My experiences in israel

4/25/23

I was fortunate to spend the years 2013-2015 studying in Israel, which turned out to be the most formative years of my life.

In the bustling city of Holon just outside of Tel Aviv, I spent my days poring over the ancient but timeless texts of the Talmud and immersing myself in Jewish philosophy, law, and kabbalah. I often miss those times when I had no concerns or responsibilities other than learning the Torah. If Shabbat is one day a week of serenity and connection, Yeshiva in Israel was two uninterrupted years of spiritual and intellectual heaven.

However, all wasn't bliss. In June 2014, after almost a year of being in Israel, three students studying at another yeshiva were abducted after attempting to catch a ride near Jerusalem. One of the boys tried to call the police, but his muffled voice was quickly silenced by gunfire. Israeli police spent the following weeks searching for the boys but to no avail. The bodies were found three weeks later in a field outside the old city of Hebron.

For me, who was also studying in Yeshiva and had just spent a week in Hebron myself, their abduction and murder were all the more chilling.

Just before the bodies were found, I had left Israel to attend my sister's wedding in our hometown of Bournemouth, England. By the time we returned, the aftermath of the boys' murders had escalated into the heaviest fighting between Israel and Gaza since the disengagement in 2005. At first, I was skeptical about returning to Israel in the middle of a war, but I eventually decided to go back.

As our airplane approached Ben Gurion airport, the pilot announced that we would not fly directly into Ben Gurion because rockets from Gaza had, for the first time, reached the Tel Aviv area and posed a threat to incoming aircraft. Instead, we flew to Haifa and veered southward, only entering the "rocket zone" at the last and unavoidable moment. I walked off the tarmac into a frightening airport plastered with bomb shelter directions on the walls.

The following day, while walking to the local supermarket, the bomb siren warning went off. I was alone with no other companions, so I ran with some strangers into a communal bomb shelter and waited for what felt like an eternity until the entire space around us shook and reverberated with the echo of a loud crash. Thankfully, it was the sound of the Iron Dome colliding with the rockets.

This now became routine, and for the next five weeks, I spent many anxious moments running to the bomb shelters. We were woken up early in the morning, late at night, while studying, and even once while I was in the shower.

But not everyone was so lucky. Today, the people of Israel remember the tens of thousands of Jews who lost their lives living in, visiting, and defending the land of Israel. This year has been increasingly tragic, with terror attacks on innocent civilians becoming so commonplace that they barely get a mention before being overshadowed by the next.

An older woman who escaped Europe in the 1930s recalled that growing up in Germany, her family was told to leave Europe and return home to Israel, but now the Jews are told to leave Israel and return home to Europe. While we Jews are indigenous to Israel and have prayed daily for our return since being exiled by the Romans, we are ironically called "occupiers."

We've all studied some Torah, at least the beginning of it. Rashi, the greatest biblical commentator, asks why the bible begins with creation. If Judaism is a religion, shouldn't the Torah start with the laws and the mitzvot? Perhaps the Torah should have begun with the story of Mount Sinai, but why with creation?

And Rashi explains, and I quote: "For if the nations of the world should say to Israel, "You are robbers, for you conquered by force the lands of the seven nations," they will reply, "The entire earth belongs to the Holy One, blessed be He; He created it (this we learn from the story of the Creation) and gave it to whomever He deemed proper When He wished, He gave it to them, and when He wished, He took it away from them and gave it to us."

The Torah begins with Genesis to teach us that G-d created the world and gave Israel to the Jews. So that nobody should ever claim that the Jews are occupiers. It's fascinating to think of Rashi's foresight with this commentary almost one thousand years ago when very few Jews lived in Israel!

This email isn't long enough to elaborate on my thoughts on the Jewish claim to Israel or my comments on the Israeli/Palestinian debate. That might never be my job. My job is to bring Jews together with the beauty of the Torah and tradition and support our community on Martha's Vineyard. But I'm writing this email to show solidarity with our brothers and sisters in Israel. A land that was given to us by G-d. A land to which we all belong. A land for which many of us died. A land to which we will all return.