Today is Hoshana Rabba, the last day of Sukkot. According to Jewish tradition the date when God makes His final decision on how we will be judged for the coming year. The final date for appeals as it were for the verdicts reached on Rosh Hashanah (the Day of Judgement) and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement).

For traditional Jews the return of our twenty live hostages on this date is highly symbolic in so many ways. A sign that maybe God has received our fervent prayers for them to come home to their loved ones alive. A closing of the circle that started on Simhat Torah (the day after Hoshana Rabba) two years ago when our country was invaded and they were kidnapped.

And so we say farewell to the sukkah for another year.

And what a strange Sukkot it has been, between the commandment to be joyous on Sukkot, our nation collectively holding its breath over whether Hamas really would free the hostages and whether this peace deal would really happen, the agonising two year anniversary of the brutal Hamas invasion and gratitude for the miracles and rebirth we have witnessed in the wake of the barbaric Hamas attacks.

When I was a child I had a Shlomo Carlebach record I loved to listen to which included "The Song of Shabbes". As a child I used to ponder its meaning, listening to it over and over: we were slaves in Egypt but we sang the song of Shabbes, we saw the Holy Temple destroyed but we sang the song of Shabbes, the Romans sold us as slaves but we sang the song of Shabbes, we saw 6 million Jews murdered but we sang the song of Shabbes". What was this song of Shabbes that we kept on singing no matter what, no matter why?

Only in my late teens did I start to understand the concept, the symbol of Shabbat, Jewish heritage and tradition, our holidays, our Hebrew language, our culture and our beliefs which we held onto no matter the horrors our people suffered. Stripped of everything, even our homeland, we clung to the heritage that we could keep in our hearts, no matter where we were exiled, no matter how harsh our circumstances. Even in the death camps of Europe and being torched alive by the Inquisition our people continued to "sing the song of Shabbes" in whatever way they could, holding on to our eternal peoplehood so that a future generation would see a new day and let us thrive once again.

Finding joy in these last two years has often been that "singing the song of Shabbes" for so many Israelis. This Sukkot, coinciding as it did with the secular October 7th anniversary was difficult for so many Israelis and Jews around the world, but still they were joyous and celebrated life, our people's life, our survival, how despite the terrible pain we have persevered and beaten back enemies who wanted us dead and our heritage erased.

And this year perhaps on Simhat Torah we can shine brighter and celebrate with a fuller heart, knowing our living hostages are home and twenty more families can hopefully start to find comfort. Knowing that maybe, just maybe, there is finally some kind of peace deal that can bring hope, life and joy to our entire region.

We're still waiting to see if Hamas will truly honour the deal, if they will hand over the 24 dead Israeli hostages they are still holding, if they will disarm and clear the way for a new future for a peaceful Gaza. This deal will only work if it is truly enforced.

Maybe this Hoshana Raba there is hope that we will yet witness a new day in the Middle East, and even if it still looks uncertain, and even if we don't yet know that the war is really over, there is hope for finding a new way that wasn't there yesterday. Tonight, the eve of Simhat Torah we will dance again with a new song in our hearts.

Refael Fahimi, 63, Netanel Maskalchi, 36 and Refael Meir Maskalchi, 12

The massive barrage of thousands of rockets fired by Hamas into Israel starting at 0629 on the morning of October 7 2023 was meant to be cover for the Hamas invasion, a distraction to keep Israelis confined to their shelters or otherwise seeking cover, easy targets for the marauding Hamas gunmen. The rockets were also cover for the Hamas destruction of the border fence, border cameras, sensors and other defensive measures on the Israeli side meant to prevent terrorist incursions into Israel.

So intense was the Hamas rocket fire that in mere minutes the Iron Dome anti-missile defense batteries ran out of ammunition. I heard from so many local Otef residents how the day started with the thud-explosion of interceptions, Iron Dome batteries valiantly trying to intercept the Hamas rockets, and then within minutes the sound changed to the thud thud thud of rockets striking Israel, having overpowered Iron Dome with the sheer intensity of the Hamas rocket barrage, over 3,500 fired on that first day.

With thousands of Hamas terrorists ambushing anything that moved on the roads and many forward bases either under siege, overrun or desperately fighting off the invaders, it was difficult for Iron Dome batteries to get fresh ammunition to continue fending off the Hamas rocket onslaught. At least one Iron Dome commander was killed by Hamas as she desperately took a jeep and attempted to make a dash for a nearby base to resupply her battery.

There was massive damage across the region, but one of the worst rocket strikes was on a house in the Otef town of Netivot, where three generations of one family were killed in their home by a Hamas rocket. Their story gets lost in the hundreds and hundreds of horrific stories of that day, but it brings home the many layers of Hamas terror unleashed upon Israeli civilians on October 7, just how many were murdered in their own homes, even in towns like Netivot which successfully held off the Hamas invasion but were still pummeled with deadly rockets.

Refael Fahimi, 63, Netanel Maskalchi, 36 and Refael Meir Maskalchi, 12, a grandfather, son-in-law and grandson had rushed home from the Simhat Torah prayer service at their synagogue on the morning of October 7th 2023 when a Hamas rocket hit their home, killing all three of them. Young Refael Meir was just a few weeks away from celebrating his bar mitzva.

Fahimi was the father-in-law of Netanel and the grandfather of young Refael Meir.

In one instant, Chana Maskalchi lost her father, her husband and her son. 

Being human

Mr Rogers said to look for the helpers, Kalonimus Kalman Szapiro, the rabbi of Piaseczno in pre-war Poland and the rabbi of the Warsaw Ghetto, said be the helper, take your own sorrow and troubles and use that negative energy to help someone else.

As we approach the two year anniversary of October 7th I feel more than ever that this is the story of Israel in the wake of this horrific pogrom invasion.

Yesterday a volunteer group leader stood up at the end of the morning's work and quoted the famous quote from Rabbi Hillel in Pirkei Avot "In a place where there are no men, strive to be a man" in reference to the way Israel has literally pulled itself up from the roots up, reborn from the depths of grief and pain by the common people who rose up and did what had to be done to repulse the Hamas invasion and the subsequent assaults on Israel from all sides, from the soldiers to the medics to the farmers to the most ordinary of people who found ways to help, feed, clothe, rebuild, drive and simply comfort.

Some say that it's a critique on the leadership, if there is no one to "be the man" then you must try to take on the role. But I see it differently, in a time of confusion and chaos and more than anything profound shock, don't wait for someone to come and take charge, to tell you what to do, be cognisant of the needs around you and do what you can, if it's feeding people or offering a kind word or jumping in your car to get people to safety or just calling on the elderly and mentally ill to make sure they are OK in turbulent, dangerous times.

More than anything this is what Israel exemplifies. How ironic that our people is so hated, excoriated and vilified today when more than anything our ethos teaches us to be the change for good in the world, to rescue, to help, to care for those in need, to be the first to help at home and abroad in times of natural disaster and tragedy, to run to offer assistance when everyone should rationally run from the danger. This is the ethos Israelis are raised on and which is ingrained in our culture. And it is the ethos which has enabled our nation to survive the attack of October 7th after millennia past of persecution and suffering.

Erev Yom Kippur a couple of the groups I volunteer with went down to a small religious moshav in southern Israel to help pack aravot (willow branches) for use the upcoming Sukkot holiday.

We were the usual very mixed group: a retired Hebrew grammar teacher and a paramedic who used to be the medic for one of Israel's leading football teams. A secular tour operator who's son and daughter-in-law miraculously survived the Nova massacre and a few hesder yeshiva students who were volunteering to honour the memory of so many fallen fellow hesdernikim. A retired Egged bus driver (who happily spent the time chatting to a current private bus driver as the two of them packed aravot). A retired biologist on the cusp of turning 90 and a young woman who's just made aliya and moved to a nearby kibbutz. The two bus drivers driving the volunteer mini-buses - one Jewish, a former kibbutznik now living in a big city, the other Muslim Arab. Religious Jews and secular Jews, non-Jews.

All volunteering their time to help a farmer pack his aravot for Sukkot. Because this is Israel, and as much as it can be a chaotic, turbulent place, it is also a nation with an incredibly high degree of mutual responsibility for one another, communal care, volunteering, charity and helping out neighbours. Not because we are perfect, but because as a nation we are doing our best to do better.

The work took place in a covered workspace behind the farmer's house, our groups working close together around tables, an atmosphere conducive to conversation. As we trimmed the branches to size, inspected them for imperfections and packed them in protective sleeves the farmer talked words of Torah, words of thanks and most of all uplifting words about Am Yisrael.

The significance of the well known explanation for the Four Species, the lulav (date palm) which has taste but not smell, the hadas (willow) which has smell but not taste, the etrog (citron) which has both taste and smell and the lowly aravot (willow) which has neither taste nor smell, but without whom the ritual Four Species are not complete.

In Jewish tradition they represent the purpose and need for every member of the Jewish people, those who have Torah learning but lack good deeds, those who do good but do not learn Torah, those who have both, those who have neither. A message of unity, but also a message of understanding for the complexity of any society, but especially our diverse society.

On Yom Kippur we pray together, as a community. As part of our communal prayers we together speak out loud the sins and transgressions of our entire people, anything anyone might have done. As a community we say out loud, we are permitted to pray with sinners, with transgressors.

Just like the Four Species that are part of our Sukkot ritual, so on Yom Kippur we emphasise community, all the different types of people, those who have done good, those who have not, but who are all still part of our nation and our congregation. And we pray together in public, not necessarily knowing who is who, what sins people may have committed or what incredible acts of kindness they may have done. We don't really know if the person praying next to us is Lamad Vavnik, one of the supremely righteous, or an evil person at heart. All we know is we are all part of the same people, standing together before our Creator, and He alone knows what is in our hearts, and He alone is the perfect being.

On October 7th Hamas showed as the depths of evil to which humanity is capable of sinking. But so many other people, Israelis of many ethnicities and faiths, and indeed people from all around the world, showed us the heights of kindness, courage and selflessness of which humanity is capable.

None of us is perfect, but in a place where there are no men, in a place in which Hamas has shown us such inhumanity, Rabbi Hillel tells us to strive to be human, to rise to the occasion instead of being dragged down.

This is my Israel, this is the Israel I see every day, soldiers and civilians, people with moral backbone and great care for their fellow humanity, striving for good.

Please God this Yom Kippur may these great merits of our people outweigh our failings and may Hashem judge us all for the Book of Life, for peace, for the safe return of all those who are missing, for the health and safety of all our soldiers, for the peace, wellbeing and happiness for all in our troubled region.

Gmar Hatima Tova

You are 16 years old and you have a big important exam tomorrow. You know that nerves will make it hard to sleep so you carefully plan your evening, light supper, some light revision with your books just to set your mind at ease, a little gentle exercise with music to help you relax and an early bedtime so you'll hopefully wake up refreshed and focused, ready for the big day.

And then at 1am the blasted Houthi thugs in Yemen launch yet another ballistic missile at Israel and you along with millions of other Israelis are jarringly jolted awake by the alarming staccato of the pre-siren alert (because the missile is coming all the way from Yemen there is more advanced warning that it's on the way).

Half asleep but thoroughly discombobulated you pile into the small home shelter with your family, groggy little ones vaguely grumbling in their sleep about not having enough space as they try to snuggle up with their blankets and cuddly animals. The gawky mid-teen awkwardly trying to find space for his newly longer rangy frame, all the while plugged in reassuringly to his headphones and technology podcast that during these middle of the night alerts offer comfort. While trying to get comfortable he accidentally steps on his older sister who is herself trying to curl up with her pillow and her phone.

When it's all over a sleepy little voice somewhere in the darkness asks "Imma, how did I get here?" and briefly climbs into my lap for a hug. Honestly I can't remember this time, did he sleepwalk in here as usually does when the siren goes or did DH go get him when the pre-alert went or was it one of the big kids? It's all such a blur I can't even recall. The point is that everyone even in the depth of deep sleep is by now so totally used to the expectation of being woken by a siren that they often as not don't even really wake up and can often turn up in the shelter with their eyes still closed, walking over on autopilot. Even dreams are not a safe haven from the reality of missiles.

By Israeli standards there is nothing exceptional about this scene, by now we've all done it so often we really can pretty much do it in our sleep. And we are so much luckier than the many other Israelis who live in older buildings without family shelters so that when the siren goes they have to run to the basement communal shelter with everyone in their building in their PJs, or outside to a public neighbourhood shelter or if there isn't time then just to the stairwell which offers somewhat better protection than other areas.

This should not be "normal".

Pomegranates

 

As last year this has been a busy and very meaningful agricultural season for me helping to package and pick autumn produce related to the Hebrew lunar New Year last week.

None is more emblematic of our hopes and prayers for this coming year than the pomegranate, a fruit that is central to our culture, one of the biblical seven species which hold a special status in Judaism.

Because of the ongoing crisis volunteers continue to be vital in helping local agriculture. The first farm I volunteered on after October 7th 2023 was a kibbutz near my home which has huge tracts of pomegranate orchards and suddenly had few hands available to pick them.

I went to help because they were in desperate need but also because pomegranates were something I knew how to pick. For years we've been going every autumn around Rosh Hashana to pick pomegranates at another local farm, not as a volunteer, but just for the simple joy of spending time in these beautiful orchards at the peak of their glory, and of course the pleasure of choosing our own supremely delicious pomegranates for the traditional autumn festive season fresh from the tree.

So I knew a bit about how to pick premium pomegranates and handle them with the care and respect such fruit requires, though hours of work picking many tonnes of them while worrying about possible rocket attack overhead was of course a very different experience.
Pomegranate thorns can also be brutal. It's one thing if you are just picking a few pomegranates for yourself, it's another when you have a whole tree to clear of fruit and you need to get into all the difficult branches, thorns and all. Long sleeves are a must, as with most citrus trees.

By last year that kibbutz where I volunteered on the pomegranate harvest of October 2023 had manage to organise enough help from pensioners and high schoolers in their immediate area to manage without more help but there were other pomegranate farms further afield who needed volunteers.

Particularly memorable was the adorably scatterbrained ritual scribe of Yemeni descent and his quaintly chaotic organic pomegranate orchard overgrown with thistles on a small village in the south. Somehow despite the apparent neglect of the orchard he produced amazingly sweet giant fruits, most of which he used for juicing. Our volunteer groups both harvested the fruits and did shifts in his ramshackle juicing shed behind the equally ramshackle family home. It was a race against time to harvest all the pomegranates before they burst from ripeness and juice them before they started to go bad. He had orders to fill for the holidays, but this was also an important harvest for the year ahead, with much of the juice frozen to last the whole year until the next harvest.

While we worked he extolled the health benefits of pomegranates in Jewish traditional medicine as handed down to him by his father and grandmother. The orchard was originally planted by his grandfather. He seemed constantly overwhelmed dividing his time between the pomegranates, other farming activities and his work as a scribe. We came home each time covered in sticky pomegranate juice, but also with giant pomegranates he had selected for us as a thank you for our work, symbols of blessing to serve at our holiday tables.

On a neighbouring village just down the road we volunteered to work the pomegranate harvest for another farmer who seemed the polar opposite of the scribe - meticulously organised and fastidious in everything from his clothing to his farm, his orchards in neat well weeded rows set up for the harvest with purpose built canvas baskets mounted on straps for each picker to wear to maximise efficiency, a tractor pulled trailer following us through the long rows of trees so that we could easily deposit our baskets when they were full. He was every bit as grateful and as warm as his more colourful neighbour though, and like him, it was all hands on deck from any family who could help with this big seasonal job.

The first fruits are the premium ones, regal with their crowns, stately elegance that required gentle handling. These were the ones that would go on sale carefully packaged in crates. As the season progressed the pomegranates became more full bodied and developed a deeper ruby colour, but they were also more likely to start to crack. These could be picked much faster as they went for juicing.

And this year? We're still only half way through the pomegranate season. The early varieties have mostly been harvested for Rosh Hashanah, but in October later ripening varieties like the Wonderful pomegranates will be harvested.

At one family farm we were picking pomegranates for donation to Leket, Israel's national food rescue organisation. The family had decided to donate a substantial part of their pomegranate harvest to those in need because this biblical fruit is such an important symbol of the holiday and there are so many families relying on donated food packages this year. At another family farm we picked enough fruit to fill last minute Rosh Hashanah orders and it was gratifying to see the crates of our freshly picked fruit being loaded up to go straight to market to provide people with this holiday staple.

I know I can ramble on a lot more about pomegranates and pomegranate harvests, they have always been one of my favourite fruits but having worked in so many pomegranate orchards in the last two years I love them even more now.

I know I end up spending most of my coffee breaks photographing instead of eating and drinking, they are just so gorgeous in every way, inside and out.

This time of year I can easily just sit down to a whole juicy pomegranate for breakfast or dinner, but it's also a fruit that goes in everything: in salads, desserts, sprinkled on tehina atop grilled vegetables or over desserts, used as syrupy molasses to create delicious fish and meat dishes, especially good with lamb and salmon. As a seasonal touch for festive jewelled rice, in addition to the usual raisins, almond and prunes.

It pairs beautifully with mint to create a light relish like salad or to coat fish. Pomegranate, finely chopped mint and honey are superb as a topping for ice-cream or over raw tehina or yoghurt, just eat with a spoon. A Persian Jewish relative taught me to make her family's Rosh Hashanah lamb-chestnut stew with pomegranate juice and pomegranate molasses, served garnished with pomegranate seeds.

Aside from being delicious and healthy it has such deep cultural meaning. It's an auspicious symbol of blessing, good deeds and fertility that appears in poetry and art since ancient times, from the tiny gold bell shaped pomegranate flowers and pomegranates that the bible describes adorning the High Priest's robe to the romantic descriptions in the Song of Songs and medieval Hebrew liturgical poetry. It can be seen on ancient Hebrew coins, in mosaics decorating ancient synagogues and in stained glass panels in modern ones.

It's traditionally eaten at the Jewish New Year, when we pray that our merits and good deeds may be as numerous as the seeds of a pomegranate so that God may judge the world favourably for a blessed year ahead, and most importantly, inscribe us all in the book of life and peace. If a fruit can also be hope and a prayer that fruit is the pomegranate.

What kind of real life moral and ethical dilemmas do our kids have to deal with on a daily basis?

It's Thursday night, and you are a 13 year-old Israeli starting off the local weekend by spending some quality time with your slightly frail, elderly uncle. You help him with some tidying up for Shabbat and take out his rubbish, and he suggests that going out for a light supper at a local cafe afterwards.

Just as you are sitting down to breakfast for dinner at a coffee shop in the nearby mall the pre-alert goes warning of incoming missile fire to your area. It's a big mall, there are safe areas, but they are a few minutes walk from where you are. You, an athletic, long-legged teen can easily get to shelter in time, especially with the pre-alert which often goes before the siren, extra warning time because the ballistic missile is coming all the way from far way Yemen.

But your elderly uncle? He has arthritic feet and legs plus issues with his back, so he walks at a snail's pace using a walking stick for support. There is no way he can get to shelter in time. Odds are the missile will be intercepted, but there is always a risk that chunks of shrapnel could come down in populated areas and sometimes even Israel's top anti-missile systems can miss, like earlier today when a Yemeni attack drone hit a building in Israel's southernmost city of Eilat.

What do you do? Run to protect your own life or stay with your elderly relative and do your best to help him find some kind of safer area (for example guiding him to an inner corridor away from windows). You can't carry him. Even with help from a kind waiter, you can't move him fast enough.

This was the call Jason and I had from our middle child this evening. "Imma, Abba, I can't just leave Uncle, but he's too slow to get to shelter in time, I don't know what to do, how do I help keep him safe when he's telling me to go save myself but I know he'll feel abandoned?"

How do you tell your child, go save yourself, leave our beloved elderly uncle and make sure you're safe?

This isn't the first time our kids have had to face such an ethical dilemma, caught outside the home when the siren goes, having to decide between running to save their own lives or stay with a slow moving older relative who can't get to shelter in time. Missiles and attack drones are fired at our country on a regular, often daily, basis. It's a fact of life. Our kids are learning these ethical questions as their real life lived experiences, not theoretical dilemmas in a class discussion.

 Do I really care about a restaurant review in London's Time Out magazine?

But it's symptomatic of a much wider, more sinister phenomenon. Israeli agricultural exports to the UK are down by around 20% since October 7. Anti-Israel activists are constantly working to portray anything grown in Israel as ill-gotten gains, "blood avocadoes" or "genocide grapes".

They don't care if these are grown by Jews, Druze or Arab citizens of Israel, I"ve met farmers from many different sectors of Israeli society who've had orders cancelled from Europe. Others have had their British and other European buyers grill them about whether they've served in the IDF or how many Gazan children they've killed or if their fruit was grown on stolen trees.

There is growing pressure on supermarkets not to sell products from Israel, while Palestine activists have taken to staging "actions" in which they raid supermarkets and stick anti-Israel stickers ("product of baby killers" for example) on anything they suspect of being from Israel or kosher. The Co-Op chain says that it will no longer stock Israeli products at all, while a London friend told me that her local green grocer now has a sign that the pomegranates he sells are imported from Iran, that great beacon of freedom and tolerance, not from Israel.

So this Middle Eastern restaurant review is just part of this wider picture. Israel and Jews viewed as irrevocably tainted, evil, immoral, but more than that, spreading the disgusting lie that Israel is a foreign colonial implant, rather than an ancient, intrinsic and authentic part of the Middle East.

Erasing Israel and Jews from a review of Middle East restaurants in London is part of a wider campaign to erase Israel and the Jewish people's origin as a Middle Eastern people and state, wipe out our roots and our historic identity, strip us of our heritage and plant a false myth of the Jew as European nomad.

It is all the more galling because the key component of Jewish identity, the Torah, whether you believe it is a divine sacred text or simply the Jewish people's national, ethnic saga, is entirely grounded in the Middle East. It only truly makes sense in the context of being Middle Eastern literature, from the metaphors based on distinctly Levantine geography and weather patterns to the descriptions of flora and fauna, to the central role of native agriculture and foods like wine and olive oil.

The Bible lists seven special species which have an added sacred connection to the Land of Israel: wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives and dates. All are central to our ancient cuisine, the rites of the ancient Temple, foods and recipes described in the Tanakh and Talmud. From fig cakes to jujube fruits (sheizafin) to lighting the menorah with olive oil and the Talmud connecting the seed rich pomegranate with being full of good deeds.

This is a culinary culture steeped in the indigenous species and native agriculture of the ancient Middle East, not Europe or anywhere else. This is who we are, a people whom even when exiled far from the cradle of our heritage found solace in dried Middle Eastern fruits brought from their faraway ancient homeland all the while yearning to be home in Eretz Yisrael.

I think of this cultural and psychological war on the Jewish people every week when I'm out in the fields and orchards and greenhouses of modern Israel. The farmers, religious and secular, who maintain the ancient religious laws pertaining to agriculture that only apply to Jewish agriculture in the Land of Israel, the farmer growing pomegranates to donate to Leket so that even the poorest will have pomegranates for their Rosh Hashanah table, the vintner who takes pride in growing an old varietal of grapes used to make the kind of sweet kiddush wine that is much ridiculed today in our age of finer wines and chicer wine grapes.

It doesn't get more Middle Eastern than that. Take that Time Out. OPINION: Why were Israeli establishments left off Time Out's list of best Middle Eastern restaurants? - Jewish News