From destruction to rebith

"On a day of destruction we're working on restoration"

ביום חורבן עסקנו בתקומה

With these words today's volunteer group leader bid us farewell after a morning's work helping a farmer hard hit by the Hamas assault on Israel in October 2023. To this day there are still some huge pieces of Hamas rockets lying in the yard, remnants of the massive Hamas onslaught which caused such terrible damage to this large farm which grows so many vital staples. Since the war began about 60% of the farm work is done by volunteers.

Today was 17th Tammuz, a fast day of mourning for the destruction of ancient Jerusalem first by Babylon in 586 BCE and then again by Rome in 70 CE.

Symbolically the group I joined today was mostly coming from Jerusalem, the modern thriving rebuilt city representing the return of so many Jews from centuries of exile.

It's not easy to work in agriculture on a fast day, not only for the volunteers, but for the farmer and his family who as traditionally observant Jews were also fasting. We focused on indoor packing and sorting work, out of the searing summer sun.

Almost everywhere I volunteer I meet people from so many different places and backgrounds, there is no one rubric to define the people that go out to help on Israel's farm, no one defining characteristic other than a deep desire to help and a love of Israel.

Today I sorted and packed chili peppers, cherry tomatoes and cucumbers with:

a retired early reading specialist teacher from Jerusalem

a couple of kibbutznikim from a Dead Sea area kibbutz

a retired Jerusalem agronomist who still lectures at Israel's top universities

a nurse from Ashdod

a social worker and a retired post office worker

an elderly gentleman born and bred in Netanya who possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of Israeli archaeological sites

a professor of mathematics born and raised in St Petersburg (then Leningrad) who emigrated to Chicago after the fall of the USSR and regularly visits Israel to volunteer in agriculture

a tour guide from Abu Ghosh

a bus driver from Jerusalem

a receptionist from a Jerusalem area clinic

a young father working in hi tech and his adolescent son

a couple of teachers and a retire nursery school aide

Secular, religious, traditional, left, centre and right. Strangers brought together in common cause to do good.

We have a tradition that one of the causes of the fall of the Second Temple period Jewish kingdom to Rome was due to baseless hatred, internal Jewish feuds and rivalries which weakened the society and made it vulnerable.

Jewish culture centres around discussion and debate, the Talmud is full of people disagreeing with each other, creative thought is ingrained, two Jews three opinions. The question is how we understand this cultural inheritance, do we argue to understand each other or do we disagree on principle and shut ourselves off from hearing people who think differently. Have we learnt the lessons of the disasterous societal divisions that paved the way for the calamity that befell us at the hand of Titus' Rome?

In modern times a tradition has developed focusing on the three weeks of mourning between the fast of 17th Tammuz and the fast of 9th Av to reflect inwards, to encourage dialogue between different communities and ideas, to pay more attention to those we disagree with, to try to really hear.

Over hours of chili peppers and cherry tomatoes, cucumbers and cabbages we talked and got to know one another. It's work that's conducive to conversation, groups of us gathered around long tables facing each other, cooperating on sorting the produce, comparing what was good and what needed to be discarded, organising the packing crates, the stronger insisting that they would do any heavy lifting, the more eagle eyed doing quality control to ensure we were truly helping the farm get the job done to the highest level.

In the year and a half I've been out on farms almost every week with so many volunteers I've seen this dynamic repeat itself so often. It isn't guaranteed. Sometimes you're in a big open field where the work is more individual, less conducive to conversation, in more difficult conditions. But more often than not the task at hand requires team work, helping each other learn a skill, divisions of labour that play to a diverse skill set of the more fit and the less fit, the taller and the shorter, the more observant and the less so.

And that builds communication and dialogue and ice that by mid-morning break down has been thoroughly broken. Strangers looking out for each other, that someone shouldn't lift a heavy crate alone, to watch out for sharp thorns or a particularly rocky field, to make sure to keep drinking lots of water in the heat of the greenhouse or sun scorched field.

By the end of the workday we part as old friends, we who were strangers to one another as we boarded the bus at the break of dawn that very same day.

It is the antithesis of sinat hinam, baseless hatred, the tragedy which led to the Roman destruction of ancient Judea and Jerusalem.

On this 17th Tammuz we remembered the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the horrors that befell our people, but we also actively did something construction to bring about the redemption and renaissance of our people from our painful history and present.

ביום חורבן עסקנו בתקומה

Tammuz 17th

 These days if you are an Israeli or a Jew you have it thrust in your face many times a day from ignorant and hateful people around the world that Jews "have no connection to the Middle East", that our people are colonisers, interlopers, thieves and charlatans.

As a Jew who prays three times a day facing Jerusalem and the ruins of its ancient Jewish Temple, who's annual calendar revolves around the rainy cycle of the Land of Israel an who to this day mourns the destruction of our homeland thousands of years ago, this canard is nothing short of ridiculous, a topsy turvy mirror universe accusation that denies the very meaning of Jewish ethnic, cultural and religious identity through the ages.

Today for example was the fast of the 17th of Tammuz, the day the walls of Jerusalem were breached during the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem in 586 BCE and centuries later, again, during the Roman siege of Jerusalem in 70 CE. Both sieges were two of the most cataclysmic tragedies to befall the Jewish people, culminating in the destruction of Jerusalem, the capital of the ancient Kingdom of Judah (Judea), the killing of many and the exile of much of the Jewish people from our ancestral homeland, first to the Babylonian empire and Egypt, later also to Rome and elsewhere in Europe, the start of many centuries of constant persecution, pogroms, expulsions, spurious blood libels and scapegoating and worst of all the Holocaust.

Millenia later the fast of the 17th Tammuz marks the start of a Jewish period of mourning leading up to the 9th of Av, the date on which the ancient Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, in 586 BCE by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnetzer and in 70 CE by the Romans under Titus. The assault on the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem was an attack on Jewish sovereignty and civilisation, not an accident of the siege of Jerusalem, but a prime target in the attempt of first Babylon and later Rome, to subjugate the Jews, humiliate them and punish them for challenging the might of the region's great empires.

That's right, here and now in the 21st century Jews in Israel and around the world are fasting and mourning the destruction of our ancient capital Jerusalem and its sacred Temple. It is flesh of our flesh, a wound that still bleeds as down the ages the terrible consequences of that terrible day continued to ripple down our agonising history.

On 9th of Av we will sit on the floor as a sign of mourning and read the painfully graphic descriptions in the biblical book of Lamentations, Eikhah, detailing the suffering of our people during the Babylonian siege of Jerusalem. We read Lamentations in its original Hebrew, the language clear and accessible to speakers of modern Hebrew today. The descriptions are not for the faint of heart, our ancestors agony our agony.

So painful is that memory that even in modern Jerusalem, today rebuilt and developed on a scale our biblical ancestors could not have imagined, we still feel those scars from the assaults by Babylon and Rome, not only as an almost genetic memory but physically in the heart of our ancient capital, where you can still see blackened, singed, huge blocks of stone where they fell from the ancient walls during the Roman sacking of the city two millennia ago.

It feels ridiculous to have to say these things which are so obvious, such a core part of the culture I grew up with, my parents grew up with, my grandparents grew up with, facts ingrained in our ancient Hebrew prayers, our calendar and our very consciousness. An unbroken chain that binds each generation to the one before in common memory.

And yet today I'm finding I have to explain this over and over and over, even to people who I once thought of as friends, who question why my country, my people, have any right to exist.

Yet another reason to fast and mourn this year.

Thousands of Israelis lost their homes to Iranian missiles but thousands more Israelis have mobilised to clear the rubble, fix smashed windows, supply essentials to those who lost everything, furnish temporary accommodations and cook meals for anyone who needs.

Almost a week after the ceasefire and you could get whiplash from the speed with which Israelis have gone back to their regular routines. Streets are clogged with traffic, beaches are crowded (despite the arrival of seasonal jellyfish in many places), kids finally had their end of year graduations, summer camps are gearing up for the end of the school year, plays and shows are back on at theatres and clubs and people are back to holding hostage vigils in public places that are once again crowded.

And here and there as you drive through certain Israeli cities you suddenly come across a damaged street or building, some hoardings with a bombed out building peaking out, some historic old buildings with shattered tile roofs or broken windows, repair work ongoing.

The Weizmann Institute lost its cancer research building to an Iranian missile but the campus has reopened and some of the world's most dedicated scientists and grad students are back to working on making life saving breakthroughs.

The war against Hamas continues. Down in fields and greenhouses near the border you can still hear it, the pursuit of gunmen who helped orchestrate the atrocities of October 7, the dismantling of yet more attack tunnels, weapons caches and booby trapped buildings. Despite the weakening of Hamas the work remains dangerous. In the last week alone more soldiers have fallen in the ongoing fight for Israel's safety. We are acutely aware of the price of freedom and security.

Tomorrow will be a better day

In the scheme of things while our country is at war this is a very minor issue, but for my daughter who has been passionate about Gilbert and Sullivan her whole life this is huge. She's probably one of the greatest G&S experts in Israel, she knows all their productions, the stories of the actors and singers who first performed them, the historical background to when and how they were staged, every detail about the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company.

She's always dreamt of being part of full production of G&S and this year she finally had the chance, singing in the chorus in one of her favourites, "Yeoman of the Guard". I hear her practicing each day, voice exercises, snippets of songs, accompanying herself on her guitar or piano, devoting

hours of her spare time to getting it just right. She's been so excited (and nervous) about opening night this week, glowing with enthusiasm.

It was already a wartime project, something to focus on away from the news and concern for all her friends currently serving in the military.

Then came this new war. What should have been a dress rehearsal became a remote zoom rehearsal and of course no one knows when they will be able to perform. Opening night should have been tonight.

It feels tone deaf to say any of this right now. People have lost their lives, their homes, been stranded overseas, been stuck for hours in shelters, received yet another emergency call up to the army leaving their families and lives on hold for who knows how long.

And this is sadly a very necessary existential war against a foe who has pledged time and time again to wipe out Israel. When someone keeps saying they want you destroyed and embarks on a programme to develop nuclear weapons and an extensive array of missiles you take that threat very seriously.

But that doesn't change the pang every parent feels at watching our kids' lives turned upside down yet again. These are the kids who's schooling, graduations, teen social lives and so much more were messed up by covid pandemic chaos. These are kids who've lived through so many wars, rockets, terrorism and then October 7th and the ensuing war. So much loss and trauma, so many interrupted and cancelled plans, so many times "normal" life has had to be put on hold.

Things that seem trivial or like frivolities, but really are the little (and often big) things life is made of, the chance to be in a play, an overseas trip, camping with friends, an internship, summer camps, going to see a show or a concert. Simply going out for a run or a bike ride without having to plan the route according to wear one can take cover. Playing in the park without first figuring out if it will be close enough to shelter in case of an air raid siren.

These ordinary and special things, experiences kids should have, but which get cancelled, postponed or adapted. And that last is the key. Because our kids haven't given up, they still plan and dream, they have their eyes on the future. They have learnt to adapt, to be all the more creative, to be resilient. With my own kids, but also when I'm out volunteering or in the park or wherever I meet youngsters so full of resolve, with a sense of purpose and a determination that they will create a better world and a brighter future, they will protect their country and care for those who need caring for. But they will also have fun and enjoy life and find ways to be happy in the now, however difficult that may seem.

So my daughter keeps rehearsing, practices her parts, does her voice exercises. She's going to do this, whether it's next week or next month, the show must go on and she's so looking forward.

Maybe it's hard for people outside of Israel to understand, but this is not some kind of baseless "hatred" between Israel and Iran. On the contrary, most Israelis feel an affinity and great sympathy with the Iranian people who have suffered under the brutal rule of the radical Islamist regime since Ayatollah Khomeini's revolution in brought him to power in 1979. Prior to that revolution Israel and Iran enjoyed warm friendly relations. Khomeini's new regime broke off relations with Israel and designated Israel an enemy.

The campaign against Israel is part of the ideology of Khomeini and his followers, a twisted regime built on his specific interpretation of a specific stream within the Twelver Shiism sect of Islam.

Khomeini despite being a Shii was influenced by the Sunni Egyptian Jihadi theologian Sayid Qutb, one of the leading ideologues of the Muslim Brotherhood movement. Qutb's works inspired his ideas on revolutionary Islam, but also anti-Semitism (Qutb was virulently anti-Western, but also anti-Jewish and obsessed with various conspiracy theories about the Jews).

Both the Islamic revolutionary regime in Iran and Hamas in Gaza are offshoots of Qutb's ideas and share a common root, despite Hamas being Sunni and Khomeini being Shii.

Historically there were streams within Shii Islam for whom concepts of purity and impurity were fundamental, and at various times in the history of both Iran and Shii areas of Yemen, there were Islamist theocratic regimes who issued edicts against non-Muslims, especially Jews, based on this belief that they were "unclean" and threatened to "contaminate" the pure Shii population.

Thus at various times during the Islamic period in Iran there were laws stating that Jews could not go outside in the rain in case a raindrop touched both a Jew and a Muslim, Jews had to step off the pavement if a Muslim came towards them in case they should touch the Muslim and so defile him and so on.

There were also periods of forced conversion and pogroms, most infamously in Meshhad, where the Jews were given an ultimatum in the late 18th century to either convert or die, some Jews fleeing to other communities such as Herat in Afghanistan, others choosing to publicly convert to Islam while in secret living as Jews like the Marranos in Inquisition Spain.

Despite this history though there were many periods when Jews in Iran were able to flourish and enjoy good relations both with their Muslim neighbours and the ruling dynasty. The Jewish presence in Iran predates the advent of Islam there by many centuries. There was a Jewish community there since biblical times, when the Babylonian king Nebuchadnetzer exiled vast numbers of people from the Kingdom of Israel to his empire. The Purim story happened in Persia. The connection between our peoples is long.

The State of Israel enjoyed good relations with Pahlavi dynasty ruled Iran in the first decades of Israeli independence when Jews from Iran were free to travel to Israel and many made aliya out of Zionist beliefs, not because they were fleeing hardship.

Israel to this day has close cultural ties with Iran. In modern Israel there is a large community of Jews of Iranian descent, including leading Israeli singers such as Rita, the various members of the legendary Banai family, Rita's niece Liraz Charhi and modern day litugical composer and singer Maureen Nehedar. All have released music with Persian influences, several have recorded albums of Farsi music. Iranian Jews have held high office in Israel, including commanding the IDF and Israeli Air Force and President of the State of Israel.

And yet for the Islamist regime in Iran Israel is a thorn in the side of their vision of "pure" Islamic Middle East under their concept of Shii theocratic hegemony.

To this end Khomeini and his successor Khameinei have invested great resources in working towards Israel's destruction. They have built up proxies in Shii communities throughout the Middle East, weaponised them into revolutionary militias to become vehicles of Khomeinist influence in their communities, tentacles of a military infrastructure designed to both project Iranian Islamist ideology and power, but also to encircle Israel in a destructive noose. Hizballah in Lebanon, assorted militias in Shii majority Iraq, the Houthis in Yemen, even Sunni Hamas in Gaza and further afield.

This deep seated ideological and theological hatred of Israel is at the heart of this war. The Islamist regime has been conducting this war against Israel for decades now via its proxies, all the while developing Iran's own capacity to wage direct war against Israeli via the development of increasingly powerful long range missiles and drones, and its nuclear weapons project. All the while a clock in central Tehran counted down the minutes and hours to Israel's destruction at the hand of the regime.

Israel waited for years for Western diplomacy with the government of Iran to yield some kind of detente, or at least a moratorium on Iran's nuclear and missile programme. To no avail. The Islamic revolutionary regime continued working on the means to destroy Israel even in the face of Western sanctions, diplomacy and negotiations. The decision of the Biden administration to unfreeze Iranian bank accounts only served to hasten the Iranian project by freeing up funds to finance the plan to destroy Israel.

Which brings us to now. Israel could wait no longer to take decisive action against the Iranian nuclear weapons programme and the increased production of deadly ballistic missile and drones to deliver this doomsday payload.

For years leaders of Iran's regime have pledged to wipe Israel off the map. They backed up these threats with military action via their proxies and an advanced weapons programme of increasingly sophisticated missiles and drones, plus work to manufacture their own nuclear weapons. This is an existential threat that Israel can't ignore. When someone pledges to kill you over and over and over again while engaging in a build up of ever more destructive weapons you have to take that threat seriously to protect your citizens. That is what Israeli is doing now, launching a pre-emptive strike at the eleventh hour as Iran is on the cusp of building their nuclear bombs.

I just wanted to update everyone that we're OK, very tired, but doing OK.

Friday evening until Saturday morning we had barrage after barrage of ballistic missiles to our area, constant air raid sirens. The missiles from Iran have been targeting civilian areas, towns and cities, crowded residential areas.

Thankfully most missiles were intercepted but a few still got through that there were casualties including fatalities and extensive damage in the crowded cities of central Israel. Our immediate area was safe but we heard the interceptions and impacts loudly.

At one point the whole building shook and the heavy reenforced steel blast door of our shelter shook. I was the only with a direct view, and the way the door vibrated I almost wondered if it was going to implode. It was just a second or two, a brief, massive boom when everything shook, but it seemed to stretch out so long. We found out later that one of the missiles had scored a direct hit on a town about 15 miles from us decimating a residential street and killing two people, wounding others. What we felt was the edge of the shockwave from that blast all this distance away.

Our shelter is small, windowless and underground, very hot and stuffy, but we are very grateful to have it. It's like human tetris trying to get everyone in at night when people just want to sleep but there isn't room for the whole family to lie down at the same time.

We tried to make things a bit more light hearted for the kids, joked about having a "picnic dinner" in the shelter, joked that it was really silly we made soup because nope, no way we were eating hot soup in a crowded little shelter. And we sang together, and we read Psalms together and prayed too.

We've been through a lot of rocket and missile attacks but this is the most intense I can remember. The missiles from Iran are much bigger, more lethal and pack a far larger warhead than those fired at us by Hamas, Hizballah and the Houthis. The damage one of these things can do, just one, is far greater, and we had plenty of damage from the smaller rockets. It's always terrifying to know that someone is shooting projectiles at you, whether they are smaller or bigger, they are all designed to kill, but this time is definitely more terrifying still. We've had hundreds of these huge Iranian missiles fired at us, even if only a very few get through the air defences, that's a lot of damage.

I'm awake at 0230 because we just had another alert to get to shelter because of expected incoming missiles in our area. Again. All night there have been air raid sirens in the north and far south, I think attack drones from Yemen and ballistic missiles from Iran. Now the densely populated central Israeli cities are being targeted again.

We can hear explosions in the distance, getting closer. Sirens going again now for us. Lots of booms and thuds. We're following local civil defense instructions, staying in our shelter, listening to the alerts, hoping and praying for the best.

Middle Eastern elders

As with the Houthis attacks on Israel, there is an extreme irony in the way the modern Iranian Islamic Republic has gone after Israel with a single minded hatred.

Very simply, there are vast numbers of Iranians in Israel. Most of them Jews, yes, but still with a deep connection to Iranian language, history and culture.

Israeli Jews and Iranians are after all the most prominent remnants in the Middle East of the region's ancient civilisations, predating the Arab and Islamic conquest and to this day clinging to languages and literature that tell the story of the time before it was Arabicised and Islamified.

Unlike the Jews, most Persians lost their ancient religion and became Islamified, even adopting the Arabic script for writing the Farsi language. And yet they retained a keen sense of Persian history and identity, that they were scions to one of the ancient Middle East's greatest empires, a vibrant and influential civilisation who's ruins remain in stunning archaeological sites across Iran and in Iranian literature and folklore, most famously the Shahnameh national epic, and even imprints on the languages and cultures of the Arab and Turkish empires who supplanted them, with both Arabic and Turkish full of loan words derived from Farsi, including terms relating to court life and government, such was the inlfluence and stature of Persian culture even in the eyes of those who sought to dominate it.

Iranians and Jews, Iranians and Israelis, share this feeling of being the older siblings of the modern Middle Eastern peoples, repositories of knowledge of times and cultures buried under the conquests of later civilisations. This kinship of fellow ancient peoples has come up in conversation with many Iranians over the years, both nations appearing in the Bible. Maybe that's the reason Khomeini and his successor Khamenai held such a deep hatred for Israel, Israel reminded them of their own pre-Islamic roots, a nation standing up for its identity and culture, a lone non-Muslim majority country in the heart of the Middle East, a people with a different language and a different script from all their neighbouring Arab and Islamic states.

Jews from Iran and neighbouring Judeo-Parsi speaking communities such as Afghanistan and Bukhara, were among the first to return to Zion in the modern period and develop the city of Jerusalem beyond the walls of the historic Old City during the 19th century. The names of wealthy Bukharan and Persian Jewish benefactors from this period can still be seen on historic Jerusalem buildings originally built as orphanages, soup kitchens, synagogues and community housing for the Jews of Jerusalem. Israel became the biggest world centre for Persian Jewry.
Unlike Jews from most of the rest of the Islamic Middle East, most Iranian Jews came to the Land of Israel out of Zionism rather than as refugees because they had been expelled. Until the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran Israel had close ties to the country, with shared economic and military interests. Israelis and Iranians visited each others countries, shared technology and intelligence. 

With Israel home to the largest community of Persian Jews in the world they could be found in all parts of Israeli society, from working class artisans and shop keepers in the markets to prominent musicians, senior generals, a Chief Rabbi and president and more. 

Just as there is something absurd about the Houthis in Yemen attacking Israel with its large, thriving, Yemeni Jewish community, so too the notion of the Iranian leadership counting down Israel's destruction with a giant clock in Teheran and a nuclear and missile programme they openly describe as being developed to wipe Israel off the map.