Honey and remembrance

For many of us time seems to have stood still this year, stuck in the horror of Simhat Torah last year when our world came crashing down, a horror film made real, claiming the lives of so many. 

And yet somehow a whole year has gone by, the Tishrei holidays are once again upon us, in a few days time we will be sitting down at the traditional meal of blessings for the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah and still our country is at war. How do we balance all these conflicting emotions, the sorrow and pain of war, the hope for the coming year? How do we permit ourselves joy in the middle of war, at a time when over a 100 of our brothers and sisters are still held hostage, when so many of our family and friends are fighting on the frontlines? 

I don't know that I really have any clear answers, but these questions were all very much on my mind in the past week as I volunteered in three related areas, as always finding solace and optimism in doing, in following the teaching of the Esh Kodesh: in your time of trouble or sorrow, find a way to do good for someone else.

1) Helping a local ceramics artist to make ceramic anemone flowers for memorial sites around the Otef, including the site of the Nova festival. While volunteering on a farm I met a woman who since November has been using her art to create memorials for the murdered and fallen, and in doing so bring comfort to so many bereaved families. For many months now she and other ceramicists have been guiding hundreds of volunteers to help realise this huge undertaking.

2) Picking oroblanco (sweetie, pomelit) fruits in the citrus groves of kibbutz Re'im, right across the road from the Re'im woodland and picnic areas where the Nova festival took place.

Though I've volunteered in the kibbutz Re'im citrus orchards several time during this past year this is the first time the farmer warned us that we might find "things which are not citrus" among the trees, and to please not touch anything like that, to call him and keep people away should we find anything suspicious. My friend looked at me and I looked at her and our minds went to some very terrifying places. Maybe seeing the looks on our faces the farmer clarified that a recent group of volunteers came across spent Hamas RPG ordinance. During the Hamas massacre of the Nova festival goers many people fled to these orchards and were chased by terrorists through the trees. I'ed always found that thought in itself chilling, picking oranges or oroblanco fruits in these serene looking groves, wondering who might have sought cover here, who might have been fleeing for their lives, what horrors these trees must have witnessed, what the previous rainy season had to cleanse from the powdery soil.

3) On kibbutz Erez we once again volunteered in the apiary helping to pack orders of honey for Rosh Hashanah. Each time I've come I meet volunteers from around the country who've made the trip to help bring sweetness to all of Israel especially in these painful times. The kibbutz residents who run the apiary always welcome us so warmly and have always been a pleasure to work with, kind, patient, humorous, even when we make mistakes. As we worked we heard stories about the kibbutz. They and many of their neighbours lost massive amounts of beehives and honey bees to the arson balloons and incendiary laden kites Hamas has been sending over the border in to Israel for the last several years. Israel's "allies" pressured a succession of governments not to respond, because these were "just toys", "just balloons", "just kites", all the while these primitive but effective weapons (flying molotov cocktails) were setting fire to fields and woodlands, nature reserves and farms, and everywhere burning down the bee hives that are set up all over the area to pollinate the crops, as well as to produce honey. Maybe it seems petty to feel sad for the bees, but maybe because on October 7 those same Hamas terrorists were setting fire to people, I felt extra empathy for the thousands of bees torched by terrorists in their homes just as Hamas burnt so many Israeli people alive in theirs. Today as then the Israeli border communities are about life, growing, creating, developing, while the Hamas ideology remains mired in death and destruction. We heard about the kibbutz residents finally able to return home, but also about all the local kids suffering from such severe PTSD that they hardly eat, burst in to tears all the time, not just a function of October 7, but years of constant attrition from Hamas rockets and mortars, of living in this beautiful Israel kibbutz right by the border. Some children have learnt to take it in their stride, grown up with the stress and the danger, others have over the years become shattered by it. Throughout the Otef we've heard the same, a generation who've been born and grown up in the shadow of Hamas terror out of Gaza. A year after the Hamas invasion we've met many in the Otef who are finally daring to hope that maybe now something will have changed after so much of the Hamas war machine and terror infrastructure has been dismantled. On the way to the kibbutz cafeteria for lunch we met a beautiful dog with a luxurious fluffy coat. "You see that dog?" said our kibbutznik "boss". "That's one of hundreds of feral dogs that wandered in to the kibbutz after October 7, when the border fence was ripped to shreds." A few kibbutz members working in essential industries returned to the kibbutz at a time when it was considered too dangerous for the rest of the residents to come home. They found all these dogs, some in viscious packs who'd ransacked porch furniture and were a menace to livestock and wildlife, dogs gone so feral they were a danger. There were other sogs though who gravitated to people, who had made friends with soldiers stationed in the area. With love and patience they were able to rehabilitate many of these dogs, some of whom are now part of the kibbutz, adopted by its residents and given loving homes. "Maybe they are a sign that something good may yet come from this situation."