28 DECEMBER, 2023
INTRODUCTION
I suppose I, like you, remember waking up on 10/7 to the horrific news about a large terror attack going on in Israel. Even within a few hours of watching the horrific events cascade across the media outlets, a deep unease settled in my soul. Something told me that this event was different. Something fundamental has changed.
THE BEGINNING
Many commentators, in Israel and abroad and both Jewish and non-Jewish, have said that October 7th was an epic event in Jewish history — maybe even in the history of the Modern Era. The barbarity of the event perpetrated on Israel soil and the lackadaisical reaction among the world community will leave painful emotional scars for years to come, not only for Israeli citizens but for the Jewish Diaspora.
And for all who choose to follow the daily news surrounding this unfolding tragic event (some might say, as I do, this is but chapter one in a yet long unfinished story), who among us can discount the ugliness and sorrow of armed conflict — especially when, inevitably, one’s moral compass uncomfortably collides head on with Western lullabies about how the world should be and the reality of war?
For me, the events of 10/7 have been less of an awakening of how evil the world can be, than a confirmation of just how challenging it is to be a Jew in America. On our way to the theater in New York City one evening, my wife, Leslie, and I experienced a firsthand collision with a “Free-Palestine” march, a bleak reminder of the terrible stains that have metastasized within the American psyche when it comes to Israel and the Jewish Diaspora in America.
You think you are insulated from hatred. You want to believe you will never witness this firsthand. You want to believe history won’t repeat itself. And then, out of left field, it’s in your face. So, as we stood on the corner of 56th Street and 6th Avenue in the eye of a hurricane of hatred (to call it a march would be too graceful a word given the venom pouring out of their mouths — this was a tsunami of hatred), it was hard for me (only in retrospect) not think — is this how my grandparents felt when living in Poland and Russia?
Was this how it felt to be scared and hated?
Frighteningly, this odious stench of antisemitism has found its way into all levels of American life. But there seems to be no denying the hatred and ignorance is persistent. It really just depends where one’s eyes are focused. And I, probably like many other Jewish Americans, never bothered to understand or fret over this distinctly distasteful part of the American psyche. Financial comfort and assimilation into the American dream are potent sanitizers.
In any event, October 7th certainly changed me. Emotionally, it’s hard watching our Jewish homeland fight for its existence.
And I couldn’t help but wonder how the Jew of October 7, 2023, was any different from the European Jews, like my grandparents, who endured pogroms in the early 20th century. The stories that my own grandparents recounted to our family, in that heavily embedded Yiddish accent, came sharply back into focus.
So, it’s not some random breach of a fence. A hole had been punctured in our collective hearts as Jews. Can anyone of us imagine, as we comfortably sit here in America, the agony that others are enduring when one of their loved ones is being held hostage by a group of people whose lives and glory are based upon their hatred of Jews. And the world basically sits in silence.
So, just what does that pain feel like in Israel? Can we in the Diaspora possibly understand this event?
While giving money to assist charities and people in Israel is important (I read that Americans gave an unprecedented sum of money, $1B, since 10/7), the act of giving money had left me somewhat unfulfilled and pondering how I might do more. A seed was planted.
So, a few weeks after October 7th, I turned to Leslie and asked her if she would be okay with me volunteering in Israel. Picking tomatoes maybe? I explained to her that it was painful for me to be a bystander to these unfolding events. There are times in life where you can talk all you want about the ills of the world until the sun sets but, at the end of the day, sometimes one must act firsthand. Fortunately, her answer was the same one given to me in 1978 by my father when I asked him a different, but no less consequential question about Israel. Leslie replied, “You should go.”
And now, as of a few weeks ago, I have been accepted into a two-week program for volunteers with the Israel Defense Forces (known as Sar-El) to serve on one of their military bases. I depart on December 28th. So, my thinking goes something like this — if I can help Israel in some small way while serving, then I will be at peace with myself. My hunch is that small efforts matter, and I am sure the collective impact can be large.
And as I get ready to depart, I really can answer very few questions about outcomes.
I don’t know what to expect of this journey.
I don’t know another volunteer in the program.
I don’t know where I will be-which military base I will be stationed on.
Nor do I know how I will react to being in a military uniform and pledging, among other things, not to talk politics while on the base — it’s not exactly a trait within our household to be silent on political issues, but I promised myself to try.
October 7th reminds me that there are times in life where you can’t be a bystander. It’s just too painful to watch. It’s irreconcilable with one’s moral compass, with one’s soul. And there are indeed times in life (mostly unpredictable) where you need to render an accounting of who you are.
And I also believe that this hole in the fence, this breach of Israel’s security, this attack on Zionism, has indeed unleashed the grotesque antisemitic incidents that have invaded our backyards and imperil what we call this experiment in democracy here in America, where tolerance and acceptance of others is an essential ingredient to a society’s health and evolution. But let’s not fool ourselves any longer — t’s an experiment without a given outcome, where lullabies about who we are as a country are just that — nice stories with comfortable endings we tell ourselves.
So, off I go on December 28th
Hatzerim air base, the Negev:
I have been assigned with a group of other volunteers to the Hatzerim air base in the Negev. A few of the other volunteers in our group had actually previously volunteered on the base and let me know that where you sleep (off base) is a noisy environment. That description turned out to be true.
Upon arrival at the base, we were reminded that we are indeed in a war zone. Getting us somewhat oriented to our new work environment, our “commander”/leader (a young woman, fluent in 4 languages, in her first year of mandatory IDF service) nonchalantly pointed her finger to the location of the bombs shelters if air raid sirens should go off. She casually mentioned that you might have only 60 seconds to get into a shelter.
Thereafter, we got right to work.
At the base we (about 100 or so volunteers) are basically assigned to working in a large warehouse established for logistical supplies and food distribution. Our job was to pack a large box (about 3’x 3’) with food for breakfast, lunch and some snacks for the soldiers on the front lines.. There must have been another such logistical point for volunteers putting together and assembling other meals for the soldiers. It takes 100 of us, in a highly organized way, to pack a box for 2 soldiers for 2 days of snacks and some meals. We work 7 hours a day and every movement is choreographed on a long assembly line.
So, what goes into one of these boxes?
Part of the box will contain a plastic bag for drinking items: 5 bags of tea, 6 packages of freeze-dried coffee, 16 packets of sugar. (It takes about 4 people to actually put just these items together and seal them into a small plastic bag that will go into the main box.) On the assembly line there are volunteers who will carefully put in the chips, freeze dried high protein soup, cans of tuna, cans of olives, a carton of chocolate and cookies. All in all, I would estimate that one box holds more than 24 different items requiring 100 focused people working. The mood on the packing line is indeed jovial at times and the time can pass quite quickly, especially if you find yourself, like I did, surrounded by the group of Australian volunteers.
I was told that, depending on the army, it could take 10–15 people behind the lines in some logistical capacity to support a combat trooper. Think about the math of that for a moment and consider how many workers/volunteers are actually needed to wage war.
Once finished, the boxes are sealed, stacked, and have to be hauled away to another distribution center to be combined with the actual meals for the soldiers. I can’t even imagine the coordination and manpower required, but it actually flows smoothly. And then these boxes have to get to the front lines and be distributed.
This is the work we did for our first 5 days of volunteer service, and I never once got bored.
On the base, you actually get little news of the war or the outside world unless you decide to go online in the evening to get a pulse of the day’s events. One night, for instance, we did not know of all the rocket attacks in Tel Aviv. I only learned of the event the next day from a text message from my daughter, Rachel.
I had also been told to be prepared for many sleepless nights, as an air force base is loud at all times. We are sleeping in big tents about 20 miles south of the air force base, but in the direct path of the runways that the jets use. These tents are literally in the middle of the desert and are further extension in times of war of the military base. About 35 simple beds to a tent. Lots of big-time snoring going on! So many reservists have been called up for this war that the base itself is overflowing and cannot accommodate all of the young men and women who have joined combat units.
And as predicted, at night we did get a lesson in sound effects, as all night long the fighter jets took off and landed, The noise of one of these jets is thunderous. I won’t say it was as bad as other volunteers snoring, but the two sounds combined creates a cacophony enough to deprive one of a good night’s sleep. (A sound night’s sleep could be achieved, I quickly learned, by using the newest Apple ear buds full-throttle on the noise cancellation setting, combined with the Grateful Dead in the background. (It worked!)
Food at an army base is good and no one is starving, but alas I will have no chance of remaining a vegetarian during these next two weeks.
So, you might ask, who are these volunteers who have come from far and wide? In our group of about 100, about one-half are not from the USA. Nationalities include South Africa, Australia, Poland, France, Germany, UK, New Zealand. Only estimating, but I would also guess that up to 30% are NOT Jewish, but are very aligned with Israel and its values. They (maybe like me) see the war in epic historical terms that will likely impact all of us outside the strict boundaries of the Middle East. They recognize that hatred can metastasize quickly even in democratic countries, especially when societies are become too complacent.
And they came in part, like me, because no one here wants to be a bystander. We have come to make some type of contribution to the State of Israel. These volunteers see this chapter in history just like the Israeli public does (at least for now), that the war needs to be “won” however that one word is managed and defined by the government. Of course, its early in the war cycle and the drama of the hostages and death of members of the Israeli armed forces in a small country may indeed require the government to eventually evolve society’s wartime goals. But as of this writing, the blame game so often found in politics has not intruded upon the war effort.
And what music do all these volunteers listen to?
Well American/British rock still rules, even on food preparation lines. It’s Rubber Soul/Beatles, lots of Fleetwood Mac, and even a fair amount of Queen. Didn’t hear any Taylor Swift. No opera…
I saw a number of people reading: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, All The Broken Places and The Postcard.
Finally, an excellent article to read to further educate yourself on the state of politics and thinking in Israel. Matti Friedman is a highly respected author.
https://www.thefp.com/p/matti-friedman-the-wisdom-of-hamas
Day 5: LAST NIGHT AT HATZERIM AIR BASE
This is our last night at this base. As fighter jets fly overhead and tear up what was otherwise a quiet evening in the desert, I write this email.
Tomorrow, after working in the morning, we are going to be taken back to Tel Aviv. Some volunteers will depart for their homes around the world, and many like me will stay on for another week or so of volunteering. I stay one more week but there are many people here who are volunteering from 3–7 weeks — really an unbelievable commitment. I have not a clue if the IDF will send me back to this base or to another base. I will find that out on Sunday.
I have met some really interesting people from all over the world. I wish I could say they all fit some common characteristic, but really the don’t. All come from very diverse backgrounds and cultures.
But as I said before, there are indeed some common denominators especially those who are Jewish — they are Zionists. All volunteers believe not only in Israel as a country with safe borders, but they believe that the Jewish Diaspora can’t exist without a strong Israel.
And finally, there is no question in their minds as to the color of evil of 10/7. It has no shades of gray.
And maybe most importantly many have family histories that are replete with their ancestors (parents and grandparents) who endured painful lives just because they were Jewish. Everyone here knows how apathetic and even hostile the world was to our ancestors.
This group, like me, simply wanted to contribute to the State of Israel in some way. We really don’t know if the 10,728 boxes of food that we put together and packed for the troops is a lot or little in the scheme of things. But the soldiers (and their commander) who we met have assured us that our work is important, and they are indeed grateful for our contribution. So, it’s a two-way street-we helped the country, and we helped our souls. In a way, we sort of rendered to ourselves our own personal accounting.
The country: While Bibi remains the PM with a very low approval rating, few Israelis I speak to seem to want him to resign now. That may change soon as the freeing hostages and stated war missions to me seem a bit like kryptonite — even the most noble of missions can be sidetracked by human tragedy. My observation is that many Israelis seem tolerant for now by this apparent contradiction of goals and the country is very focused on winning a war which may get far larger and uglier because of the issues relating to Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. We Americans know that “winning a war” is not so easy despite the best of intentions and narratives.
In 1978, when I came here for the first time, I met people who changed my life. As my immediate family knows, those two years of working at the Israel Tennis Center were quite impactful in many ways. And this evening as our first group disbands, I have met fascinating Jews from all over the world with colorful histories, some remarkably similar to mine and others totally different. They are all leaving as important ambassadors of sorts telling the world about their experiences, the Roy Kozupskys they met, and how important it is at this point in time not to be complacent as a Jew or a friend of Israel.
The same can be said for the people I met who are not Jewish why did 30 percent of the entire group come to Israel to help? This evening, at our last dinner together, every Jew in the room and soldiers within the IDF stood up, applauded and thanked every non-Jewish volunteer who chose to come from far-away places to help Israel. The applause, lasting a good 5 minutes, was just tear-jerking and thunderous. We all bonded working together over the past 5 days but that last evening, in a dirty large tent, our souls were now glued together.
Israel does have friends.
TEL HaSHOMER ARMY BASE & SOME DEPARTING REFLECTIONS
“All night I tried to write, I couldn’t get to it and my heart is dying to say goodbye,” said Hadar, Ben Basat’s wife. “This morning I woke up and we cried, the kids and I. Five broken hearts that love you and are connected to you.”
Col. Itzhak Ben Basat, 44, head of the Golani Brigade, died in battle in Gaza.
I’m getting ready to leave Israel and come back home. And this may be my toughest email to write to friends and family as I keep trying to capture an elusive goal-giving an accurate picture of what is happening in Israel. Not what I want it to be, not what I remember it to be the first time I set foot here in 1978, but what I think is going on. No predications, just some observations derived from a lot of listening. But, like trying to lasso the moon, trying to articulate a national mood, spiced with anger, unsettled political turmoil, and a profound feeling of national abandonment by many of the world communities might be impossible.
Before I get to the harder task of this last communication let me tell everyone a bit about our duties this week at the Tel HaShomer army base. Unlike our last week of work, here our group was tasked with helping process, clean and then redeploy for distribution to the front lines an enormous number of pants, parkas and sleeping bags for the young men and women fighting on the front lines.
Probably overlooked by many who have not served in the armed forces and been in actual conflict is the fact that clothes and sleeping bags get filthy. It’s winter in Israel and even in the south there are occasional downpours of rain creating a lot of muddy territory where the fighting is taking place.
So, clothes and sleeping bags need to be cleaned. Quickly. The complexity of cleaning these items is unfathomable, especially when one considers the amount of reservists who have come back to Israel and are deployed to the front lines in the north and south. Thousands of dirty garments, including sleeping bags, arrive each evening from around the country and need to go right into enormous washing machines, next into large dryers, refolded, bound (and in the case of sleeping bags — with a handwritten note of thanks to the troops) and then taken back to the front lines! In the last two days our group of processed about 3,000 pants, 1,000 parkas, and another 600 bags. And this is where volunteers come in. Usually, the army would do this job, but now everyone is serving in other military capacities and there is little excess capacity in the system to do such seemingly menial tasks. And foreign workers are largely absent. So, lots of hands are needed. This is what it takes to wage a war. The logistics are mind-boggling. But, everyone in our group feels privileged to help in some way. All efforts count-even helping clean dirty sleeping bags — and when I say dirty, I mean filthy.
But equally as important as our daily contribution of serving is to try to tell you something about what is going on in the country. Maybe I can leave everyone who reads this with a stronger scent of a national mood than one can inhale from mainstream media.
How do I capture a national mood when one goes to the beach in Haifa to watch 500 Israelis folk dancing one morning in an open park near the beachfront when the previous day, some 20 miles north, sirens had been blaring and a barrage of rockets from Hezbollah were raining down on residential communities (none of which have been evacuated)? They seemed to not have a care in the world that morning. And yet these same Israelis, happily dancing together, probably all did the same thing before leaving their residences that morning to go dance — they pressed a button that lowered the outside metal blinds to protect their flats and children inside from rockets fired at their homes from Hezbollah up north. In a way, their homes became temporarily sealed from both politics and Hezbollah.
Stubborn optimism or, as many of the Israelis I have spoken with have said, a deep worry about their future?
So, here I go. I fear the Israel that many of us know is forever changed by the events of 2023. Not the physical things we see. Not the food we eat. But emotionally the land, our Jewish homeland, has shifted. And when I say “events” I am going way beyond the two largest events to capture mainstream U.S. media attention in 2023 — the turmoil over “judicial reform” of Israel’s Supreme Court and the seismic tragedy of 10/7. Listen carefully, ask questions without prejudice, and you will find that the gates are widen open to a deeper understanding of Israeli society. The war has indeed magnified these issues. I am hardly alone in thinking this. Whatever you each have thought about Israel in the past, whatever ideals, lullabies, and ideas you had, they likely no longer exist as preset navigation points. Your sense of gravity will be different, as it is for Israelis’.
And don’t fool yourself. The events in Israel in 2023, culminating in the massacre on October 7th, will forever impact how Jews in America think. One might say no big deal as our thoughts and ideas are always evolving. And indeed, our sages say that is something to aspire to. But I am talking about one’s moral and political compass — how we go about navigating and thinking through our emotions, rationalizations, and decisions when dealing with epic issues in life. My own sense is that the year 2023 in Israel was and continues to be a worldwide transformative event. I suspect our individual compasses will need some recalibration.
I also suspect, like what Israelis are going through, these changes will touch you and me as well, whether we are watching or reading our news sources, conversing (or arguing) with family and friends, or when each of us eventually casts an election ballot. These events in Israel and worldwide will pierce your comfort zone.
Distinguished author, writer and Rabbi, Daniel Gordis was spot on when he recently commented:
“For as long as my generation is alive, Israel will be a traumatized nation. People’s trust in the army will take decades to return. The ultra-Orthodox world, as we saw yesterday, may find itself under great pressure to embrace Israeli-ness. Israeli attitudes to Palestinians, even among our left, are likely to be much more harsh and less trusting for years to come. Politics will almost certainly be different.”
Why will things be different? In large part because war and social media form a two-way street. Mainstream media by and large has focused on the tragedy and ugliness of the war and its impact on Palestinian civilians. But if you are an Israeli, you are also deeply impacted by a number of traumas that will not recede so quickly, the least of which may be the question of just where was the nation-state on October 7? Where was our protector? This national trauma was captured well in a recent article in Tablet Magazine by Deborah Dunn, an investigative reporter:
“Survivors’ accounts, video evidence, and the interrogation recordings of apprehended Palestinians paint a damning picture of the complicity of Gazan civilians both in the Oct. 7 attack, in which more than 1,200 people were murdered and 240 people were abducted to Gaza, and its aftermath. It is one that has sparked a debate in Israel that challenges the inclination to draw distinctions between ordinary Palestinian civilians of Gaza — often referred to in Israel as bilti me’uravim (uninvolved) — and their terror leaders. For many, Oct. 7 reeked of something that Jews have been familiar with for centuries; a phenomenon where not just a vanguard, but a society at large participates in the ritual slaughter of Jews.”
Deborah Danan, October 7 Was Worse than a Terror Attack. It was a Pogrom, Tablet Magazine, 1/24/2024
And Elliot A. Cohen, contributing writer to The Atlantic, put October 7th in some numerical perspective:
“Israel remains a society in trauma. To understand the dimensions of October 7, Americans should apply a rule of 30 — Israel’s population being about one-30th that of the United States. So, imagine that, in a single day, pitiless enemies had attacked the length of one of our borders, killing some 35,000 Americans, 9,000 of them soldiers — some surprised in their sleep, some fighting heroically in doomed bands of fewer than a dozen. A dozen simultaneous 9/11s, if you will. Imagine some 6,500 hostages taken, and 3 million to 6 million people displaced from their home along America’s borders. And instead of hundreds of rapes and mutilations, thousands.”
And Israelis see, smell and feel things very differently than we Americans do sitting comfortably at our dinner tables with few of us (at least in my generation of friends) having served or performed any type of national service on behalf of America. But walk down any street in Israel, pick any person who you want to talk to and ask them if they know of a friend or family member who is serving in the IDF, ask them if they have a friend or family member who was impacted by the massacre of of 10/7, or inquire of them if they know of a family where one of their sons or daughters is being held hostage underground-in all cases I can almost guarantee you the answer to this question is that this random Israeli is touched personally by these events and the war. Its deeply personal.
One Thursday afternoon after leaving the army base, I did have the opportunity to visit an exhibition in central Tel Aviv reminding us of the plights of the hostages. Many of you might have seen this exhibit in other news outlets, but to witness it firsthand really rocks one’s soul. This is pure trauma, searing pain, for this country. This trauma will endure many years as the chances of all of the remaining hostages returning alive is diminishing. One can see the damage of a forest fire. One can witness the physical destruction of a fire in a building. One can even be aghast at a bad car accident. All of these sad events are physical. But with the hostages the pain goes immediately to your heart. The soul is penetrated and wounded. I have found that no words in Western culture captures the evil and senselessness of taking other human beings as hostage. So, there is no smell of a fire. Your eyes can’t see a daily physical event, but your imagination can run rampant with emotions and descend with anger when thinking about this war. And you can’t just replant a charred tree. So, I am not sure any one picture, any one news article really captures the helplessness of ordinary Israeli citizens to tend to their souls in this war.
The pain here, if you listen carefully, is searing — almost like accidentally touching a hot stovetop. But the events here are not accidental. They didn’t just happen in a vacuum.
And unfortunately, the widow, Hadar, nailed it in her eulogy-when she asked just how do you heal a broken heart?
How do you repair a gross breach of national trust? How do you go about repairing an anger directed at another population of civilians?
Leslie and I have many friends here in an Israel. Some far right (settlers), others far left. This has afforded me the opportunity over the past two weeks to listen to their thoughts. Many have served in the armed forces. On any one issue, there’s a lot of finger-pointing going around. Ask any one question two different ways and you might get two totally different answers.
But here are two observations that seems to stick in my mind as reactions to this emerging national trauma . And when I say emerging, I suspect that what we are all watching is just chapter one, maybe even a prologue, in a long book yet to be published.
First, Israel’s national insouciance in the face of clear and present danger is gone — out the window. Complacency as it relates to security, whatever its root societal or political causes, will be dramatically reconsidered. Secondly, while there remains a deep appreciation of US assistance, telling Israelis who to make “peace” with, how they should live with their neighbors, or how they should construct their future is deeply troublesome to many in Israelis — a hard reaction that many in America may have trouble understanding when we Americans like short, sweet, and easy-to-understand Hollywood endings.
So, I have lots to think about for my final two days. I have met new friends from all around the world who came here, from long distances, away from their families and jobs, to help Israel. For many, it’s hard and expensive to get here. Many as I noted are not even Jewish. All who are here with me share the same belief that Israel, America and its Jewish Diaspora, are in for a period of seismic changes.
But much like the Israeli’s dancing in a park at a beach in Haifa with warning sirens blaring just a day earlier in nearby communities, my sense (and that of others who I spoke with in Israel) is that such strife, especially within a democracy, can indeed be a source of positive citizen energy to continue coloring this painting called Israel and the story of Zionism. Even with this trauma, listen carefully to what people are saying, and there are indeed some rays of light penetrating these dark clouds.
A few weeks after I returned home, I added the following:
Recently, a member of Knesset, Sharren Haskel, accompanied a group who were visiting some of the southern communities where the murderous rampages took place. They were there to plant trees. Sharren Haskel noted:
“They thought they would bury us in the ground….but they didn’t know, that we Israelis, the Jewish people, we are a seed….and when they bury us in the ground, we will rise up from those ashes, and we will continue to grow…”
