With Israel On Edge, Tender Moments Of Connection

Israelis are shocked, outraged, grieving and anxious – but bonded in commitment to eradicating Hammas.

Deserted Dubnov Street, Jerusalem, last Thursday, 9 am.

The man called to the Torah this past Shabbat morning at an outdoor minyan in the heart of Jerusalem appeared to be in his 60s.

As he began to make the blessing over the Torah in a soft voice, he paused. After a few seconds, he appeared to be sobbing. The congregation of about 30 men and a handful of women grew silent. No one moved. The silence lasted a full minute or two before the man completed the blessing, almost inaudibly.

I soon learned that he lost two nephews in the army in the first days of the war with Hamas.

After the Torah reading was completed, the gabbai (or, sexton) announced the reading of a memorial prayer and asked anyone who had lost a close loved one in the war to come up and tell him the names to be included. Three men came forward.

I realized that if among this small group there were at least five people mourning relatives, the tragic toll across Israel after one week of war was staggering. And the thought of the impact on the nation – if the expected ground war is as prolonged and brutal as anticipated – is almost too heavy to bear. 

Jerusalem, described by The Jerusalem Post as “a ghost town” early in the week, stirred a bit the last few days. Many of the shops, stores and restaurants were closed. So were the schools around the country, with youngsters back on Zoom. But people ventured out in the afternoon on Thursday and Friday to shop as best they could for Shabbat. 

They had been urged to buy water, batteries, and other necessities in case they needed to go back into their safe rooms over the weekend. A rabbinical edict was issued, permitting and even encouraging people to keep their radios and/or televisions on, and to put safety over ritual. The message noted that if sirens are sounded while a person is praying the silent Amidah, he or she should not hesitate in hurrying toward shelter.

The Shabbat station for radios and TVs remain silent on Shabbat unless there is an emergency. At that point, the volume comes on with a loud warning.

Throughout the week we learned of countless volunteer efforts among Israelis in support of the soldiers, including blood donation centers that were oversubscribed, projects for food preparation and delivery to the IDF bases, and efforts to supply soldiers with additional clothing. Many displaced families from the southern kibbutzim that had been attacked were offered free rooms and meals in hotels around the country.

Friday night dinner at the home of American friends who made aliyah many years ago was a microcosm of what countless Israeli families were experiencing, trying to keep the war at bay for a few hours while celebrating Shabbat. But the grim events of the week were never far from our minds. Our friends’ daughter, son-in-law and two granddaughters joined us. The older granddaughter was serving in the army reserves, the other volunteering through her high school youth group. Their brother was “in the south” with his combat unit; the looks of concern were clear on the faces of his parents and grandparents. A guest and his daughter were at the table, having lent their home to a large family from the south whose close relative, a young mother, had died as a hostage. Another woman at the table had two nephews in the army. 

One Shabbat table, so much sadness. We marked the day of rest, but the restlessness in the room was palpable.

Lone Soldiers Never Alone

Last Thursday, on a lovely sunny afternoon, my wife and I joined dozens of other people in the Bakka section of Jerusalem at the shiva for a lone soldier, Corporal Natanel Young. From his photos, he was a strapping young man, and we learned from his parents that he joined the IDF in July, visited his family in his native England for a month, returned to Israel in September and was killed in fighting near Gaza the day after the Simchat Torah massacre. 

He was 20 years old. 

Lone soldiers by definition serve in the IDF without the comfort of having close family in Israel to support them. About half of the estimated 7,000 lone soldiers serving today are new immigrants from around the world.  Israelis are deeply appreciative of this level of commitment and treat these young people like family, with respect, gratitude and affection.  (The other 50 percent of lone soldiers are Israelis who are either orphans or from low socio-economic backgrounds.)

The death of a lone soldier is treated as a national tragedy, and when news goes out in the media or by word of mouth that a lone soldier has fallen, large numbers of people attend the funeral and/or the shiva. This past week as many as 10,000 people were reported to have attended the funeral of a lone soldier at the Mount Herzl national military cemetery in Jerusalem. (One of the most visited of the more than 3,400 graves there is that of Michael Levin, a lone soldier from Pennsylvania who was killed at the age of 22 in the summer of 2006. He had cut short his vacation back home to join his unit fighting Hezbollah.)

Soon after we arrived at the shiva house on Thursday, the mincha afternoon service was held with at least 60 people taking part, led by Natanel’s brother. Then Natanel’s father led us in reciting several chapters of Tehillim (Psalms), followed by the singing of Hatikvah. As we sang, I felt emotional as I looked around at the large group, virtually none of whom knew Natanel’s family — and probably not each other. But they were not strangers, either. They shared a desire to offer condolences and support to a grieving family from abroad. And the mood of the room, though somber, was convivial, one of shared values and traditions. 

While my wife and I were speaking to Natanel’s parents, a young man in full chasidic garb approached from the side and explained to the parents that he had visited them earlier in the day but decided to come back because there was something more he wanted to tell them. He recalled that Natanel’s mother had said earlier that her son was not fully observant, but the chasid said he disagreed. “He came to live here in Eretz Yisrael and join the army,” he said, so that qualified him as observant. The mother then offered that Natanel had once turned down a job at a hotel because it would have required him to work on Shabbat.

The chasid, enthused, said that was additional proof Natanel was observant. 

I was fascinated by the brief interchange. Here was a chasid who had visited the family, gone home, and then come back because it weighed on him to assure the parents their son was observant. And the proof he offered was that the son had made aliyah and chose to enter the army – the same army that this young man and so many of his fellow charedim eschew joining.

Only in Israel – the mix, if not blend, of so many cultures, traditions, attitudes and beliefs, but joined somehow in a common identity of being a Jew and part of a Jewish people.

At this critical moment in the life of the Jewish State, and of Jewish history, that identity for Israeli Jews includes a shared realization that the kind of pogrom that took place on Simchat Torah must never happen again. The path to victory is unknown as is the fate of the IDF soldiers, the 200 Israeli captives and the nearly two million citizens of Gaza. But for Israelis, the resolve that their army will prove victorious in the end is a given. Because there is no alternative.

Am Yisrael Chai.