| I apologise for this blunt letter. It befits the times. (Next week I plan to write about defying destruction to create what’s hopeful, uplifting and inspiring.) Monday brings the new moon of Av, and ‘When Av commences, joy diminishes’, at least until after the bitter fast of Tisha B’Av when we remember all the calamities which have befallen the Jewish People. This year, especially, we feel the painful mood. If only for the sake of the children, it’s enough. As everyone waits in high tension for what will happen next between Iran and Israel, I pray for no more escalation, a cessation to this war, the return of the hostages, an end to destruction, the restoration of hope. ‘Although I knew no one there’, writes Shoshana Keats Jaskoll, ‘I felt I had to go to the Druze town of Magdal Sams and mourn there with the bereaved’: Mahmud led us to the soccer field. The scene of the massacre. It was quiet, even serene. But the people were shattered, broken… Twelve wreaths, 12 pictures of beautiful children… Mahmud introduced us to a few older women who wore the traditional religious white headscarf of the Druze. I cried with them. The women spoke only of wanting no more dead. No more suffering. Of ending war and living in peace. (The Times of Israel) Talya Danzyg, just 18, felt similarly. Her grandfather Alexander, a remarkable Holocaust educator honoured in Israel and Poland, had won awards from the Polish Ministry of Education and the President. He was a heroic figure who encouraged others, even while held hostage by Hamas: ‘Captive prisoners say that he strengthened their spirit through the history lessons that he taught.’ He was killed in Gaza last week. Talya spoke bluntly on Israel’s Channel 13, addressing her own Prime Minister: What total victory are you talking about? How is spilled blood total victory? How much longer will our soldiers die? How much longer will the hostages continue to die? How long will people be displaced from their homes? The longer it takes, the longer it will be before we can heal all these things! What total victory? Come down to the people. Look them in the eyes… Stop the destruction and devastation, and bring the hostages home. I don’t have words from the children in Gaza, or their parents, except for the crying of a bereaved mother which goes round in my head. Except for the sight of the boy I saw years ago, covered in bandages in an East Jerusalem Hospital, and the elderly man bent over him who explained through an interpreter that he was the child’s uncle: ‘Eighteen of the family are dead.’ The rabbis asked themselves why God allowed the Second Temple to be burned and Jerusalem to be sacked. Because of sinat chinam, they said, causeless hatred. I’m cautious about the word ‘causeless.’ Hate finds its pretexts, vindicates its rages. No doubt Hamas and Hezbollah, cruel agents as they are, will profess to having ‘reasons’. Instead, I read the words as ‘pointless hate’, anger that gets us nowhere, except to engender more anger, more pain, more grief. Now in the UK we also mourn the deaths of children, murdered as they enjoyed a holiday dance class in the peaceful town of Southport: ‘How can it happen here?’ local people ask. Why does it happen anywhere? Already the horrible crime is exploited, to vent more rage and fear. One line from the Scroll of Lamentations, which we read on Tisha B’Av, haunts me above all: ‘“Where is corn and wine?”’ the children ask, as they faint in their mothers’ laps.’ I pray for Israel. I pray for children, wherever on earth they are. I pray for us all, that we find the right ways to bequeath them a world of joy, not misery; of wonder, not horror. May God give us, and especially our leaders, the vision, strength and courage to give the world’s children what they deserve. |
Israel
At Noam pre-camp: a space for listening
| Dear Community, Here’s my consolation, in a week of listening to so many heart-rending stories. I’m at Noam pre-camp. Noam, just in case anyone doesn’t know, is our youth movement. Actually, that’s not true. It’s more than that. It’s where tens, hundreds, of young people make friendships which last lifetimes, eagerly take on responsibilities for each other, initially for younger groups, then for the whole movement. It’s where they form their identity as Jews, absorbing the values of community, companionship, caring and compassion. It’s where Torah becomes real, in learning, listening, arguing and absorbing. Reuben Green, recently appointed head of the movement, gives me a lift from Port Talbot Parkway to the site. His heart is in Israel, he tells me, but he cares deeply about the Jewish community here in the UK, ‘which is why I’ve taken this job.’ He wants Noam to engage more deeply with their Judaism and their rabbis. He wants to strengthen the bonds with Torah, and, whatever political views Noamniks hold, with Israel, in all its strengths, weaknesses, challenges and dilemmas. Pre-camp is where the madrichim and roshim, leaders and heads, prepare their activities before camp itself begins, with all its frenetic energies. We rabbis are guests here. We are so used to young people being in our ‘adult’ spaces – when they come. But at pre-camp we are in their space, so an invitation to pre-camp is a privilege which to be respected and honoured. After all, at my age of 66, there are 45 years between me and the average age of the 140 Noamniks all around. It’s extremely touching to be welcomed so warmly. It’s a beautiful location, wooden buildings, ecologically designed, in the middle of fields and wooded hills. There’s a small zoo, where I watch a wily young alpaca fail to charm an alarmed two-year-old boy. Deer graze in the nearby fields, my favourite animals. There’s respite simply in breathing. There’s a different kind of beauty here too. Actually, a more fitting term is chen, good grace. It comes across in the friendship with which people treat each other. There’s fun and banter, but underneath, there’s a palpable spirit of kinship and concern. This has been an extraordinarily and exceptionally tough year to be Jewish, especially at many schools and campuses. I’m asked to facilitate a conversation for the whole camp on how to hold spaces so that they are able to accommodate difference. I listened, humbled:‘I had to represent the Jewish community at my university…’‘I wore my Magen David out…’‘When October 7 happened, I was far from home and the people with whom I could process it…’‘I feel so moved to belong to a faith which can hold complex emotions, solidarity, pain, anger at the same time…’‘I felt deep loneliness. The Jewish community around me didn’t encompass my views and feelings…’‘What I value here at Noam is not that everyone shares my mindset. I didn’t expect or want that. It’s the spirit of friendship in which we can hold these conversations…’Anguish sits deep in our souls. We are often far from people who understand us. We need to hear each other. It’s not about arguing who’s right and who’s wrong. It’s the healing that comes from being allowed to say what’s in our hearts, the healing that being listened to brings. I leave pre-camp filled with affection and respect. Shabbat Shalom Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg |
The heartbeat of our faith
It was minutes before the festival, and I hadn’t decided which prayer book to take. Of course, it would have to be the correct machzor for Shavuot, Zeman Mattan Toratenu, the Season of the Giving of our Torah. Machzor means cycle, a lovely, simple word with which to refer to the beauty of Judaism’s liturgy for the annual rhythm of our festivals.
I didn’t have a copy of the most recent Koren edition, with its thoughtful, practical notes. But what about the Artscroll, with its excellent layout, but super-pious commentary? Or the classic British Routledge, the translations archaic but the Hebrew large and clear?
No, none of these would do.
Instead, I sought out my grandmother’s old Machzor. I first saw it, and its companion volumes, on the bookshelf in the flat on Ramban Street in Jerusalem, where the family fled from Nazi Europe in 1937. When my grandmother had gone to her eternal rest, and her daughters and son-in-law who had lived there with her were dead too, and my one-and-only cousin and I were clearing the flat, I asked if I could have those books. They now live in my study.
I opened the machzor for Shavuot; it was dated 1838. The title page read: ninth edition, arranged and translated into German by Wolf Heidenheim (1757 -1832, a renowned liturgical scholar). The books were printed in Roedelheim, in Frankfurt.
On the back page was a solemn admonition, threatening with the rabbinic ban anyone who reprinted the volume unlawfully before 25 years had elapsed since its publication.. It was an early, probably unenforceable, version of copyright protection.
I kissed the machzor, as one does. It’s not that I needed a two-hundred-year-old book. What I wanted were the two hundred years of prayer which its pages, thin and yellowing yet untorn and clear, breathed out. I needed their strength, resilience and piety. I wanted the love instilled into their words and melodies by at least eight generations of family. I wanted the hope and faith, even the tears and fears, of everyone who’d prayer through those pages to slip into my heart. For ancient books carry within them the devotion of centuries.
With the Jewish world in profound trouble, I sought refuge in two hundred years of prayer. With Israel under attack, with so many still held hostage, so many killed and grieving, I needed the yearning and hope of two centuries of prayer. With so many dead in Gaza through Israel’s response, and page after page of condemnation of Israel, I sought the integrity, depth and truth of two hundred years of prayer. With so many people telling me how they feel shunned at work, isolated, proud, ashamed, distressed, resolute, I needed the resilience of two centuries of prayer. With the Jewish world torn in its heart, I sought the faith and faithfulness of two hundred years of prayer.
To whom had those prayerbooks originally belonged, with their poetry and piety? In whose hands did they survive the 1848 revolution, the rise of political antisemitism, the horror of the First World War and its disastrous aftermath for Germany and Austro-Hungary, the hunger of 1919, the great inflation and the great depression? How did they escape the Holocaust? How did they get to Jerusalem? Did my great-grandmother Regina, widowed in 1937, send them ahead to her son and daughters in the land that she herself was destined never to reach, murdered at Birkenau in 1944? I’ll never know.
But of this I am certain: those prayer books were a most treasured possession. They were loved and cherished. They were our family’s pathway upwards to God and down into the soul. They were their truth and strength.
On that path I strive to follow them, hearing in them, as we all need to hear, the heartbeat of our deep and resilient faith.
This war through Chagall’s eyes?
I write from a full heart.
I feel great distress for Naama Levy, still held hostage by Hamas after 230 days. Her family released heart-rending footage of her capture in a desperate effort to persuade governments to do more.
Her mother Ayelet says: “We only see a fraction of the horrible things that are going on in their surrounding in the shelter. [Naama] is terrified and wounded, there is fear in her eyes, and she is saying what she can, she is begging for her life. The top priority is to bring her home, bring them all home now.”
I wrote to Ayelet at once: We feel heartfelt solidarity with you.
In the video we hear Naama say, ‘I have Palestinian friends.’ Ayelet told me, ‘I hope she’ll soon be back to building such bridges.’ Amen to such prayers.
Since October 7 I’ve written repeatedly about the horrors of this war, brutally instigated by Hamas, into which it has calculatedly drawn Israel to such grim and disturbing effect.
Forgive me if today I try to imagine looking at it through the eyes of Chagall.
My wife and I had two hours to spare in Nice, after a conference of European rabbis to which she accompanied me. ‘You must see the amazing Chagall pictures,’ Nicky insisted. I’m so glad I did.
The Musee National Marc Chagall was built during the artist’s lifetime to exhibit his series of extraordinary paintings of Biblical scenes. At the opening, in July 1973, Chagall said:
‘I wanted to leave them in this House so that men can try to find some peace, a certain spirituality, a religiosity, a meaning in life.’
The paintings of the Flood engrossed us most deeply. Chagall’s genius is that, like rabbinic Midrash, his work can be interpreted in so many ways, all valid, none ‘correct’.
In Noah’s Ark the hero is inside his great ship, his tired face benign, one hand on the head of a calf as if in blessing, the other releasing the dove. Outside, a dead man floats past. Behind Noah, a crowd huddles. Are these the unsaved? Some hug, someone screams, some stand haplessly by. Are these, also, some of the numberless, including Chagall’s own family, who drowned in the gas?
In Noah and the Rainbow, Noah reclines beneath God’s outstretched white wings. Is he at peace with God’s promise? It’s hard to know. A crowd – those same unsaved? – still stands between him and his God.
Every corner of these paintings is full: figures clear in colour, figures half-hidden, gentle faces, sharp-beaked birds. But everywhere there’s empathy. Maybe that’s why the paintings are so beautiful: – the wonder and pathos of life in the magnificent depths of colour.
Sadly, I couldn’t stop myself from thinking: How would Chagall paint this terrible war now? What figure would be centre, – a hostage, a mother in Israel, or Gaza, or both? He would surely ignore none of the many kinds of pain. In what colours would be Israel’s, and Gaza’s griefs?
Yet, as he said, ‘Is not painting and colour inspired by love?’ In the richness of his colours, love and care would surely, somehow, show through.
That’s what matters now in our own communities, and hearts. We’re each responding differently to different parts of the pain and wrong. We’re each clutching differently at the wind-blown blanket of hope.
Therefore, despite our diverse feelings, we must lay this upon our hearts: What’s required of us, amidst our fears and anguish, is our love, hope and empathy. That’s what we need from each other. That’s what Israel and the Jewish People need. That’s what the suffering of ordinary people trapped in Gaza, and everywhere in war’s horror, calls out to us for. That’s what the world needs. That’s why we’re here on this earth.
As Chagall said in his inaugural speech:
‘‘If all life moves inevitably towards its end, then we must, during our own, colour it with our colours of love and hope.”
For Yom Hazikaron and Yom Ha’Atzmaut, in a terrible year
I face next week with pain, fear, dismay and anger, yet with prayer, hope and love. Monday brings Yom HaZikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day for the Dead. Tuesday is Yom Ha’Atzmaut, Israel’s Independence Day. If only things were simpler; everything tears at the heart.
There’s pain. ‘It’s over twenty years since my son Noam was killed in Lebanon,’ my friend Aaron Barnea tells me, ‘Yet a hundred and fifty people still came for the anniversary.’ I think of Ilana Kaminka, her son killed defending his base, on October 7. My heart travels to the site of the Nova Festival, the trees planted for everyone killed, the photos and letters tied to them: ‘We miss you, love you, long for you.’
I hear the terrible cry of the Palestinian mother, trapped between Hamas and the IDF in Gaza’s misery. Her child has just been killed: ‘Before God I call to account…’
On Yom HaZikaron I’ll say the Prayer of the Grieving Mothers, written by Raba Tamar Elad-Applebaum and Sheikha Ibtisam Mahameed together:
God of Life, who heals the broken hearted…
Hear the prayer of mothers…
For you did not create us to kill each other…
But …to sanctify Your name of Life… [1]
I fear the hatred waiting to ambush the future. For decades, Hizbollah’s gunmen lie hiding beneath the houses of South Lebanon, foot-soldiers of Iran’s brutal, hate-filled leaders, dreaded and loathed by their own people.
I feel shame and dismay at the racist haters among my own people. I saw the children’s books scattered across the broken floor of a Palestinian school bulldozed by a settler, after the villagers, intimidated and afraid, abandoned their homes. This isn’t what God meant by commanding us to be anshei kodesh, holy, heart-aware people, attuned to the sanctity of life.
Then there’s the chaos of the campuses, the bigotry, hatred and folly. Is this really for the good of Palestinian people, or another way in which their just needs are betrayed? I feel for the fear and loneliness of so many fellow Jews in this threatening, violent world.
But I can’t stop here. For we have prayer, hope and love to strengthen our hearts.
My prayer is ‘Veshavu banim legevulam – May the children, may all the hostages, be returned to their longing families. May this terrible fighting, this catastrophe, end, with a forward-looking plan for the security and dignity of all. Mindful of Nachmanides’ words that ‘where true tears are, God is too,’ I pray with all who weep.
For we mustn’t act as God tries to act after the golden calf. ‘They’re your people now,’ God tells Moses,’ You deal with them.’ God – albeit temporarily – wants nothing to do with them anymore. In contrast, I recall the woman in Israel’s far north who turned to me quietly: ‘People are saying, “My country, right or wrong.” I’m saying, “Wrong. But they’re still my people.”’
I struggle, like countless others. I think, ‘Right in this; wrong in that.’ But the Jewish people is my people and Israel is our only country. I pray for it to survive and thrive. I’m bound by ties of faithfulness and love. I don’t mean love for any racist and corrupt members of Israel’s leadership who disgrace Judaism. Many families of hostages are furious with them, wanting a deal, not yet more bloodshed.
But I care deeply for the innumerable Israelis, Jews and also Arabs, who work to heal wounds, in Israel’s hospitals, food banks, hesed (lovingkindness) NGOs, schools and arts.
I know so many who see beyond the bloodshed and anger, who reach across the grim wall between Israelis and Palestinians and say, ‘Enough tears, enough heartache; how can we build together?’ How can my heart not be with them? With them rest my prayers, love and hope.
The most difficult time to be Jewish
I ought to be writing about the Song of Songs, the most beautiful book in the Hebrew Bible, with gardens and love at its heart; the book Rabbi Akiva described as its ‘Holy of Holies’.
I can’t. The only flowers on my mind right now are whether I can send any to Ayelet, mother of 19-year-old Naama, still hostage to Hamas, because last time we sent some, Ayelet sent a WhatsApp message back: “Good to have something nice come through my door.”
It’s more than 200 days since October 7 and this terrible war goes on, in the north and south of Israel and in Gaza literally, and across the world by proxy. In a different way, it’s also being fought out, or about, in our own communities and minds.
Here is David Horovitz on what’s happening on American campuses, his piece interspersed with shocking footage:‘The initial goal of this inexcusably tolerated murderous hostility is to aid in Israel’s demise — by establishing our country as a pariah state, and rendering it untenable to be associated with, defended or protected. Protected, that is, from the amoral, rapacious, misogynistic, homophobic, and potent enemies who, as I write, fire rockets from the north (Hezbollah), try to do so from the south (Hamas), and advance toward obtaining nuclear weapons in the east (Iran). But if those enemy states, terrorist armies and their facilitators get done with Israel, they’ll be coming for Jews everywhere.’ (The Times of Israel, 24 April, 2024)
It’s terrifying, and it’s not just about Israel, or Jews. The world is in conflict, directly or indirectly, with Iran, Russia and their allies. It’s horrible to acknowledge. That’s why so many of us, whatever our politics, fear and feel for Israel, its hostages, bereaved families, soldiers, whole communities dislocated, living in and out of bomb shelters.
But that’s not all we’re seeing. Day after day we face pictures of the destruction of Gaza. Fellow Jews with whom I speak all acknowledge the horrible suffering of ordinary Palestinians caught between Hamas and Israel in the misery, destruction and death into which Hamas has, cynically and calculatedly, lured Israel into co-responsibility.
That’s still not all. There’s Israel’s government – a coalition despised by many Israelis, according to repeated opinion polls – with hardened extremists in its ranks. There are the vicious actions of West Bank settlers who are not only taking advantage of this war, with everyone looking the other way, but who have for years, through bullying acts of aggression towards local Palestinians, sapped the life blood of Israel’s moral credibility.
So where are we left? In the Passover Haggadah we’re victims: ‘They rise up to destroy us in every generation.’ Maybe not everywhere in every generation, but it’s a broad, sad truth.
Now, though, are we in any way, to any extent, perpetrators too? Has the poison of hatred seeped into our souls? If so, do we, should we, speak such an uncomfortable truth? Add to this the huge sweep of antisemitism, leaving us anxious in places where, until recently, we felt secure.
All that makes this the most difficult, painful period in my lifetime to be Jewish. Jonathan Freedland puts it so well: these issues ‘don’t only rage around the family table: they also rage within us. Indeed, I think that’s one reason why this last half-year has been so hard for so many. We’re having to hold multiple and conflicting thoughts and feelings in our heads and hearts all the time.’ (The Jewish Chronicle April 10, 2024)
All this is even harder because we each, depending on numerous factors including our age, hold these conflicting feelings in different proportions.
We would do well to acknowledge this, with forbearance and generosity. Otherwise, it will be yet one more way in which we become victims of what Hamas did on October 7.
I wonder what God thinks about all of this. Maybe God’s feeling: Why is humanity abandoning my beautiful Song of Songs garden and destroying my world instead?
For these things I pray in these terrible times
Eighteen in Hebrew is signified by the word חי chai, which means life. So I want to write about life. For ten times chai makes one hundred and eighty, the exact number of days today since October 7, six months ago on Sunday, the date on which Hamas, the enemies of life, perpetrated their evil against Israel and ultimately their own people too.
I want to write about life, but I’m struggling, drafting sentences, then deleting them, because my head and heart are full of the horrors that have ensued since.
So all I can manage is a prayer, a prayer for hope and life as we approach the month of Nisan, the season of freedom, the beginning of our journey to redemption, the springtime when we bless the fruitful beauty of God’s world. How frail all these things seem! How much it therefore matters to care for them all the more.
So I pray for life, for everyone in Israel, for the women, men and children still held hostage by Hamas, for the safe return of all the soldiers.
I pray for the tens of thousands of ordinary people in Gaza, caught homeless, helpless and desperate in the middle.
I pray that this war will swiftly end with a cessation of all the bloodshed, the return home of all the hostages, and a viable plan bringing hope for a dignified future for everyone, across Israel, Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, so that hatred has no leverage anymore.
I pray for food, drink, shelter and healing, everywhere in Israel and Gaza. How else can I say ‘Let all who are hungry come and eat’ at the Seder table in 18 days’ time?
I pray for everyone striving to heal wounds, work with the homeless and displaced and bring comfort to grief and trauma. May God give them resilience, strength and courage!
We are always allowed to hope and pray.
I want to pray especially for the hostages whose families I’ve met, whose names I know, whose faces I see before me.
Naama Levy, may you be safe in body and strong in spirit. May you soon be held once more in your mother’s and father’s arms. May your dog Bafi jump up at you, against all the rules, when you walk through the door. May you go to the seaside with the Ra’ananot girls, your school and Noam youth movement friends.
Romi, you should know – I hope the knowledge somehow reaches you – that the picture of your smiling face looks out everywhere across your hometown of Kfar Veradim, which longs to welcome you home. May you once more relish the music you love, and dance in each of the six styles of dancing (or more?) your father told me you enjoy. May you spread the joy of your life-loving spirit across everyone you meet.
Oded Lifschitz, may you hear in freedom the words of your remarkable daughter Sharone, who calls in her quiet, collected, courageous voice for Hamas to release you, who minces no words about their cruelties, and who yet can say that she has taught her heart to feel the pain of others. May the fields be replanted which you and your wife tended for decades; may your lifelong work for peace and co-existence resume. May you witness it bearing fruit.
I pray for all the grieving families I’ve met, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Druse. I don’t believe that deeply felt grief is different because it’s on the other side of a border.
I pray that hearts pierced by anguish and grief be filled not with hate, but with healing and compassion.
I know all this may sound stupid, amidst the fighting and dying. But I don’t know what else to say. I fear terribly the turning of our world, our beautiful world, God’s world, towards hatred and destruction.
So I pray for life.
Where there’s hope we’re not just permitted but required to pray. We’re commanded, too, to back up our words with commitments, solidarity and actions. And how anyone carry on without hope?
‘The world is built on loving kindness:’ is it really so?
Since long before dawn, a verse has been going round and round in my mind like a tune which won’t let go: ‘Olam chesed yibaneh; the world is built on loving kindness.’ Those words are inscribed on the cornerstone of our synagogue. Maybe they’re pursuing me because tomorrow we read in the Torah about the completion of God’s sanctuary. Where chesed, kindness, is absent, God is half absent too. Places are only holy if God is welcome too.
But is the world really so? Is it anything more than a placatory wish, a delusive fiction, that, amidst war, destruction, cruelty, hatred, broken cities, broken trust and broken lives, ‘the world is built on loving kindness’?
Yet through these pre-dawn hours – hours when, the mystics tell us, the archangel Raphael traverses the heavens with healing on his wings – those words have accumulated details and restored memories which give them solid substance.
Last year in Kyiv, in a dim hall scarcely two miles from Babin Yar, I listen as Jewish women tell their stories. ‘I lost so many of my family in that place. Now I’m left here in this city. I used to care for children with disabilities, but they’ve all evacuated now. So I look after abandoned dogs and other animals. What’s life worth, if there’s no other life to care for?’
Last week, in the north of Israel, I hear how every morning at 6.00am volunteers prepare 500 breakfast rolls for displaced families and soldiers guarding against Hezbollah. ‘They come, day in, day out. All the ingredients are donated. They organise it all, shopping, preparing, distribution, everything.’
Last Shabbat I was at the table of my colleague Raba Tamar Elad-Appelbaum in Jerusalem. I asked her about inter-faith relations in the city. ‘They reach out to me, Christians, Muslims, fellow Jews, and I reach out to them. We need each other more than ever now.’
Yesterday, I was invited to offer a prayer in a multi-faith Iftar at Brent Mosque, commemorating five years since the massacre of Muslim worshippers in Christchurch, New Zealand. I learnt that the Mosque’s kitchen doesn’t close at lunchtime during Ramadan. They continue to offer free meals for local non-Muslim people, the cooks preparing foods they themselves can’t eat for many more slow hours.
Kindness is no bomb shelter. But it builds deep, deeper than the seductive reach of collective hate. Kindness has special chambers of its own, most importantly at this bleak time, the chamber of hope. I mean hope in human nature, hope in the hard-won ability to transform anger and transcend borders, hope in life itself.
Yet still the question returns: ‘Olam chesed yibanei’ – is it really so? Our world doesn’t look that way just now. Then I remember: the root of the word ‘olam’ means ‘hidden’. Underneath everything, half concealed, in ways we often cannot see because they look so small, so fragile, so feebly person-to-person in this age of the mass and crass, it will be kindness, if anything, which rebuilds our broken world.
To the kabbalists, kindness is a holy quality. The divine vitality pours forth from its deep, unknowable heights into binah, intuition and understanding, out of which is formed the awareness that all life is precious and holy. From there, this sacred energy flows into chesed, calling on each of us from within our heart to nurture and sustain the life around us with care and loving kindness.
The question isn’t ‘Is this true?’ but, in these bleak and aggressive times, ‘Can we make it so?’
With light feet, but a heavy heart
I hope to run the Jerusalem Marathon with light feet today. But I won’t be running with a light heart; my heart is full and heavy. I can’t add up the feelings or experiences which fill it. Some are contradictory. I make no comparison and suggest no equivalence between them. Some of the people who moved me hold radically different views. But they’re all people, and what they had to tell has left me, in every case, with two similar feelings.
The first is deep, anguished sorrow. In a noisy café at Tel Aviv Savidor Station I had a long conversation with two psychotherapists: ‘The need is huge,’ they told me. ‘The immediate circle of family members traumatised on 7 October is 20,000.’ And the circles beyond? ‘Tens of thousands more, the families of soldiers killed and wounded…’
At the previous station I’d met Aaron Seitler who’s walking the Israel Trail (the sections which aren’t too dangerous) to raise money for The Society For The Protection of Nature In Israel’s project Nature Heals which takes relatives into the gentle consolation of green spaces.
I travelled on north, and sat with x – I’m not sure she wants to be named. ‘I need a shoulder to cry on again,’ she wrote to me after we met the first time, last November. ‘I’m still in touch with my friend in Gaza. I’m so worried; he hasn’t replied to my last message. I don’t know if he’s still alive.’ She showed me a video of him holding the hands of a circle of children, then another of him cooking a vat of soup, the children running up to him while he turns aside and weeps. ‘I’m careful whom I talk to. Many here would be furious with me.’ Actually, I’m seeing more indications of deep concern for the children of Gaza.
I spent Wednesday in Kfar Veradim with my amazing colleague Rabbi Nathalie Lastreger. (The warning there when Hizbollah send missiles is zero seconds.) Lastreger means ‘bearer of burdens,’ and she carries the burdens of countless people with courage and love. She introduces me to Eitan Gonen, father of Romi, who’s still held hostage. ‘Tell us about her.’ ‘She loves animals, people, life, connects with everyone instantly. She’s a dancer in six different styles. She’s my sunshine, positive energy always. It’s 150 days; even one is unimaginable. She’s strong.’ All over Kfar Veradim are pictures of her, with her beautiful smile. ‘Every day I say: “This is the day she’ll be home.” Make a deal, any price; get them back.’
I ask what we can do to help. He answers with the same words as Ayelet, Naama’s mother, whom I met last week: Send good energy, prayers, heart’s warmth. I believe, I know, it’ll reach her, however deep the tunnels.’
We hear a terrifying army briefing about the threats posed by Hizbollah – another of Iran’s vicious proxies. Then Nathalie takes me to the homes of two bereaved families. Salman Habaka was a high-ranking Druse officer: ‘They had their eyes on him to be the IDF’s first Druse Commander-in-Chief,’ his father says. ‘Ani rishon; I go first,’ was his motto. He inspired everybody, gave his soldiers confidence and courage. He rescued many people.’ His father gives me a keyring with his picture. His mother cries quietly.
Uria Bayer belonged to a Christian family, originally German, whose lives have been devoted over three generations to caring for Holocaust survivors in Israel. Uria received a bullet through the head in Gaza. ‘“Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people,” his father said. ‘These words have an even greater meaning for me now. For four days we witnessed the care at Saroka Hospital. Unbelievable!’ The family draw great comfort from their faith. As Uria’s father speaks, the family dog looks up and holds out her paw.
Yesterday I went to the South Hebron Hills with Joel Carmel and a team from Breaking the Silence. Seemingly unimpeded by the army, settlers are exploiting the aftermath of October 7, violently intimidating and driving away villagers across the West Bank. We wander round the ruins of the ancient Palestinian village of Khirbet Zanuta; the whole population of 250 fled after repeated threats. One settler drove his bulldozer into the small, abandoned school; books and broken desks lie across the ruined floor. These are different kinds of injuries, deep and terrible wounds.
Today when we gather at Gan Sacher for the start of the races, I will see on countless running shirts the names of loves ones, taken hostage, tortured, murdered on Shabbat Shechorah, killed in the fighting. I will carry the memory of Martin Segal, for many years head of The British Friends of Israel Guide Dogs, who died this year, young, courageous, gentle.
That takes me to the second group of emotions that all these experiences – which I can’t add up and can’t compare, except to say that they overwhelm me, every one of them – have in common. All of them evoke a powerful determination to see justice and compassion, to care, support, and create a safer, fairer, better, kinder world.
That’s what I’m running my marathon for. I want to join those who, whoever and wherever they are, devote their lives to compassion.
In the South of Israel
I spent yesterday in the south of Israel with my colleague Doron Rubin, many years ago a shaliach in our community, now rabbi in Rechovot. I was looking at projects for our community to support. We drove past Kfar Aza and Be’eri, which suffered the worst of the vicious horrors on October 7, down to Kibbutz Re’im.
Imri, a close friend of members of our synagogue, met us there. For the next two hours, alleyway by alleyway, house by house, tree by tree, he talked us through how he and a tiny number of others fought off as many as a hundred Hamas fighters: ‘I ran here; the four police who joined us returned fire from there… We heard Hamas were inside that house… We stopped them getting through there; that was another miracle that saved us…’
Many times, he stopped to play on his phone the explosions, voices, calls for help of that morning. He relived it with us, took us inside the burnt-out rooms, some with the grim notice ‘Declared clear by Zaka,’ the organisation which identifies the dead.
‘This is where my friend stopped the attack but gave his life. He had a small chocolate business; we want to start it up again in his memory. He loved sport. We want to be a centre for sports again. Everybody joins in, all the local communities, Bedouin, Thai families, they all play. Bring a football team from your community.’
Imri, and everyone else we met (few have so far returned) thanked us repeatedly for coming, as if this minuscule gesture of solidarity actually amounted to something.
Doron and I then went to the site of the Nova festival. Eucalyptus saplings had been planted for those murdered or taken hostage, a deep, extensive field of trees, the last of the dark red poppies in between them. The trees had names and messages by them: ‘We love you and long for you.’ Some had pictures, beautiful, happy young people. Some saplings had been watered just that day.
I shall see that field as long as I live.
Tomorrow I’m going north to meet a colleague and her community who’ve been facing the threats from Hizballah.
What can I say? I’ve been asked to emphasise hope. Please God, there will be a deal and, after 150 unimaginable days, the hostages will be freed. Briefings by senior military figures stress their concern for the humanitarian needs of the hundreds of thousands of people caught in the middle. But the war against Hamas, hidden in tunnels underneath their own people whom they calculatedly use as human shields, is unlikely to be about to end.
Realistic, long-term hope has to offer a safe, secure, dignified future for everyone, Israel and its neighbours. For that, right now, we can only pray. I pray for the hostages and their families; for the grief-stricken, the wounded, the traumatised; for the soldiers going into danger; for ordinary people caught up in horror, whoever they are on whichever side of the border; for this mad world that contains such nihilistic terror as well as so much beauty.
Meanwhile, what we can do is show solidarity, whatever our political opinions. We can keep contact with friends, family, anyone who needs us. We can help rebuild, more so over time. We can, and must, stand alongside suffering; we can help heal, in whatever tiny way we are able, the deep hurts of our own people, and of everyone, because all wounds cry out to God and every life matters.
I was asked to be up-beat, so, at the risk of sounding trivial and foolish, I’ll end on a different note. I slept on Saturday night at Israel’s Guide Dog Training Centre; apparently, I was the only human present. ‘The need for therapy dogs is huge,’ they told me in the morning, showing me eleven six-week-old puppies. One day, maybe, we humans will become as good as these cute creatures at bringing love and healing.