Last year’s New Year’s card

This was the New Year’s card I made last year, for year 5784, to send to my family. It was a self portrait taken in early September in the pomegranate grove of Kibbutz Nir Oz, near sunset. On the horizon, west of there, lies Gaza, where the sick, genocidal plans for October 7th were being plotted and already set in motion as I was obliviously taking my time, setting up this shot, less than a mile away. I loved that place for taking photos. It was taken for a photo challenge which was “edited by somone else” and expertly edited by my fellow framer and friend Heidi.

I look at that photo now and tears come to my eyes. I can barely recognize myself from way back then – all of a year ago. There is an innocence and a joy I can see in my face that I do not see anymore. Life back then seemed about as good as it can get – living in the same kibbutz as my youngest daughter and three of my granddaughters, all of them just a minute’s bike ride away.

I was in the first month of my retirement in September 2023, and I had plans… a magical women’s retreat in a castle in Ireland, an upcoming course in my photography school… I was just learning the freedom of being unattached to the education system for the first time in over 40 years. How ignorant the “Adele” in that picture was, of the impending onslaughts and catastrophic changes that were soon to impact all those in her region. She had no idea of how many close friends and acquaintances she was soon to lose. She had no inkling of how profoundly her life was on the cusp of being violently uprooted and changed. She couldn’t have even dreamed that she would be a refugee in her own land within a few weeks from then, for the indefinite future.

She had no way of knowing that she would not be able to live in the home she built with her husband, in the community in which she had lived since age 21, in which they raised their children. She had no clue that she would not be able to walk the paths she knew so well, pop out for a coffee in the members’ club to catch up on news and local gossip, go to the little store to quickly buy what she would need for dinner. That “2023 Adele” would have never imagined that she wouldn’t be able to celebrate her holidays with her community, with their traditions, as we have for decades. The ability to spontaneously watch the orange sun sink into her kibbutz’s wheat fields, or to hop into her car with her camera to take photos of the white blossoms of squills at sunrise would become inaccessible activities.  The “Adele” in that self-portrait could never have imagined that she would probably never live in the same community with her daughter and grandchildren again, and that that loss would be just one of many so profound.

This year, for 5785,  I did not make a personalized card. I was too busy on a 27-day speaking tour trying to raise awareness as well as money to rebuild my community so that we can move back home to a kibbutz that is bigger and better, safer and stronger.

This year my New Year’s greetings are different:

Wishing you all a (much) happy(ier), safe(er), sweet(er) New Year than the one that just finished.

May all our hostages come home NOW.

May we in Israel be able to live in our homes in our ancient, ancestral homeland in peace without genocidal threats.

May the Jews outside of Israel feel safe enough not to have to hide their Judaism for fear of the antisemitic hatred that seems to have become so popular today.

“May the year and its curses end, may the year and its blessings begin.”