After the war, after the war, it's hard to think of a time please God when our lives will be safe and quiet after the war, but today even with the constant boom of (distant) artillery pounding away and a constant soundtrack of assorted military aircraft overhead, even with all that, for the first time in a while I had thoughts of one day, after. When this is over, when we can live here in security again, when the soundtrack to being outdoors in the fields and villages of rural Israel is just birdsong and maybe some sheep bleating or the odd dog barking instead of cannons, rocket interceptions and warplanes, then, right then, I want to go back to the place where I volunteered today, with the friends and strangers I volunteered with today, with my family and yet more friends from around the country, old ones from years ago, new ones I've met in recent weeks, the refugees now temporarily housed in our neighbourhood, people from overseas who were supposed to be visiting this autumn, all of them. I want to take this big crowd of people and sit out in the pretty courtyard and on the scenic terrace and in the tasteful tasting room of the vineyard and winery where we volunteered today. I want there to be so very many of us feeling safe and secure sitting outdoors and indoors, filling every space, far too many of us to need a shelter because we won't need to think about being close to a shelter. I want everyone now at the front to be there, safe and well and whole, all our sons and daughters, husbands, wives, cousins, neighbours - all the hundreds and thousands of Israelis who dropped everything and put on a uniform to protect all our lives, all our homes from a viscious, murderous enemy intent on annihilating us all. And all the people taken hostage from Israel to Gaza, they should be there too, alive, home, free, able once again to laugh and feel the sun on their faces and see the trees and the endless sky. We'll sit around tables enjoying the pastoral views, the fresh air, the calm. Some of us I'm sure will enjoy splurging on the award winning wines produced at this vineyard. Some of us will just go for the platters of delicious cheeses and farm fresh vegetables, maybe a coffee or herbal tea. It won't really matter though, the point will be just to feel the freedom of being able to gather a huge crowd of people together without fear of sirens or terrorists or rockets. Also to help the vintner and farmers recoup some of their huge losses incurred during the war, to give them a hug too. Like the place where we worked today. His usual workers, young strong men, were called up to the army on emergency draft orders. His sons, likewise called up to emergency army service. Overnight he and his wife were left to do all the work alone: the heavy manual labour, the bureaucratic office work, the packing and bottling, caring for the sheep which graze the vineyard and eat the weeds. At the same time he lost much of his income, the corporate events, the Friday wine and cheese tastings, the accounts with wedding halls, hotels and fancy restaurants closed due to the horrific Hamas surprise attack on Israel. Who has time or money for award winning wine in the middle of a war for survival? With the steady rain of rockets over southern Israel he couldn't have even hosted workshops or tastings if he'd had customers interested in such things - the shelter in his nearby home is only big enough for about a dozen people and besides, who would want to be caught out by a rocket attack while driving there? The grapes though won't wait for people or wars. The harvest was just completed before the Hamas invasion on October 7th. Even with all his workers and his sons called to the army the farmer and his wife have to process the grapes to keep their vineyard going and hopefully still have a livelihood left to maintain their farm, keep their home. So they got in touch with the Hashomer Hahadash agricultural organisation which even before the current crisis helped to organise volunteers to assist farmers in need, and that's how a group of us: a teacher, a lawyer, a travel agent, the chef of a well known Jerusalem restaurant (so far closed for the duration) and yours truly, found ourselves on this picturesque moshav village not far from the much bombarded southern Israeli city of Ashdod. Some helped with the physically demanding job of pressing the grapes and repairing fencing. Some did the less intense work of sealing and labelling bottles, packing them in boxes and general maintenance, like washing up the wine making equipment. All the while the air around us reverbrated with the regular boom boom boom of artillery from the fighting in northern Gaza, just a few kilometres down the highway. For one brief surreal moment the same sky was shared by a v-shaped flock of pelicans, a military helicopter and the rumble of warplanes overhead, all at different altitudes. As much as the work we did seemed to be genuinely useful to the vineyard owners we had the impression that just by being there we were helping to lift their morale, to make them realise that they were not alone, that random Israelis from around the country, even from frontline Ashkelon, cared enough to schlep out and lend a hand to someone they had never met, just because when our country is in crisis that is what you do. So one day, one day, when the war is over, when God Willing everyone is home safe and sound and the backdrop to sitting outside in rural Israel is birdsong and not artillery, one day, I hope you will join me in the garden of this winery, right next to the vineyard and its charming flock of sheep and raise a glass of wine (or water or coffee or tea) to the memories of the far too many people we have lost, the children, babies, men, women and elderly massacred on that terrible Shabbat October 7th and the brave soldiers and security forces who gave their lives and their futures so that the rest of Israel could live and have a future in our homeland.
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