40 hours in Otef Aza: Shabbat on the edge

The first clue that I’m getting closer, is a small gas station just north of Ashkelon. “Can I help you?” asks me, politely and with a smile, a young lady who runs the place alone and looks like she just graduated high school. “Can I get water, I mean, a water bottle?” I ask, clarifying. “Come into my office,” she says as she goes out to the pump to help another customer, “You can fill yours in there.” I have a feeling, it’s not Kansas anymore…

On Road 232, I turn southwest. This is “the” road. Within a few hours, approximately 1,150 Israeli citizens, policemen, and soldiers were raped, massacred and murdered here – of which 364 were partygoers who were at the Nova party, not including 251 people who were kidnapped to the Gaza Strip. It is estimated that close to 6,000 terrorists entered through close to 120 breaches in the fence. It anchors me to write all these numbers: 6,000 terrorists could have murdered 60,000 or 120,000 people or who knows how many. In spite of everything, somehow, within the horrible tragedy, I see a miracle here as well. A miracle at the highest price. And still, a miracle.

Zak”a spokesperson shared that along this road, “every 10-15 meters there was a vehicle on its side, upside down or burned. In every such vehicle there were murdered people who were lying down after they were shot again and again… There were vehicles into which the terrorists threw grenades after murdering the passengers. We saw burnt bodies and vehicles that were still boiling after burning. We found murdered people who were in the ditches on the sides of the road who ran away and were shot”… and here we also heard about heroes who repeatedly returned to the inferno to save others; who fought valiantly, preventing a much heavier disaster.

I pass the entrance to the Black Arrow Monument. I visited this place a little more than a year ago as part of the tour guide course I was on, looking out safely towards Gaza. Right there, in front of Kibbutz Miflasim, there is a curve on Road 232. The terrorists took advantage of the cars slowing down at the curve here and murdered about 50 Israelis, shooting them over and over again, sometimes raping the victims beforehand. Several monuments commemorating those murdered here were erected along the entire length of Road 232. Names. pictures. Flowers. Loving words. The road is blurred through tears, pain, anger. It is impossible to drive here without going back, again and again, to those images, sounds, memories.

But I’m not here on an organized trip to see monuments and hear stories. I am here to visit my son who is – again – doing his reserve duty, this time in one of the Otef (area around Gaza) settlements. I brace myself for what I might see, and indeed – a surprise. Fresh flowers greet me at the gate. Along the entrance road, the irrigation system is working and the plants are blooming. Near the parking lot, the grass is green and trimmed. Someone started a vegetable garden next to one of the buildings. I’m not sure what to think. It’s not that there aren’t burned buildings and traces of battle, but it’s also very clear that loving hands are taking care of the place and doing everything possible to restore it to be as beautiful as before, maybe even more, for when the residents will be allowed to return.

The first thing I want to know is, what if there is an alert – alarm? There is no minute or minute and a half here to seek safety. There are barely 15 seconds, and sometimes not even that much. How many steps can I walk, maybe run, not stumble, in 15 seconds? In the beginning, I accurately calculate how far I have moved away from the last shelter and where the next shelter is. Booms of different volumes are heard in the background. “What was that?” I ask in a fright after the first, second, third. “It’s there; everything is there. Our army is doing its job. Here, there are almost no alarms anymore, and even when there are, it’s often due to a false identification.” Here and there a stray dog ​​from Gaza shows up, looking for food and a better life. I worry, “what if…?” There are so many “what ifs”… but my kid is smiling. “Why are you smiling? I’m not in a panic! I just worry! How can you not? After all, a year ago we also thought everything is fine!” “It’s true,” he says, “We went way too far in complacency, but we can also go way too far in panic. Somehow, there is a place between panic and breathing.” Ok, if he says so…

I’m trying to breathe; half a breath; then another one, a little more complete. I discover that there is another car, two, three, near some of the houses. There is light behind a window; flower pots cared for by the residents who are starting to come back – not yet officially, but already showing up just to check what’s going on, just to water the plants, just to take something, just for a few hours, just for the weekend, just because it’s impossible to stay away…

“Okay”, I compromise, “Let’s go get things out of the car. I brought pastries from the bakery…” He does me a favor and bites into one of the burekas. “What wrong?” I wonder, almost offended, “Is it not good? I thought”… “You’ll see soon”, he answers.

A few moments later, the rumble of an IDF jeep is heard from the parking lot. He goes with a friend to collect bags and trays, still warm. “What, what is this? From where?” I am stunned, peeking in to see. A glorious Shabbat meal. Everything is packaged and marked, stating the content and level of kashrut: Chicken. Rice. Meatballs. Veggies. Kosher. Bada”tz. And every package has a note. Some in round and precise writing. Some rushed, a handwriting that runs through the lines, as if there is no time and there is still a lot to do. Each one is written with great love: “Dear soldier, please take care of yourself; thank you for what you are doing for us and all of Am Yisrael; may G-d guard you and protect you; come back quickly and safely…” There are hearts. And flowers. And sometimes a phone number. A lifeline.

“Wait”… I try to digest through the tears, this time because I am so touched, “I don’t understand”… “It’s like this every Shabbat”, he explains, “and not just for us”, he reminds me, “for everyone who sits along the border.” .

The more he explains, the less I understand. Does anyone?

It’s been almost a year. A year of fighting; living by the frontier. Endless talks of achievements, drawbacks, successes, losses. A year of demonstrations, yelling, criticism; A year of intense joy, immense pain… Almost a whole year…

“Oh, don’t worry about it”, I can hear them say, “What’s the big deal, I’m preparing for my family anyway, so another little something? It’s nothing, and for our soldiers, our heroes? anything…” I lift the lids: Fresh salads. Small schnitzels rolled in breadcrumbs one by one. Rice pots with vegetables and spices. Scalloped fish with potatoes. Real homemade cakes. I don’t know her, but I can see how she kneads, sprinkles sugar, mixes, rolls, bakes, waits, packs, writes… The people of Israel that do not appear in the news headlines, ignore all the doomsayers from within and without, grit their teeth, and continue to do what has to be done.

A few months ago, a friend of mine came to visit Israel from the USA: “What’s going on here?” she asked me bewildered, “There’s fighting in Gaza and in the rest of the country, everything is just fine?” “We’re also fighting in the rest of the country,” I said, “but differently.” Because behind all the noise that the news spew, the People of Israel continue to fight for their lives, insisting on our sanity, on flowers and trees and little gardens, on soups and cakes, and on the love story we have here and don’t give up on.

We arrange the food on a hotplate that somehow showed up in this definitely not religious place. The word hadata – “religify” – which has become another news “buzz-word”, does not exist in this place. Neither does being “anti” to Jewish things. One is preparing the hot water urn for Shabbat, and the another is looking for a movie on TV. And there’s enough Shabbat for everyone.

I ask about a synagogue. There are none here, but there is one at an army base nearby. We can go and try. A small group, both with those who “keep” Shabbat and those who don’t but anyway join for the ambiance, go out to Kabbalat Shabbat. The guard asks us some questions, checks us up, decides that we are not dangerous, and lets us proceed to the little shul, where I find one of the most beautiful Kabbalat Shabbat services I have ever experienced in my life. I can’t quite put my finger on what exactly is so moving: the fact that there is a women’s section, and there is a female soldier there that sings and prays devoutly, smiling at me and giving me a hug. Or because someone makes sure there are books – sidurim and serious learning and reading material. Or because the soldiers sing in high spirits and wonderful harmonious melodies. Or because one of them, his gun diagonally on him, gives a meaningful dvar Torah about the consolation haftara of this time. Or maybe because it was all done with ease, and here inside, in spite of everything elsewhere, it is now Shabbat, this Temple in Time, as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said. And Shabbat continues with the dinner that was left on the hotplate and is now ready. The hot food is loaded on a cart and rolled to the guard post, so guard on duty can participate and hear kiddush as well. There we sit, chat some, sing some, even breath.

Somewhere I come across a collection of articles in honor of the 50^th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, published in Tishrei 5784, a year before… Rav Ze’ev Whitman tells how, on October 6 (5th actually), 1973, he arrived at the Tel Fares military base in the northern Golan Heights be the Yom Kippur prayer leader. Later, he fought on the southern front in Sinai. The story of the war at that time is chilling, but what is even more chilling now are his words: “This memory of the Yom Kippur War is especially difficult for me these days… If we don’t come to our senses and preserve our unity, G-d forbid, we may find ourselves again in the situation that we were in at the beginning of the Yom Kippur War… Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, and our other enemies are rubbing their hands with pleasure when they see the internal fighting between us taking place before their eyes – their work is being done by us”… all of this and more, written just a few days before October 7^th, 2023…

On Sunday morning at 6am I head back north, again along road 232. The sun appears little by little, like the Gemara in the Yerushalmi, that tells about Redemption, like light rays over the Arbel Valley, slowly growing into a beautiful sunrise. I take a picture and upload it to Facebook. “This reminds me”, writes a friend, “of Bialik’s poem: ‘The sun rose, the tree blossomed, and the murderer slaughtered…’” (from Bialik’s “On the Slaughter”).

Well, I answer her: “The sun does rise, the trees do bloom, and the farmers work hard so that they can return home to their lands. It’s not that there is no pain and no memory, G-d forbid, but we’re not living Bialik’s poem. This is not exile. This is the Land of Israel.”