Hope from Israel

In our neighborhood, the shops are closed on Shabbat. People are usually walking to services on Friday night, going in all directions to the many local synagogues. Saturday morning as well, and then afterwards to have lunch with family and friends, or an afternoon stroll, or sitting peacefully in the park. This Shabbat was very quiet, hardly anyone in the streets. When we walked to our friends for dinner last night, we saw maybe a dozen people out and about. Dinner during wartime was comforting. The two Israeli couples that were there have 13 soldiers called up between them, their children and grandchildren. Yet the dinner was lively, discussing many topics before we talked about the war. The consensus was that yet again, it is a necessary battle, and the country is prepared for the fight, no matter how horrible the casualties will be. They do not believe Bibi will survive politically and his legacy is tarnished.  This morning we slept in, exhausted from the past week. With enormou...

We have been to Gaza when there were Israelis living there.  In 2003, we hosted two 19-year old Israeli young women, who were spending a year in the US doing their national service. This is in lieu of going into the army. They lived with us and worked in the local Jewish day school and our synagogue. One of them was from Ganai Tal in Gaza. In the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel captured Gaza. In the 1970's, the Labor government offered cheap housing to Israelis who wished to build a life there. Her parents, newly married, took the offer. They built a thriving business of cultivating potted plants and flowers, many of which were exported to Europe.  In 2004, we were in Israel for Passover and we visited this family. They had a beautiful single family home where they raised their three children, and we toured the many greenhouses they owned. They employed many local Palestinian workers, some of whom had been with them for decades. At that point, the government was beginning to talk abo...

 I have been trying to be strong and resilient like the Israelis, but today my resolve was shattered. We drove an hour to the shiva for Yoav Malayev, the 19-year-old nephew of our Berkeley rabbi, Yonatan Cohen.  Yoav was a young soldier on duty in Zikim, a small kibbutz whose main crops are mango and avocado. When the terrorists stormed the gate, Yoav fought bravely but fell in the battle on the first day, Saturday. Yoav's grandparents, Rabbi Cohen's parents were spending Sukkot in Berkeley. With the help of the amazing Berkeley community and the Israeli Consulate, they were able to get back to Israel in time for the funeral. Over the seventeen years Rabbi Cohen has been in Berkeley, we have met many members of his extended family. When we entered the shiva, Yoav's safta, his grieving grandmother, hugged me so tightly, her grief so intense, the need to transmit even a small semblance of it to me was overwhelming. Rabbi Cohen arrived yesterday to be with his family, his grie...

It was another quiet day in Jerusalem, and in our neighborhood a limited number of shops and restaurants were open. People were out and about, old, young, families with children, people walking dogs, under a brilliant blue sky. I went out a few times to the hardware store and supermarket, needing some fresh air and a chance to see life beyond the walls of our apartment. Our apartment is in a building probably built during the Templar era. It was originally two stories, and a third was added in the 1970's. Each floor is its own apartment, ours is on the second or middle floor. The apartment on street level has lovely gardens in front and back, with flowering trees and other plantings. Along the walkway to enter our part of the building, there are fruit trees: pomegranate, pomelo, apricot, and cherry, which give welcome shade to the path. Our upstairs neighbors are Americans who have been here for 30+ years and raised their kids here. Our downstairs neighbor is a Brit who rarely come...

Jerusalem was quiet today. Our neighborhood is called German Colony, or Moshava Germanit in Hebrew. It was established in the mid 1800's as a German Templer Colony, on land purchased from the nearby Arab village. The Templers were Christians who broke away from the Protestant church and encouraged their members to settle in the Holy Land to prepare for the Messiah. The British Mandatory government deported the German Templers during WWII fearing they were Nazi sympathizers. The Christian Arabs who also lived in the neighborhood fled when Israel became a state in 1948. At first these vacant homes were used to house new Jewish immigrants, and it has gradually become a vibrant enclave, filled with many English-speaking residents. There are many shops and restaurants on the main street, Emek Refaim which is one block away from our apartment. Today there were few people on the street, everyone is laying low.   It was not quiet in Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Ashkelon, Ashdod, and many of...

 Noah and our upstairs neighbor went biking this morning. There is a beautiful bike path that circles Jerusalem and passes several neighborhoods, and the zoo and the aquarium. I did not think this was a good idea, but Noah is very stubborn and believes that one should continue to do normal things while the war is going on.  My friend E came over with her 2-year-old granddaughter. Her daughter is 8 months pregnant, her husband has been called up, and they are now living with my friend. Things were calm overnight and we were sitting in our living room discussing the situation while the toddler played. E showed me pictures from a zoom she had done that morning with one of her sons who was called up and several of her grandkids. Crazy to think a soldier fighting a war can spend a few minutes on  a zoom call, and I'm sure it was reassuring to his wife and mother.  Noah went out to deliver some toiletries to a collection point in the neighborhood, which would then be sent ...