Hevre/Friends,
Entering the Gaza Envelope, our hearts began to beat faster as our bus traversed the landscape where the massacre of October 7 took place. Along Route 232 we passed kibbutzim that had been overrun, drove over scars in the road where burnt cars seared their tragic stories into the pavement, saw missile shelters where people tried to hide before being ambushed by terrorists, and even beheld audacious colorful flowers and wheat blooming with new life along the roadway, daring to defy the murderous atrocities that took place around them; life pushing through death.
Our first stop was at Moshav Sde Nitzan where we worked in the fields of Meir Turgeman whose son Dudu was murdered along with four friends fleeing the Nova musical festival just kilometers away. While others have been helping by picking crops at risk of decay because the war has resulted in fewer hands available to work, our task was to plant rows and rows and rows of zucchini. Some have helped by harvesting to save the past; we planted and planned for the future. With hands deep into the soil, all I could think of were the lines from Psalm 126 we recite in our blessings after eating: “hazorim be-dimah be-rinah yiktzoru/those who plant with tears will reap with joy”. May it be so.
After a delicious, fresh lunch at a moshav that calls itself “The Salad Trail”, agronomist Uri Alon shared his family’s story of October 7, including how his son and daughter-in-law have adopted twin babies from a nearby kibbutz whose parents – his daughter-in-law’s sister and her husband – were murdered in front of them, with the babies surviving alone for 12 hours before they were found. At the end of our visit we released homing pigeons with prayers for peace, counting down “ahad, shtayim, shalom!”
From there we proceeded to the grounds of the Nova music festival, a beautiful, serene setting where 364 mostly young people who had gathered to dance for peace were brutally massacred, with many more injured and over 40 taken hostage. The site has now become a vast memorial with pictures of the victims, loving tributes, all surrounded by newly planted flowers and trees. After some time walking quietly through the site, we gathered as a group off to the side by some beautiful trees who bore witness to unspeakable atrocities. We sang, we cried, we chanted the El Maleh Rachamim memorial prayer, said the Mourners Kaddish, and prayed for peace. Throughout our gathering the boom of IDF cannons along the nearby Gaza border punctuated our prayers and rattled our souls. We were literally pleading for peace from within an active war zone.
We stopped briefly to see the vast collection of burnt vehicles piled in a field as evidence of the attacks, as vessels that needed to be combed for human remains, and, also as property that is still being evaluated for insurance processing.
It was a quiet, subdued ride to our next and final stop for the day which was our dinner with a battalion of reserve soldiers at the Tze’elim army base. The transformation felt almost like the words of the “Acheinu” prayer so many of us have been reciting daily since October 7: “mitzara lirvacha, umi’afaila l’orah/from constriction to expansiveness, from darkness to light”. In a vast, opensided hangar the blaring music reset our heart rates from anxious to upbeat. Aromas of barbecued meat and grilled vegetables filled the air as our group dined with soldiers from around the country, trading stories, bonding over shared pride and gratitude, revealing the visible and not-so-visible scars of war, and deepening our sense of belonging to one another. We presented the soldiers with hats and gloves and warm socks, and the sweetest letters from KBI Ottawa kids. Our incredible evening closed another day of the inspiring highs, despairing lows, and stark realities that are filling our time in Israel.
Back in Tel Aviv, a late-night open mic jam session at a tiny bar around the corner of our hotel featuring young Israeli Jews and young Israeli Arabs, and even our own David and Matthew Sachs, placed a perfect seal upon Day 2 of our mission.
Dini