Homefront Hannukah snapshot: Israel 2023

On the "jolly" giant Hannukah dreidels decorating a roundabout in Herzliya Pituah the faces of Israel's still missing hostages replace the traditional Hebrew letters. 

In the train stations in Jerusalem and Modiin vast posters displaying with the hostages' names and faces and the legend "Bring the home" cover a wall in the foyers.

In Modiin's central train station there is an empty plastic yellow chair in front of the poster with a sign announcing "this chair will remain empty until they all return home". 



Prominently displayed in the middle of the main ticketing halls at train stations are tables with makeshift memorials and the photo of Eliyahu Elmekayes, an Israel Railways security guard killed who was also an army reservist. One of hundreds of thousands of reserve soldiers drafted on emergency call-ups in the wake of the October 7th Hamas invasion, he was killed fighting Hamas in Gaza. 

The Hannukah menorahs all over the place can't escape from the shadow of being a country at war.

In malls they stand alongside signs pointing the way to the nearest bomb shelter in case of a rocket siren.

Outside a cafe a glass hannukiah stands in front of a photo of Daniel Kastiel, a soldier in the prestigious Maglan commando killed on the fifth day of the war in Gaza. The photo is flanked by a printed card with the prayer for the IDF and Israel's security forces. 



Every other person wears dogtags proclaiming "my heart is captive in Gaza" in support of the hostages and their families. Or a pendant in the shape of a simple map of Israel, maybe with a Magen David star or a heart in its centre, perhaps also a verse for mystical protection like the priestly blessing or the Shema Yisrael prayer. Quite a number of people wear necklaces and bracelets featuring all of the above.  

Israeli flags are everywhere, in festive looking stands in the train stations or hung respectfully in shop windows and malls, draped over tall buildings and bus stops, hanging outside homes and businesses, stuck on to walls, vehicles and windows, fluttering from lamposts and balconies, adorning advertisements, billboards and product packages, even on the side panels of train engines. 

I walked by a treif (non-kosher) supermarket who's window decor featured Novi God/Christmas trees festooned with copious Israeli flags mixed in with the baubles and tinsel. 



Messages of support and encouragement have popped up all over. To Israelis in general, to the soldiers of the IDF, to families of hostages and the bereaved. The giant billboards looming over Tel Aviv's congested city highways that usually advertise fashionable goods now sport blue and white posters to raise morale while hand scrawled notices and pictures drawn by young children are taped to bus shelters, benches, shop windows and blocks of flat. Improvised banners hang on fences, balcony railings and outside shops. 

Even the traditional Hannukah holiday sufganiya doughnut treats feature patriotic colours: blue and white frosting and sprinkles or Magen David designs, bakeries selling them in flag decorated boxes with the ubiquitous "together we will win" message which is present everywhere, even more so than the flags or the second most common slogan "Am Yisrael Hai" - the nation of Israel lives. 



This is a strange bittersweet Hannukah, streets and transport hubs crowded with soldiers in rumpled, dusty uniforms and guns travelling home for a few hours of precious leave to see their families or schlepping back to the front loaded with homecooked food from home.



The cheery displays of sufganiyot in the bakery windows are at odds with the faces of the hostages staring out from prominent posters in every public space, the regular roar of military jets overhead punctuated with occasional boom of rockets or distant artillery, the relentless news cycles or the signs everywhere indicating the nearest bomb shelters. 

But despite it all this is Hannukah, the festival of light in the darkness, of the miracle of the olive oil, of Jewish hope and defiance in the face of those who seek to wipe us out over and over again. 

The word genocide was invented by a Jew because there were no words to describe what happened to the Jewish people during the Holocaust. But for the Jewish people the concept was nothing new. Physically or spiritually and culturally, oppressor after oppressor has tried to perpetrate a genocide of the Jews over and over again throughout the centuries. While they inflicted terrible losses on our people we have always survived. Am Yisrael Hai. We still live and will go on living. 

 

This year there seem to be even more outdoor Hannukah menorah's lit on streets, in public squares, by the entrances of buildings, balanced on garden walls. And so many twinkle from the windows of homes and offices, on the counters of shops and cafes, perched on balcony railings.

Knowing how many Israelis are still captive, missing or mourning loved ones it feels weird to suddenly find ourselves in the middle of the joyous festival of Hannukah when for so many of us time seems to have stopped on Simhat Torah, October 7th. 

Lighting the candles or oil wicks, comemorating the holiday with traditional foods and songs, gatherings of family and friends, the little things in life we always took for granted, suddenly all feel like a strident, defiant, life affirming act in the face of the sadistic enemy who attacked us on October 7th and the far too many in the big wide world who celebrated that murderous assault on Israel and the Jewish people and who continue to deny our right to exist.

As night falls they broadcast the Hannukah miracle loud and clear, the story of the oil which lasted for eight days, a metaphor for the survival of the Jewish people who held out against the odds in times of terror and persecution, holding on long enough for a new generation, fresh oil from the new season, to be born to ensure our light would continue to shine in the world. 

Close to home

Itai Roth thought that he would have to celebrate his bar mitzva ceremony without his father present, as his father, Benny, is a reservist combat soldier on active duty in Gaza. However the army was able to release his father for a few hours to surprise his son on this special occasion, before returning to the front.

This is a small bittersweet story in a big war, but aside from the personal joy of this young boy, it's also a story about just how close the front line is to our homes.

Active duty in Israel doesn't mean being sent off to fight in some foreign war on the other side of the world, active duty in Israel means soldiers going off to defend their own homes, sometimes literally a few minutes from the front lines, often only an hour or two away from the war zone.

For many parts of Israel the front lines are close enough that residents are hearing the bombardments from the combat in which their parents, spouses, sons, daughters, neighbours, friends and colleagues are taking part. In most other parts of the country we are at the very least hearing the daily roar of military jets taking part in the fighting.

This proximity means that our soldiers are going in to battle with the knowledge that they are literally defending their families and communities.

It also means that sometimes they are able to take a few hours break from the war to join their loved ones briefly for births, weddings and sadly funerals. And yet even with the frontlines so close to home there are many combat soldiers who have hardly seen their families in many weeks.

I feel like often for friends overseas this is the part people don't understand. Just how small distances are here, the extent to which those going off to war are both a world a way from the relative normality (or at least appearance of relative normality) in much of the home front, and yet physically the distance between the battle zone and their homes is small, sometimes shockingly so.

Make no mistake, there but for the IDF soldiers actively pursuing terrorists and destroying the Hamas terror infrastructure on the ground, and Iron Dome intercepting the majority of the thousands of missiles launched at Israel from Gaza in the air, our home front would much more closely resemble the war zone.

The relatively (emphasis on relatively) routine existence that has to some extent returned to most of Israel's population centre is not because Hamas isn't trying to kill us, but because the IDF is doing all it can to stop them from succeeding.

This is not a story about yoghurt

 

This is not really a story about a fancy jar of yoghurt.

Small anecdote from the war #2343

When you sit down with your daughter to enjoy a special yoghurt and fruit snack and just then the rocket alert on your computer pings and it's for the kibbutz who's dairy makes the yoghurt you are eating right now.

Only you know because you met one of the folks who run the dairy at a "support the refugees" pop-up market a few weeks ago that at the moment the whole kibbutz pretty much has had to be evacuated and the people who run the dairy are currently displaced elsewhere in northern Israel being "hosted" by another dairy so they can keep producing on at least a very limited scale so that their dairy can survive.

A few brave souls have had to stay behind on the kibbutz (with army protection) to care for and milk the cows (who can't be moved) despite the regular bombardment and attempted incursions by Hizballah from southern Lebanon.

In fact the only reason you splurged on this fancy premium yoghurt is because you recognised the label and knew the story behind this kibbutz dairy.

You remember the haggard, harried, exhausted face of the dairyman you met at the pop-up market a few weeks back, worried for his future, worried whether he'd have a home to return to, worried for his fellow kibbutz members who had to stay behind for the cows (whom he also worries about), worried whether he could keep the dairy afloat, worried whether Hizballah was going to try to replicate Hamas October 7th attacks on Israel's northern border, worried whether they had built attack tunnels under the border in to his kibbutz, worried like every other Israeli about what tomorrow would bring.

And the apples you cut up to dip in the yoghurt? From another northern border kibbutz who's residents are also now refugees in their own country. During the brief ceasefire last week the army told the farmers that they could use that limited window of quiet to go back to their orchards, which are right next to the border, to mount a salvage harvest of as much as they could pick while the ceasefire held.

An emergency call went out on all the volunteer groups calling for anyone who could to go up to this northern border kibbutz (with army escort) for this rescue harvest. Farmers in safer parts of the Israel then sold the apples and kiwis on behalf of the displaced farmers.

Suddenly eating yoghurt and apples has become an act of patriotism and support for Israel's bombarded border communities and the northern refugees.