckner. He said the families are going out of their minds with frustration that the government has not prioritized bringing home their beloved family. Earlier this month, a short video of another member of the Dahan family was all over Israeli TV and social media after he confronted the extremist right-wing National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir asking: “what did you do today to help free Carmel?” Ben-Gvir replied: “Stop being such a leftist.”
Even before the current war, Tel Aviv was renowned for its street art. Now the “Bring Them Home Now” collective took our group on a walking tour of dramatic murals in South Tel Aviv’s funkier neighborhoods, most of which the group members painted themselves. Our tour guide was Ignazio, an Argentinian immigrant, whose “adoptive family” on Kibbutz Nir Oz was also from Argentina: the family of Shiri Bibas, wife of Yarden and mom to those two red-haired babies, Kfir and Ariel, whose faces we cannot forget, held in captivity, as I write this, for 264 days. Here you’ll see a graffiti mural imagining them lighting Hanukkah candles.
Another is a wall painted by the world-renowned, Tel Aviv-based artist “Dede Bandaid,” depicting four heroes – including an Israeli Arab citizen and paramedic, Awad Dawarshe – who saved the lives of others at the Nova festival, while they themselves were murdered. (I met Dede once in another context and discovered that he only appears in public while wearing a full mask, since he wants people to experience his art, not the artist. Hmm. Eccentric.)
Another very impactful mural depicts the international community’s “see no evil” approach to the sexual violence of October 7. Our member Lori Cohen found this one particularly pointed: Lori had been among a group of feminist human rights activists who had petitioned UN Women over their inexcusable delay in protesting the atrocities. As the saying went: “#MeToo, Unless You’re a Jew.”
We reconvened for lunch and further discussion at Bina, the “Secular Yeshiva” in South Tel Aviv, where I have been involved for 15 years, and where my own children and several other Ansche Chesed kids have spent post-high school gap years. Bina’s Hebrew slogan is “the Home of Israeli Judaism,” while its English literature calls itself “the Jewish Movement for Social Change.” Both phrases are very illustrative of this organization dedicated to Jewish learning in a secular key, infused with social justice activism. “We deeply believe that Israel must be a Jewish and democratic state,” its director Nir Braudo told us. “We know what we mean by democratic. But what do we mean by Jewish?”
Bina is fortunate that the city of Tel Aviv-Jaffa has given it the city’s old botanical gardens, which they use for programming, including secular Kabbalat Shabbat services. Tel Aviv in June is hot! But sitting in the breezy garden, amid the native trees and grasses, was lovely. We Ansche Chesed Jews are familiar with studying classical Jewish texts to discover contemporary meaning. But fewer secular Israelis have that muscle trained. That’s what Bina brings to the table. One of their educators, Gili Dvash Yeshurun, a social worker by profession, studied with us passages from the Book of Ruth and the Zionist thinker Ahad Ha’Am to discuss how people conceive of themselves as members of a community.
While at Bina we had lunch with another great friend of Ansche Chesed, Miriam Herschlag, opinion editor at Times of Israel, and niece of our beloved Yocheved Muffs z’l. Miriam described herself as a generally cynical person, not given to patriotic enthusiasm. But these days, feelings of solidarity tend to overwhelm her natural reserve. She spoke to us about the way ordinary families live oscillating between suffering and celebrating. For example, Miriam recently attended two weddings within a single family, in which people carried all their fear and anxiety, yet managed to summon the appropriate joy. ובחרת בחיים, “choose life,” the Torah exhorts. It’s not always easy.
Wow – this post is getting long! But so were the days themselves. We were dragging our carcasses along at points. But in the spirit of the Arik Einstein classic – “Drink a Turkish coffee, and wake up!” – I found a cup, and on we went to Jaffa.
After my Encounter trip to the West Bank, in 2017, I promised myself that I would always include Palestinian voices in any future (extended) trip to Israel. Thanks to our member Jimmy Taber of the Abraham Initiatives, the leading organization working on “shared society” for all Israel’s citizens, and a wide coalition known as the Interagency Task Force in Israeli Arab Issues, we connected with a number of impressive women striving for a more equitable society. We met at the Well House, a cultural center in Jaffa. (A “well house” is not a place for yoga and mindfulness; wells were built in the large farmhouses of Jaffa orange growers in the 19th century, from which they irrigated the orchards.) Well House is run by Lisa Hanania, a Jaffa native from a Christian Palestinian family and graduate of Brandeis. Well House specializes in programs celebrating both Jewish and Arab culture, such as concerts – the day we were there, the Jewish Mizrachi star Shai Tsabari was playing – and cooking and crafts workshops. But in a context like this, there are always potential tensions. Arab women who teach famed Palestinian embroidery techniques asked that the Jewish women promise not to sell their wares. Hanania’s charisma and humor are off the charts. She ran unsuccessfully for the Tel Aviv-Jaffa city council before; I won’t be surprised when and if we see her in political leadership.
On the same panel, we met Nawa Jahshon Bathshon, also a Jaffa Christian, who leads Co-Impact, a consultancy helping Arabs seeking jobs in Israel’s business sector, and helps companies hire and integrate Arab employees, creating more diverse workplaces. Israel’s economy has thrived in recent years, but the Arab sector remains largely marginal. While Arabs constitute about 21 percent of Israeli citizens, they account for only about 5 percent of the employees at Israel’s most successful companies. The Bank of Israel estimated that the nation could add $8 billion in GDP if it fully integrated its Arab citizens.
Our final stop on Wednesday was a high point of the whole trip. Rachel Korazim is a renowned educator – she spent most of her career at the Jewish Agency, in Holocaust education. In recent years she has specialized in teaching Hebrew literature as a window into Israeli life. (I hope we can have her for some Zoom sessions this year.) She welcomed us to her lovely home in Jaffa, where we brought dinner. Rachel is assembling a book of poems written since October 7, and she taught us a handful of these often searing works. For example, give a look at these lines from a poem called “Kaddish,” by Assaf Gur, who imagines a radio news announcer transmitting a report from the field:
Our correspondent goes on to report
Sobbing all the while
That there is burnt baby
And there is an abducted baby
There is an orphaned baby
And there is a one-day old baby
Lying there, still attached to his mother’s body by the umbilical cord
Who never even learned his own name
Which will be inscribed on his tiny tombstone
With a single date for birth and death.
We began Thursday morning, the final day of our trip, by meeting Haviv Rettig Gur, the excellent reporter for Times of Israel. (His dad is an American-born, long-time Israeli Reform rabbi, whom I have known for many years.) Our friend Ben Bokser, a beloved member of our community, joined us for this program too. Among the interesting features of Haviv’s presentation: he described himself, like most Israelis, as being on the right. As some of our group reminded me: It is salutary for liberal American Jews to hear views that don’t only confirm what we already think.
For instance, Haviv expressed, shall we say, great skepticism at reports of famine. He mistrusts reports from international agencies and the UN, which he said are blatantly anti-Israel. And Hamas or organized crime clans steal the food aid aimed at civilians, he said, while Israel does a good job of getting aid to those displaced. In fact, he said, that’s why and how Israel is able to evacuate civilians in areas when fighting ramps up – because they know they will be fed if they comply – while Hamas wants to increase suffering to further isolate Israel. Is that plausible? Is it true? Is that what pro-Israel partisans like me want to believe? Can we dismiss critical reports by respected authorities? Should we assume that all sides have reasons to distort the facts? I lack the necessary information to evaluate such claims.
But in fairness, if it is true, it would not be the first time international agencies charged Israel with cruel crimes against humanity that turned out false. Recall the “Defensive Shield” invasion of the Jenin refugee camp in April 2002, at the height of the Second Intifada, after the Pesach seder bombing in Netanya, which killed 30. Led by the Palestinian Authority, human rights activists claimed that Israel unleashed unimaginable slaughter. There were 500 dead, 1,000 dead, “thousands” dead, whole families buried under the rubble of their homes. It was like Bosnia, said Amnesty International. The final number of dead, confirmed by the IDF, the PA and the UN was 52.
Haviv told us that Israelis are poised between optimism and pessimism. Lamrot hakol, “despite it all,” Israelis are remarkably happy. The annual World Happiness Report, issued by British academic researchers along with the UN found Israel the 5th happiest nation (with the US at 23). Asked if Israel will win the war, Israelis roundly say yes. But when asked if Benjamin Netanyahu will lead them to success, from both the left and the right, they roundly say no. Haviv said he expects the government ultimately to fall, but cautioned that this might not make people as happy as they might think. Elections are hard to hold during wartime. And a lengthy caretaker government is unlikely to be able to negotiate a cease-fire and bring the hostages home. Oy v’avoy, as the saying goes [see Proverbs 23.29 – that saying is old!].
As on Tuesday, after that conversation, we needed to do something positive, so we volunteered at the Jerusalem “Hamal” – that term literally stands for hadar milhama, or “war room,” but it doesn’t necessarily have military connotations. Any headquarters uses the term, and it has come to refer to any of the emergency social service pop-ups that emerged since October 7. We cooked and packed hot Shabbat meals for soldiers in the field, whose units will pick up the food and drive it to their bases in and around Gaza.
Our final major stop in the tour was at the brand new National Library, an architectural, technological and cultural marvel. Dr. Raquel Ukeles. Director of Collections, and a former AC/Minyan M’at davvener during her New York days, brought us on a tour of the public display, which included rich collections of popular media and ancient manuscripts, from Judaism and Islam. Jews really are the “People of the Book,” passionately in love with our tradition of words, expressed in many media, and this is a sacred shrine. Personally, I delighted in seeing specimens of my own favored genres: Talmudic era Aramaic magic bowls used to ward off demons, a Maimonides’ autograph Commentary on the Mishnah, the printed copy of the Zohar used by R. Isaac Luria, and handwritten work by modern authors like S.Y. Agnon and Leah Goldberg.
By Thursday night, it was time to say goodbye. We had a relatively fancy closing dinner in Jerusalem with some esteemed guests. We invited members of our AC family, Ariel Fischer and Daniel Fischer, with his fiancee Michal, to share a meal and informally talk about their experiences in this crazy year. It was a joy to see these beloved people in the Holy City. And Masorti (Conservative) Rabbi Doron Rubin of Rehovot pitched in at the last minute, subbing for another speaker who was taken ill. He told us of his life journey, growing up as a secular Israeli in Haifa, who discovered Masorti Judaism at his bar mitzvah and found his spiritual path. Doron was not shy about the challenges facing liberal Judaism in a sometimes hostile state. But he also inspired us by telling us about the good work he and his community do to deepen Judaism in the Jewish state.
And with that, my friends, we brought our communal trip to an end. Our goals were to stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters, to bear witness to some of the horrors Israel experienced since October 7, to learn what sources of strength are sustaining Israelis in this difficult time, and to lend a hand when we could. We can be pleased we succeeded.
We named our trip לבי במזרח, “my heart is in the east,” after Judah HaLevi’s famous poem. Indeed, my heart is always there. May I and we return again soon.
