Josh's War Journal - Week #10

Hanukah!!

Please note: the photograph accompanying this blog is a Hanukiah made up of IDF flares, illuminating the border (photo courtesy of my son Yonatan).

For the first time since the war's beginning, my two soldier boys were home at the same time (if only for a short while)!

As a family, we usually take a couple of days and go camping or hiking. This year we are in a different headspace. We care less about what we can do, and think more about what we should be doing.

There are limitations in our family dynamic:

Akiva (future son-in-law) is fighting Hamas scum in Gaza, Yonatan is on the northern border facing Hezbollah terrorists, Yedidya is covering Palestinian terrorists, and I'm protecting my city which has suffered three terror attacks this past year. (As I am based from home, I can leave the city on my “off” days, but I do need permission to do so.)

Geographically, we don't wish to go to any areas that are even more dangerous... so we need to avoid the northern Galilee, the Golan... and of course, the south as Hamas still has rocket launching capabilities... and it's not a good time to be in Jerusalem, or anywhere in or near Judea or Samaria... Maybe we should consider going abroad. London is not too far... but currently excessively hostile. As is Paris, as is Harvard...

I don't want to sound pessimistic, but it does seem that it is hard to be a Jew anywhere.

Not wishing to diminish from so many other suffering populations in the world, I will take back the above statement.

It is hard to be anyone, anywhere...

Only that it is easier if you are not also Jewish. 

Chana has wisely decided that we will do a family-oriented hessed activity. We make plans to assist on the agricultural front. We head to Hazav (an agricultural moshav - agricultural community). Hazav is just a one-hour drive away from home... it is also only 30 minutes from Gaza (and only 20 seconds away, as the Hamas missiles fly).

We meet Yoram - the picture-perfect Israeli. His 85-year-old father built this place and loves the land. Yoram is a lieutenant colonel in Central Command and a farmer. Their farm is in trouble. All eight of their Thai workers fled at the war's outbreak. Objectively, who could blame them? Nonetheless, Yoram's family tutored them, nurtured them, and treated them like a family. Yoram may not blame them either, but he is deeply hurt. He feels betrayed. (I think that part of that hurt likely comes from an unspoken knowledge that if the situation were reversed, the Israeli worker would stand and fight by his Thai host...).

Yoram shows us where weeds are taking over two rows of scallions. Our mission, should we choose to accept, is to pull out the weeds and give the fledgling plants a fighting chance. 

We accept. The kids eventually make peace with the fact that we will get muddy and encounter many more invertebrates than they are comfortable with or bargained for. 

They experience the extremely satisfying feeling of pulling out a weed with its roots. We give the various weeds names: weed #1 we dub Hamasniks. Weed #2 - Hezbollahs. # 3 are Houthis. The kids not only participate in agricultural activity, they are destroying “Israel's enemies,” (the weeds) and helping to make the world a better place for the good guys (AKA scallions)!

Yoram is beside himself with emotions. "I want to thank you so much for coming here, on your vacation, and helping out a random person whom you've never even met. I want to say Todah.. but it just doesn't cut it. I don't think there is a word in our language that fully describes my emotions to this scenario." (Some of you may remember that I wrote about this concept of the inadequacy of words, albeit from a different angle, in the blog for week #7)

We may have helped him, but we left feeling that we gained even more than we gave. We gained a family and friends’ activity, an opportunity to do good, to put a concept of solidarity into practice.

The other volunteers today are a group of soldiers on leave from the front lines. They could be at home. Resting. But they are here. Because this is the mission, and they too, chose to accept it.

Monday:

Tragedy again strikes our country and our neighborhood. The Zennelman family made Aliya about 15 years ago. Our two families drove school carpools for a few years. Their oldest, Ari was already in high school at that time. He graduated with such high marks that he received an invitation to join Israel's most prestigious academic-military interdisciplinary R&D unit. Ari turned them down. He wanted to learn Torah in a Hesder Yeshiva and draft as a combat soldier. Ari, now 32, fell in battle in Gaza. Ari left behind a wife and three little children. The youngest he managed to see just once, as Ari came out of the battle for her birth and then returned to his unit to defend his newborn. 

The funeral procession leaves from his parents' home down the block. The third such procession in our little neighborhood in the past month. Thousands of flag-holding supporters line the city's streets.

streetsWe stand in Har Herzl's military cemetery. I have given hundreds of tours here. I know its complexities very well. But I'm confused. We are not in the newest section. We are standing next to the 1948 plots. Then it hits me. The newest section, which only two months ago had dozens of spaces, is now filled to capacity. 

Ari's father: "Of course, I'm broken. But even more than feeling sad for our family, I feel sad for the world, as Ari could have made it, if only given more time, a much better place for all."

Ari's mother: "If my son's life, and death, are to have any meaning, our leaders and army must eradicate this evil, so it will never return."

The youth refuse to leave the grave. They surround the grave singing songs of faith and strength. Songs with words composed by our greatest warrior-poet, King David, their meaning as relevant today as it was 3000 years ago.

My chest compresses. My heart and eyes weep. I would feel sadness for this tragedy from my home, or even if I were in Moscow or Milwaukee… but nothing compares to being here, with thousands of people, as these energies pulse through the fiber of your existence.

On our way out, I deviate to the newest section to pay my respects to Israel's most recently fallen heroes. A sight I have never seen before greets me. Half a dozen Hanukiot - lit alongside the fresh graves. Even at this late hour, young widows, children, and others refuse to celebrate Hanukah without their lost loved ones. So they have come here. They sit in paradox. Engulfed in a cold cemetery night, with only a few Hanukah candles attempting to chase the blackness away.

Just as chilling was this grave: Dvir Lisha. Born in Gush Katif (the Jewish community in Gaza) in 2001. Evicted from Gush Katif in 2005. Killed in action, Gush Katif, 2023.

On Tuesday night, the 40 soldiers of our unit gather for Hanukah candle lighting, a BBQ, and rifle maintenance. The city's chief rabbi comes to share uplifting words of the Hanukah spirit. His words are even more meaningful as his soldier-grandson was killed in action on October 7. The deputy mayor comes as well. He thanks us for our volunteering service and for helping keep the city safe. As often happens, it is those who give thanks that deserve thanks. He too is in uniform. He is a lieutenant colonel - brigade commander, who has barely been home in the past two months.

Such is the nature of Israel.

 Wednesday I have an eight-hour shift at the city’s entrance. The challenging part is being the entire time alert and on your feet. However, the load is made lighter as so many people stop to offer a word of support, best wishes, and lots and lots of Hanukah pastries (which ironically make the load heavier… if you know what I mean)!

Thursday we travel to a small moshav near Netanya. Without workers, their strawberries will not make it to market. Like at the other farm, there are only a few volunteers. I struggle to understand. I see the social media and I know that hundreds, even thousands of people are out there volunteering. Then it hits me… with so many places in need of help, the workforce is spread thin.

The weather is beautiful and the berries are amazing. It is the kind of work that in other circumstances we would pay to do.

Michal, the owner’s daughter-in-law apologizes to us for not being there the entire time. “You see,” she says, “once a week I volunteer at a center for autistic children, and I couldn’t let them down…”

Even those who need volunteers, need to volunteer.

Did you know that Israel has more NGOs per capita than any other modern country? Standing there in the fields of the Sharon Plain, it all made sense to me.

We meet a 24-year-old Golani soldier who is home from the front lines for a few days. He, like others, feels like he needs to get away from the horrors of war and reconnect with land, with nature, with Mother Earth, with goodness.

As my week ends, I sense its theme, in retrospect, is “earth.”

Earth is neither good nor evil. It just is. But, people can use it for good or evil.

Yoram cleanses the earth from weeds --- good. Just as many nations have ‘cleansed’ their lands from Jews --- evil.

Michal plants berries. Hezbollah plants mines.

Yoram digs trenches for irrigation pipes. Hamas digs tunnels for terror.

Michal’s sand yields avocados and yams. Gaza’s sand yields hidden rockets and abducted hostages.

Politically, Israelis want a land of their own, even at the expense of not having all of the land for their own. The Arabs want us not to have any land of our own, even at the expense of not having any land of their own.

Spiritually, the earth that gives us life is the same earth of Mt. Herzl that embraces our fallen soldiers.

But note that this week was Hanukah. The holiday of the supernatural. In Judaism, seven represents nature and eight represents the supernatural.

So on this last day of Hanukah, I will end on a spiritual note:

Last week I wrote about the connection between Adam and Hanukah.

Following in that theme, Adam is so-called as he is formed from the earth - the adama.

But even if we have an “earthy” base nature, we also have within us a divine spark and a divine mission vis-à-vis the earth, as per God's command in Genesis: “To cultivate" it as well as to “guard" it.

All in all, it has been a whirlwind week and a meaningful Hanukah, during which I was privileged to be surrounded by people who are spending their lives, and even giving their lives, to cultivate the earth, and guard the land!

Shabbat Shalom to All!