Initial Impressions from Israel Having Just Landed Back Home

Initial Impressions of Israel, Having Just Landed Back Home

Sermon Parshat Yitro 5784

As you know I’ve just returned from a week in Israel, mostly on a rabbinic solidarity mission, although I had a Jerusalem Shabbat and a Sunday in Tel Aviv before the formal program began.  Since I have now been traveling nonstop for the past 30 hours or so—I got on my shuttle to Ben Gurion Airport the equivalent of noon Thursday in Tucson, and have been flying or driving ever since—I think it best to reserve my serious reflections for next Shabbat’s Israel Sabbath when we are planning to invite the community to hear more about the experience of being in Israel during this terrible war.  It will take some time to assimilate and reflect on all that we saw, heard, learned, and felt during this brief but intense trip.  But I want to capture at least a few of the most urgent observations while they are still fresh in my mind.

I hope that most of you have had the chance to read at least some of the seven daily reports I sent back from Israel and were able to view some of the images I posted on our Facebook page as well.  As always, no matter how much you read or watch about Israel from over here, and most of us have been somewhat obsessed with news from Israel since October 7th, actually being there is different, surprising, and enriching in ways you can’t possibly predict.  Some things about Israel seem utterly changed; others are not changed at all.  And there were many surprises over the past ten days or so that I could not have predicted. 

This was the first time I have been in Israel since COVID times, although not for lack of trying.  I have had three planned trips cancelled by Coronavirus issues—Israel’s, not mine particularly—and that makes it the longest I’ve been away from the country since the mid-1990s.  The first surprise was how totally empty Ben Gurion Airport was compared to any other time I’ve been there.  And while I had seen images of the hostage photos that greet you when you land, the ubiquity of the reminders about the hostages, that there are posters and paintings and bumper stickers and banners everywhere all around the country was a stark reminder of just how profoundly painful this is for all Israelis. 

What was not surprising, because I have spoken to many people in Israel over the past four months, is the overall mood of the country.  The shock and horror of the nearly inconceivable atrocities perpetrated by Hamas Palestinian terrorists on October 7th, the dislocation of hundreds of thousands of Israelis from kibbutzim, villages and towns in the south and a similar dislocation of a hundred and fifty thousand Israelis from kibbutzim, villages and towns in the north has had a profound impact on the state of mind of the ordinary Israeli.  When you ask people how they are doing these days they don’t respond with the typical “Kol B’seder, it’s all fine” but with “L’chulam”, meaning I’m like everybody—that is, not doing so well. 

Israel is at war, and it understands the effort to destroy or at least defang Hamas as an existential war.  There is a nearly universal belief among Israelis—young and old, rich and poor, right-wing and left-wing—that this fight must be prosecuted as far as it can be.  There is an incredible sense of unity on this subject in Tel Aviv, in Haifa, in Jerusalem, in the small towns and Kibbutzim we visited too.  This is all the more remarkable because on October 6th Israel was a visibly divided nation, severely split over the fight over the judiciary purge the government of Bibi Netanyahu was trying to conduct, going to the matt to protect democracy.  That conflict evaporated in the first hours of October 7th.  The religious-secular divide in Israeli society, always sharp but increasingly severe in recent years?  Also washed away in the bloodbath of Hamas’ Palestinian terror.  If there is an intense unity, though, it is a somber, intense form of unity.  Everyone wants the hostages freed.  No one believes that Hamas, or even the Gaza Palestinians more broadly, can be trusted.  And in spite of the fact that Israelis are some of the most compassionate people on the planet—they are Jews, after all—sympathy for the Gazan Palestinians is in short supply.   

Now, I was on a trip with a group of about 37 American Reform rabbis, typically a left-wing population of people.  I was genuinely surprised to learn that many of them, including two classmates of mine who are super left-wing, brought substantial donations—tens of thousands of dollars from smaller congregations—to purchase necessary equipment for IDF troops engaged in Gaza or the north.  These are flak jackets, protective helmets, drones, night-vision goggles, and other items that reserve units in particular lack when mobilized.  I asked them if they could have imagined raising money for IDF troops supplies back when we were in rabbinical school together, and both agreed they could not have imagined it in those days.

So what happened to all the peacenik Israelis, young and old?  The comments I heard from other left-wing Israelis is that many of them died at the Nova Music Festival or are imprisoned in Hamas tunnels under Gaza.  The people who lived near Gaza, who hired Palestinian workers in their fields and homes, and who drove them to Israeli hospitals when they were ill—these people were on the front lines, and were brutally attacked.  They don’t have room in their hearts right now for the Palestinians civilians: they are too busy attending funerals and memorials, getting temporary housing or providing it to others, being treated for PTSD themselves or assisting with food for homebound people who haven’t been able to be evacuated, helping out doing the jobs that reservists are unable to do right now.  As many people told me, the whole country has PTSD.

Still, there are profound contrasts in Israel now: I met with past Cohon Foundation Award Winners while I was there and the cafes in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem—the ones frequented by locals—were full, active, busy.  The hotels are pretty full for January and February—although that’s mostly because so many families have been evacuated from their homes in the north or south to hotel rooms, and their kids are all over the lobbies doing homework, playing soccer in these fancy hotels, which opened themselves up for free to the families.  The Israeli public has been amazing at supporting people; the government much less so, slow, bureaucratic, disorganized. 

Fortunately, Israel is a land of volunteers.  My cousins take the bus a couple of days a week—a bus service organized by Leket, whose founder Joseph Gittler received a Cohon Memorial Foundation Award a few years ago for his work on food security for needy Israelis using surplus food—they take the bus to the south to harvest bananas, pomelos, whatever crop needs to be brought in because Palestinian workers from Gaza certainly aren’t going to be let in now, and the east Asians workers all left with a day or so after October 7th.  People are active, busy, making do in a country at war.  I attended Shabbat services in Jerusalem last week, Friday night at a Modern Orthodox synagogue, Nitzanim, with a charismatic rabbi and a great deal of singing.  In many ways, their service is quite similar to ours; we even use some of the same melodies.  Saturday morning I attended a Syrian Orthodox synagogue, Ades, for the chanting of the Song of Moses at the Sea, the Shirat HaYam.  On a cold, rainy Shabbat both sanctuaries were crowded and energetic, a mix of old and young, including soldiers who were there on leave, weapons at their sides.  The mood at both shuls was enthusiastic and filled with the joy of Shabbat, even though relatives of members had been killed fighting in Gaza.  The contrasts are always here in Israel.

Everyone I met said that things in Israel are profoundly changed.  Not everyone agrees on exactly how, however.  But three things stand out.

First, nearly everyone, of every political position, believes that this government must go after the war is fully prosecuted, and no one thinks it can go on for more than a few additional months.  It is clear that the political leadership, embodied by Bibi Netanyahu, has failed dismally and allowed this disaster to occur, and Netanyahu himself is harshly criticized for failing to attend October 7th funerals and for failing to even meet with the families or even call them. I’ve heard this from religious and secular Jews, right wing, center and left wing; Bibi must go.  There is beginning to be a lot of talk in Israel about what happens the day after the war is over—but the government seems to have absolutely no ideas even about what its goals after the war should be.  It is a matter of time before it is out of office, and Netanyahu rides off into the sunset. 

Second, no matter what Israelis think about their government—and they are often harshly critical of it—the one institution that has always had universal respect has been the army, the Israel Defense Forces, the IDF.  And for the first time since the Yom Kippur War, that faith in the army has been challenged and is being questioned.  The army took anywhere from six to 20 hours to arrive at the homes of that brutalized communities of the south.  In a small country with a large military presence this was a shocking failure of military intelligence and preparedness.  Israelis still have some of their habitual faith in the military—which means faith in themselves, since all the men and most of the women serve in active duty and then in the reserves for years, and the reserves have all been called into active service the last four months.  But the bedrock faith that existed in the military before October 7th has been shaken.

And third, there is no trust of the Palestinians.  Left-wing Israelis who used to drive Palestinians to Israeli hospitals, like my new friend Rabbi Amnon Riback, no longer are open to that kind of cooperation.  Those who were building factories near the border with Gaza to employ 10,000 Palestinian workers aren’t building them anymore.  It will take time—maybe another generation—before the level of cooperation and trust that existed before October 7th can possibly be restored, if it can be restored even then.  Some of the same Palestinians who sat in the homes of Israelis and drank tea with them drew maps for the Hamas terrorists of which houses to attack with rpgs and in what order on October 7th. 

It is traditional to end a Haftarah, and even a Midrash, with a note of hope, a nechemta.  I must add such a note tonight, for it is impossible for Jews to live without hope, and hope for peace.  Nine years ago on this Shabbat I climbed Mt. Sinai, in the Sinai Peninsula near Sharm el Sheikh.  It was a memorable night and an amazing dawn.  And it was a reminder that for the first 30 years of Israel’s existence Israel had no more implacable foe than the nation of Egypt.  From before the founding of the State of Israel through wars in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973 Egypt swore to drive the Jews into the sea and annihilate the Zionist entity.  Yet after all those years of warfare and overwhelming hatred peace was arranged—and that peace has lasted for 45 years and counting. 

I do not believe that the result of the current Gaza War, the true end of the October 7th atrocities, will prove to be a lasting peace with Palestinians and a demilitarized new Palestinian state that is somehow democratic and coherent.  But stranger, less probable things have happened right there.  As Ben Gurion famously said: to be a true Israeli you must believe in miracles. 

Israel itself remains a modern miracle.  We will talk more about it next Shabbat; but as nearly everyone in Israel said to me at the end of each meeting or talk: may we meet again in Israel in better, happier times.  And may those times come speedily and soon.