Day One of the Orthodox Union United We Stand Mission
Ben Gurion is a ghost town.
In the void are signs, every few feet, for bomb shelters.
It’s not a depressing silence.
Everyone in that airport has purpose in their footsteps.
We’ve come to fight. We’ve come to help. We’ve come home.
Nearly every passenger from the US is carrying anywhere between 2 and 13 duffel bags.
I told them at customs my bag was filled with clothing for soldiers.
That’s what they told me.
It was filled with medical supplies.
The soldier looked at the supplies, looked at me, shrugged his shoulders and let me through.
Handed the bags to some off duty soldiers who were waiting for me. A quick embrace before they went back to their base.
We’re all family, bringing packages for our loved ones.
The highways are empty. I’m waiting for foxes to run across Kvish Echad.
But we’re not crying.
We’re all Rabbi Akiva.
Here to give hope and to experience the eternal hope of the Jewish People.
The hotel – this is the third hotel we booked as the others got filled up with displaced people, is now a refugee center.
A Bat Mitzvah is taking place.
Strangers off the street come to give the girls some joy.
Kids running through the halls.
Pressing all the buttons on the elevator.
Fighting ever so hard to just be normal.
How many people from the south told us tonight that they said shema on October 7th, thinking it was their last prayer? How many parents described giving out kitchen knives to their 13 year olds?
Who dared awaken these old plotlines from books from the crusades, movies of the Holocaust. What are they doing here?! In Israel?! In 2023?!
There are words that keep on being repeated: “Miracle” “Hashem was watching over me.” “Achdut!!”
The last time I was here was August and I’ve only been here a few hours, but I can confidently say, this is a new people; a people awakened from a deep slumber, a people energized with unity, with faith, and with resolve.
It’s midnight. There’s a cool breeze outside, blowing hope through the streets of Jerusalem. We have been knocked down. But we are anything but beaten.
Day Two of the Orthodox Union United We Stand Mission
There’s just too much to share and emotions that are too raw to unpack. So I’ll just share a single moment –
In Chevron, we learned that one of the soldiers stationed there got married a few days ago. Immediately after his wedding he went back to serve. Because that’s what you do in a time of war.
He didn’t have any sheva berachos. However his battalion decided to surprise him and brought his newly wed wife to their base for an impromptu sheva berachos. We crashed and this is what we experienced.
You can watch a clip of the sheva berachos here: https://www.instagram.com/reel/CzFAG-JrU7r/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
V’haikar lo l’facheid klal.
May Hashem give them the strength to not be scared and to return home in safety.
Day Three of the Orthodox Union United We Stand Mission
It’s a pretty holy group of people I’m traveling with. Leaders of their community, international teachers of Torah, and just plain old good people. Despite their collective stature, there’s one sentiment I’m hearing from them over and over: “The people here are just on another level.”
The parents whose child is in captivity who affirms his faith in G-d’s plan, the father who just buried his 19 year old son who affirms his faith in the holiness of the land, the secular soldier who thanks us for coming to the kotel to pray, the unit whose job it is to identify bodies who have been pulling 24 hour shifts who have seen and smelt and touched the most horrific sites who somehow danced with us affirming their faith in the eternality of the Jewish people with huge smiles on their faces…
These are not rabbis or spiritual gurus. These are doctors, mechanics, college students, teachers…
To be in their presence pushes you, it opens your eyes to how shallow our version of spirituality is.
My dear colleague, Rabbi Larry Rothwachs, a different level individual in his own right, commented today how he’s afraid that whatever new vistas have been opened to us will be lost when we return, he wonders how long it will last. Those concerns shook me to the core.
I’m afraid it won’t even make it off the tarmac. It’s like those bottles of ‘Israel air’ they used to sell in the shuk.
We shouldn’t kid ourselves, the holiness of Israel cannot be imported. The people are different because the air is different. Or maybe it’s the other way around.
I’m already checked in to my flight tomorrow night, the ominous countdown has begun. But I’ll be back. We’ll all be back. Our soul is drawn to holiness like a magnet. No amount of missiles and no amount of terror can hold her back.
And even if we only stay for a few days, we can still walk these holy streets, breathe the holy air, and hug the holy people of Israel who are radiating their holiness now more than ever.
Touching Down in the US
The commentators question why it is that Hashem made Noach save the animals. Why couldn’t G-d save them on His own?
“Olam chesed yibaneh, the world is created on kindness.” There is a principle that for the world to form it must be built on kindness. This is not only a mystical idea, but practically, the world cannot function unless there is kindness at its core.
The pre-flood society had devolved into a jungle where each person or tribe was focused entirely on themselves. That world was destroyed; it simply could not go on. Hashem asked Noach to look out for the animals as He wanted to ensure that the new world will be founded on the most important quality – chesed – only then would the world endure.
This past year was a low point in the history of the State of Israel and the Jewish People. Our differences seemed unbridgeable, our shared values seemed to not be enough to hold us together.
That world experienced its own mabul on October 7th; destruction and devastation beyond description.
In its place a new world is forming. Every Israeli citizen has been mobilized not to fight but to unite. Charedi teens are cleaning understaffed hospitals in Tel Aviv. Senior citizens are picking fruit to help farmers. Communities are creating massive meal trains for all the mothers whose husbands are on the front lines. One Israeli told me, “There are more volunteers than opportunities to help.”
“Olam chesed yibaneh, the world is created on kindness.” There is a new world forming and at its core is unity and kindness.
***
I’m about to land in Newark airport.
My heart is always in the east, but now more than ever, I want to be a part of the revolution of kindness that is sweeping across the land.
Below you will find a video and letter from a soldier to whom we brought cards drawn by children. I had assumed that these hardened soldiers, and these ones in particular whose job it was to deal with the dead, could not care less for silly cards. Boy was I wrong.
We can still be a part of the revolution from across the Atlantic. We have and we will continue to think and pray for the people of Israel – aside from its intrinsic value, they appreciate it more than you can imagine. We have and we will continue to fundraise unprecedented amounts of funds to help support the people of Israel – they need it now and they will need it for the long haul. We have and we will continue to do anything we can for them, up to and including drawing pictures, thanking the brave men and women of Israel.
But perhaps even more importantly, we can and we will rebuild our own world; maybe it wasn’t as broken as Israeli society, but our community too faces its own share of challenges. We can commit to rebuilding it it before it is destroyed.
My heart is not in the east. My heart is with my people, in Israel and in my backyard.