Letters from Israel
Thursday, March 21, 2024
Helping our younger boys get their Purim costumes ready for dress-up day in school tomorrow, going through our massive "Purim box" full of costumes and accessories from years of Purims past and kids who've always enjoyed dressing up.
As I looked for a particular item my hands found instead a transparent bag with superhero components - capes, shirts, headgear - and a stiff felt Batman mask with pointy ears atop a neatly folded set of little boy Batman pajamas.
The tears welled up unbidden and all I could see in my mind's eye was the photo of the once happy Bibas family and their two little boys enjoying a family Batman PJ costume back in another life, before the Hamas invasion of October 7th stole that all away and kidnapped them to Gaza.
What is happening to them now? Are they still alive? Together? What conditions are they being held in? Do they have food, water? How are they being treated? Do they know it's almost Purim? Do they know how much everyone is doing to find them, save them, set them free?
Let my people go! שלח את עמי
Monday, March 18, 2024
Purim - Hope of Deliverance
One of the books that made a deep impression on me as a teen and
throughout my life is Esh Kodesh, the carefully preserved writings of
Reb Kalonimus Kalman Szapiro, the Piaseczno Rebbe. Even in the darkest
of times, in the horror of the Warsaw Ghetto, he did all he could to
preserve life, to maintain the rhythms and customs of the Jewish way
of life, be it mikveh or Shabbat or marriage.
Among his teachings, taught to me from earliest childhood by my
mother, was a deeply ingrained principle that in the depth of despair
and tragedy one should seek out the person who needs help. Even in the
darkest hour, find ways to do hesed, acts of kindness. Turn the
paralysis of grief and trauma to the positive of helping someone else,
even if it might be your final act. Perhaps these ideas are intuitive,
but all my life they have been a guide to how one can relate to times
of crisis.
Along with other Jewish intellectuals in the ghetto such as historian
Emanuel Ringelblum, he formed a secret group known as "Oneg Shabbos",
dedicated to preserving records of the life of the Jews in the ghetto
and testimonies of the Holocaust as it was ongoing.
In early 1943 these writings were buried in milk churns underneath the
ghetto. Rabbi Szapiro was murdered by the Nazis in November 1943 at
the Trawniki forced labour camp. Two out of the three caches were
discovered during the rebuilding of Warsaw after the war. In 1960,
surviving students of Rabbi Szapiro published his writings from the
Warsaw Ghetto under the title of Esh Kodesh - the Sacred Fire.
An innovative educator and passionate writer, as much as Rabbi
Shapiro’s words offer comfort and inspiration during times of darkness
and crisis, his very life and example also offer guidance. At a time
when it seemed as though the Jewish people had no future and were
doomed to be wiped out, he continued to live and work as though
tomorrow would always come.
The very act of preserving testimonies and burying them was an act of
hope that there would be survivors to find these hidden writings, that
the Holocaust would end and that the Nazis would eventually be
defeated. The sun would rise again, and there would be Jewish life
left in the world to rebuild and restore the remnant of the Jewish
people.
Which brings me to the upcoming Jewish holiday of Purim.
It's hard to think about celebrating any festival in Israel’s current
situation, let alone the raucous, joyous, silly season of Purim with
its dressing up and feasting.
Months of war, 134 hostages still held captive in Gaza, vast numbers
of bereaved families, thousands of war wounded, an entire nation still
deep in trauma and grief since October 7. Really, who has the stomach
now for parties, clowns and making merry?
And yet this complexity is precisely Purim. Purim isn't "carnival". It
isn't a celebration for celebration's sake, but a Jewish holiday
commemorating our deliverance from annihilation.
Purim is the story of Haman the Amalekite, who convinces the drinking
and carousing Persian emperor to let him carry out a plan of genocide
against the entire Jewish nation in the Persian empire - effectively
meaning the entire Jewish people, because the vast Persian empire
included all the Jewish population centres of the ancient world.
The ancient Persian legal system didn't even allow the Persian emperor
to simply overturn this horrific decree when Esther beseeches him to
save the lives of her people. He just can't. A decree issued by the
emperor and sealed with his ring of office cannot be revoked. The most
he can do is give permission to the Jews to defend themselves against
those who will be coming to massacre them.
Purim, despite being clothed in fun and silliness, is a story of Jews
successfully defending themselves against enemies set on genocide of
the Jewish people.
The ensuing celebration is not an easy one. Mordechai and Esther have
to instruct the Jewish people how to observe this festival of
Thanksgiving for their successful defeat of Haman's plot. In "the
month that turned from grief to joy, from mourning to a holiday, to
commemorate them as days of feasting and joy, giving food gifts to
friends, and gifts to the poor."
There is a difference between breathing a subdued sigh of relief at
being saved from certain destruction, and actively celebrating that
deliverance. A traumatised, exhausted people who have just had to
fight for their lives against murderous mobs can't necessarily see the
broad historical perspective. Without the guidance of Mordechai and
Esther, they might not have had the strength or vision to mark the
occasion.
Mordechai and Esther wanted the enormity of these events to be
remembered throughout the generations, to serve as a source of eternal
hope and faith that whatever dire straits the Jewish people might find
themselves in, whatever new Amalek might arise, the tables could be
turned.
To my mind, they were also looking to heal the deeply scarred and
traumatised Jewish people. The merriment, the emphasis on the
topsy-turvy turn of events, is a tool for helping the Jews of the
Persian empire release some of the pain and grief by focusing on
celebrating life and survival, by seeing the positive of their
successful defeat of those who sought their destruction and finding a
way to be joyful and thankful despite the horror of what they
experienced.
It's also interesting how Mordechai and Esther choose to commemorate
the events of Purim. Their instructions that people should hold joyful
feasts recall the lavish feasts of the decadent Persian emperor, too
busy with his own pleasure to even think twice about agreeing
initially to the mass murder of an ethnic minority in his realm.
Yet unlike the emperor's days-long extravaganzas of drinking and
partying, the celebrations Esther and Mordechai describe are fixed in
scope. They set a specific time for a persecuted people to release the
stresses of all they have just experienced, to let down their hair and
just let go. The Megilla tells the Jewish people to feast and be
joyful in remembering that Haman's evil plot was turned on its head,
not to engage in over the top parties and weeks of silliness and
abandon.
Yet they also understand that for many it was not the time for
celebration. Everything was too close, too raw. There were many Jews
who did not feel up to even modest feasting and joy. So they
emphasised that this commemoration of Purim must involve reaching out
to all sectors of the community with gifts of food, with donations to
those in need - including everyone, even those who were not ready or
able to join in the communal celebrations.
The entire community was saved on those miraculous days when, against
all odds, the Jews were allowed to fight for their lives and were able
to successfully defeat their enemies. As such, the entire community
needed to be included in giving thanks for that miracle.
Maybe all this is obvious, but to me this is one of the essential
lessons for Purim in our difficult times. We are traumatised and in
pain, but we need to also see the positive in our situation, to give
thanks for those doing good, to recognise the helpers and the
successes, even as we mourn our terrible losses and do all we can to
bring home our people who are still being held hostage in Gaza.
The essence of Purim isn't the dress-up, the drinking or the joking
around. It's an appreciation of the gift that the great power of the
day permitted the Jewish people to defend themselves in the face of a
genocidal plot and to save their own lives. It doesn't get more
existential to Jewish experience through the centuries than that.
And for those who don't feel like gathering with friends and family,
for whom October 7th is still too raw to engage in any kind of
feasting or celebrating, however modest, there are still plenty of
mitzvot of the day that are in the spirit of Purim, particularly
those which involve helping others.
Donate to "Smiles for the Kids'' to help bring joy to Israeli
children who are refugees or living in frontline communities. Visit hospitals,
or run Purim activities at a local retirement home, or offer to read
the Megilla for those who are housebound.
Make a modest Purim se'udah so that you can invite a new family in
your neighbourhood, or a recently-divorced or widowed friend and their
kids, or some elderly neighbours who live alone. There are so many who
need this kind of "hug", not just now, but especially now.
Mishloah manot isn't about grandiose gifting, themed baskets or baking
marathons. It's about seeing others in our community, maybe a
neighbour we aren't so close to but who is going through crisis, maybe
a miluim family or a socially awkward kid in your child's class, the
one people don't usually invite, or just an old friend you've lost
touch with or a relative who needs a boost. Even in our communities
which are full of kindness and love, there are still so many people
who are often "transparent". Mishloah manot is an opportunity to help
them feel seen.
To my mind, Mordechai and Esther and Reb Kalonimus Kalman Szapiro were
coming from that same perspective. During times of tragedy or in its
aftermath, take your grief, your trauma, your despair, and turn it
towards hesed and mitzvot, kindness and compassion.
Thursday, March 14, 2024
Superhero lullaby
For our young kids this song is their lived reality. These "superheroes" are their teachers, their friends' parents and siblings, school staff and neighbours.
Their school has taken in Israeli children from the north and the Gaza border who've been made refugees in their own country. They've heard first hand from these children about what it's like to live on the border with Lebanon in recent months under Hizballah bombardment, what it was like to be a child in Sderot or a nearby moshav on October 7 hiding with family in a shelter, praying the roaming Hamas gunmen wouldn't find them.
And they understand the response of hundreds of thousands of ordinary Israelis who left their regular lives as bus drivers, teachers, restaurant owners and lawyers, threw on a uniform and went off to defend all of us. They ask to watch this video over and over again because it is a great reassuring comfort to them, to know that we have a "people's army" of the mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers and neighbours and teachers who have gone out to protect them, people who are doers and helpers, people who are doing all they can to keep them and all the children of Israel safe.
I know there are those who say "see, all Israelis are soldiers, you all deserve to die!" (yes, that is a quote from a "friend" overseas) If you don't believe we have the right as a people to defend ourselves then I guess that might be the way you view this song.
If on the other hand you believe that Israelis and Jews have the right to self-defense against murderous terrorists who make no pretense of their desire to annihilate us and wipe our country off the map, then this song is one of reassurance. In some countries they sing lullabies and tell children stories about imaginary monsters and things that go bump in the night. Our children know that there are real monsters right on our borders and that sometimes the thing that goes bump in the night is real too. This song and the real life heroes it is about is the comforting lullaby for all Israel's children that there are flesh and blood superheroes out there every day protecting them.
Wednesday, March 06, 2024
Alive!!!
If any Israeli song is due for revival in our difficult times, it’s this one.
This is Ofra Haza performing "Hai" (Alive) and winning Israel's nomination for the 1983 Eurovision song contest held that year in Munich, Germany.
She went on to be first runner-up at that year's Eurovision competition, and the song has ever since been an Israeli and Jewish anthem of hope, survival and resilience.
The Eurovision competition was held that year in Munich, Germany, a location fraught with painful associations for Jews and Israelis, from its central role in Nazi era Germany to the 1972 massacre of eleven Israeli athletes by the Palestinian Black September terror organisation when the city hosted the Olympic games.
In 1983 First Lebanon War was raging, as after years of constant rocket attacks and terror assaults launched into northern Israel by Yasser Arafat's PLO in southern Lebanon, Israel tried to restore security to the residents of northern Israel, whose children were growing up spending as much time in communal bomb shelters as their own homes.
Meanwhile, the Cold War was also still in play. In the Soviet Union, growing numbers of Jews risked everything to live as cultural and religious Jews, fighting for the right to learn and speak Hebrew, the right to observe their Jewish faith, and most of all the right to emigrate to the Jewish homeland in Israel.
Many of these brave Jewish activists in the totalitarian Soviet Union were at the time sitting in prisons in Soviet cities and the infamous Siberian prison camps. Others had been fired from their jobs and labeled "parasites" for not working, a designation that often led to arrest. Soviet Jewry's struggle was alluded to in Ofra Haza's fierce celebration of Jewish life and survival, especially the line: "my sons seeking to return home".
Here are the deeply symbolic lyrics Ofra Haza sang (my translation):
Hear, my brothers,
I'm still alive!
And my two eyes are still raised towards the light
I’ve many thorns
Yet many flowers
And ahead of me too many years to count
I ask,
And I pray:
It's good that we have not yet lost our hope
A hymn passes
Through generations
Like a spring that flows eternal
Alive, alive, alive
Yes I'm still alive
That's the song my grandfather
Sang yesterday to my father
And today I’m still
I'm still alive, alive, alive
The nation of Israel is alive
That's the song my grandfather
Sang yesterday to my father
And today I’m still
My days are busy (alive, alive)
As are my nights (alive, alive)
And in my skies the pillar of fire still rises
I'll always sing: alive, alive!
And I'll reach out: alive, alive!
To my friends from over the seas
I ask...
Alive, alive...
Listen my brothers,
I'm still alive!
And my two eyes are still raised towards the light
So welcome
To all my guests
And to my sons seeking to return home
I ask...
Alive, alive...
Alive! I'm still alive, alive, alive!!!
שמעו אחי,
אני עוד חי
ושתי עיני עוד נישאות לאור.
רבים חוחי
אך גם פרחי
ולפני שנים רבות מספור.
אני שואל
ומתפלל
טוב שלא אבדה עוד התקווה.
עובר מזמור
מדור לדור,
כמעיין מאז ועד עולם
אני שואל...
חי, חי, חי
כן, אני עוד חי.
זה השיר שסבא
שר אתמול לאבא
והיום אני.
אני עוד חי, חי, חי,
עם ישראל חי.
זה השיר שסבא
שר אתמול לאבא
והיום אני.
הומים ימי חי חי
ולילותי חי חי
ובשמי עמוד האש עוד קם.
אשיר בלי די, חי חי
אפרוש ידי חי חי
לידידי אשר מעבר ים.
אני שואל...
חי, חי, חי...
שמעו אחי,
אני עוד חי
ושתי עיני עוד נישאות לאור.
אז כה לחי
לכל אורחי
ולבני המבקשים לחזור.
Sunday, March 03, 2024
Let my people come home!
Watching all the back and forth diplomacy as though the 134 hostages are just balls in a ping pong game for Hamas and Qatar, and yes, the UN and the US and the EU and our supposed "allies" to play with. Tools to beat Israel with. Weapons of diplomacy to force Israel to choose in a sick trolley problem.
Even if we don't personally know these 134 Israel hostages they are our people, our family. And we want them home now safe and well.
And the message shouldn't be "bring them home", like if only Israel wanted it enough it could happen. Their freedom is a choice of the bad guys who invaded our country and kidnapped our people and are holding them hostage. The message has to be "Let my people go!!" - Hamas and co who kidnapped them have to release them, let them go, no terms.
Hamas are criminals who kidnapped children, women and men, young and old, and carried them off to Gaza like chattel, paraded them in Gaza as booty, as spoils of war, as "things", just because they were Israeli. They poured over the Israeli border and stole vehicles and livestock - and people, living and dead.
It is on Hamas to let the hostages go, and that is the message Hamas should be hearing from Qatar and Egypt and the US, the UN, the EU, the British and every nation in the world which considers itself a decent member of the family of nations. Not that our hostages are pawns to be toyed with. Not that Israel has to give and take. Not that Israel should be forced to choose between letting Hamas regroup to mount another October 7 or getting the hostages released. Let my people go. Now.
Tuesday, February 20, 2024
Give me shelter
On the face of it many Israelis have returned to some kind of regular routine despite the war situation, but we are a nation in trauma, PTSD nation in a way that many outsiders don't understand or don't even see.
The Hamas attack on October 7th twisted so many things which should be safe in to things which are now dangerous.
Like the way that the public shelters you see in many places in Israel, especially near the Gaza border, which should be symbols of safety, set up all over to protect from the threat of Gaza rockets, were turned in to death traps by Hamas on October 7th.
As part of the Hamas invasion on that terrible Shabbat they fired massive numbers of rockets from Gaza in to Israel and people logically ran for cover to these public shelters, especially the hundreds and hundreds of people caught out in the open at the Nova dance festival.
And then the terrorists came and threw grenades in to the shelters full of civilians sheltering from the rockets. And fired RPGs in to shelters full of civilians seeking safety from the rockets. And fired kalashnikovs and M16s in to the shelters full of civilians seeking sanctuary. From places of safety these open public shelters became death traps where Hamas murdered and maimed hundreds of people.
Today for millions of Israelis these public shelters, many painted in cheerful colours or decorated with murals, are a symbol of the October 7th massacres.
Drive down to the Gaza border area in the weeks and months after that horrific day and you'll still see these shelters lining the roadsides where Hamas terrorists rampaged. Many of the happy bright murals adorning the stark concrete are pockmarked with bullet holes and shrapnel.
By the open entrances notices have been hung up indicating that this shelter has been cleared by Zaka, the volunteer organisation that ensures the respectful burial of the dead and any body parts or tissue left behind after a terror attack (or other disaster). Cryptic marking indicate whether and how many dead were found at this site.
These open public rocket shelters are a constant reminder of what Hamas did to us, the cynical way they turned would should have been a sanctuary in to a death trap.
Each time we walk by a shelter like this. Every time we pass one on the road. The sight of one outside a hospital or by a bus stop.
They are a constant reminder of the evil atrocities Hamas perpetrated against our people that terrible day.
Most of the time the shelters I see like this are (in local terms) are nowhere near the scenes of carnage in the Gaza border areas. In the first couple of months of the war many areas of central Israel were under daily rocket bombardment too. Open public shelters like these were set up near bus stops and public areas in towns like
A friend recently wrote about how during a visit to a local zoo with her grandchildren it started to rain. The children excitedly ran to what looked like an artificial cave but turned out to be a disguised rocket shelter. She couldn't bring herself to go in. Better to get drenched in the rain than revisit the nightmare of the public shelters of October 7th.
Since that day there are many Israelis too traumatised by the shelter massacres to even take cover in one of these from rockets. A friend who's relatives were at the Nova festival tells me that she'd rather take her chances lying on the ground out in the open but able to run if need be than enclosed in the concrete of what was once a sanctuary but now a symbol of Hamas mass murder.
Saturday, February 10, 2024
שלח את עמי Let my people go
I will never forget the day Prisoner of Zion Natan Sharansky was freed. Our entire small primary school gathered in the big hall, crowding around a small television on a rickety trolley watching this moving event live as this great man of short stature walked to freedom.
We all grew up with the struggle for Soviet Jewry an integral part of our lives. Our parents, family, rabbis and teachers travelled to the USSR to smuggle Jewish religious texts, vital medicines and clandestine tapes with recordings of Hebrew lessons. We wrote letters to Soviet Jewish children our ages and hoped that they would make it past the Soviet censors.
On Shabbat and festivals, especially at the Pesah seder, our tables always had an empty chair or more, waiting for our brother and sisters trapped behind the Iron Curtain. We had special prayers for their freedom, that one day they would be able to join us.
That day in February on the little tv screen we were watching the realisation of our dreams and our prayers, one of the greatest heroes of our generation walking to freedom, a walking embodiment of our hope that one day all the Jews stuck in the Soviet Union would also go free and fill the chairs waiting for them at our Shabbat tables.
That day is engraved on my memory, a formative experience in my childhood. A real life struggle of Jews held captive by an evil tyrannical regime. With every yellow chair I see, every hostage poster, remind me of those hopes and prayers: LET MY PEOPLE GO! May we merit to welcome them home to freedom very very soon.
תמיד אזכור את יום השחרור של אביך. אספו את כל בית הספר והצטופפנו באולם הגדול סביב לטלוויזיה הקטנה וכולנו ציפינו בלייב ברגע המרגש הזה. גדלנו לתוך המאבק למען יהודי ברית המועצות, עם הורים ומורים שהיו נוסעים לשם כדי להבריח ספרי קודש, תרופות חיוניות וקלטות ללימוד עברית, ובשבת ובליל הסדר תמיד היה כסא רק, מחכה לאחינו יהודי ברית המועצות והיו תפילות מיוחדות שיום אחד הם יצאו לחופשי ויצטרפו אלינו. והנה על הטלוויזיה רואים את אחד הגיבורים של דורנו יוצא לחופשי, התגשם חלום ותפילה, תקווה מהלכת שיום אחד כולם יצאו לחופשי למלא את הכסאות המחכים להם ליד שולחן החג. זה חרוט אצלי בזכרון לעד וכל כסא צהוב וכל פוסטר של חטוף מזכירים לי את אותה התקווה ותפילה: שלח את עמי!