Now is the time to check in on your Israeli People

For months, I have wanted to go to Israel.

Then I got my break when for the first time, taglit-birthright Israel extended an invitation to Jewish American journalists.

In late June, I spent two days touring with journalists, birthright donors, students, and young adult volunteers.

Together we bore witness to Kibbutz Be’eri and the site of the Nova music festival – places that endured the worst horrors of the Hamas-led massacres.

We witnessed the resilience of young Israelis and their diaspora counterparts in a solidarity event and concert at Mini Israel, organized by Taglit.

I am thankful for the generosity of birthright donors who made this happen and to the Detroit Jewish News for giving me the story.

But there is something else to write and talk about, and that was the opportunity to check in on my Israeli friends.

Let me introduce you to a few of them:

Stacey lives in Modi’in with her husband Benzi who has a large extended family in Israel who are part of the Bene Yisrael Indian community. They have three adult daughters, who all served in the IDF and have served in the meluim, reserves.

Stacey has lost count of how many shivas and funerals she has attended in Modi’in since October.

Like me, Stacey grew up in New York but she has no other country but Israel.

British-Israeli Sarah is a solo globetrotter and travel writer. She’s worked hard to become Jewish and Israeli over the last 20 years since making aliyah.

Sarah has attended multiple anti-government protests with her partner, whose son is serving in active combat Gaza.

Her Tel Aviv apartment has a shabby, mold-infested bomb shelter, a space she hopes she will not have to spend a lot of time in if the war with Hezbollah heats up.

Yet back in London, she watches the growing anti-Jewish fervor on the streets.

Sarah no longer feels British. She has no other country but Israel.

Then there’s Vivi, our family tour guide in 2011 when my middle son Nathan became a Bar Mitzvah. Vivi’s family emigrated to Israel decades ago from Uruguay.

And Tami, who I met in Rochester, New York through Israeli Folk Dancing when she was a graduate student at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

A native Israeli, she’s now a chef who lives in Tel Aviv with her husband Ori, who works in the hotel industry. They have a 2-year-old son Dror who has curly hair and big brown eyes just like his mom.

Then there’s Gila, also from Modi’in, an internationally known textile and weaving artist and special education teacher.

Her most recent work focuses on the kalaniyot, the national flower of Israel. More than ever, the red anemone flower has come to represent the beauty and resilience of the Israelis.

Her father is a Holocaust survivor from Romania who saw what happened to Jews when they had no self agency, so he chose Israel over the United States to live.

Gila, her husband, children and grandchildren have no other country.

With just a few short week’s notice of my arrival on assignment to Israel in late June, all of these friends made it a priority to spend time with me.

I had not seen them for at least a decade.

The day I arrived, Stacey and Benzi fought through crazy Friday afternoon Yaffo traffic to pick me up.

First, they took me shopping at the Carmeil/ Nachalat Binyamin Market. Stacey prides herself in her skill at being a personal shopper every time someone visits Israel from abroad, which is not that many these days.

She helped me pick out jewelry for my dress for my son’s upcoming wedding. All the while, she remarked how empty the market was, and how many regular artisan vendors were noticeably missing, perhaps due to the war.

Then they took me back to Modi’in for a lovely and restful Shabbat, where I also visited with Gila and Doron.

Vivi, a single mom of two, got her parents to watch her kids and took two trains to meet me in Yaffo.

Sarah, who broke her foot a few months ago while traveling in South Asia, said it was no problem to take a bus from Northern Tel Aviv to my hotel.

Sure, we could walk around and grab a bite in Yaffo, we’ll just take it slow, she said.

Another friend, a former tour guide, gave me her personal walking tour of Old Yaffo.

Tami and Ori met me with Dror for dinner one night after they were done with work.

It seemed like there was this an urgency to talk to a friend who did not live in Israel about their post-October 7^th world.

The reunions were joyous, yet each encounter felt akin to a Shiva call.

I noticed some eerie parallels between how my friends were processing October 7^th and how Americans, especially New Yorkers, processed September 11^th.

They were eager to tell me where they were on the evening of October 6 and the morning of October 7. How they reacted. What they did. Who they knew. Who they lost.

In the weeks following October 7^th, the world of my friends became very small.

Tammi slept in Dror’s room every night.

Tammi and Ori have an emergency bag packed at all times, just in case the war escalates.

Vivi, who lives in a small community close to several Arab villages said her world condensed into a few blocks. For the first nine days following October 7th, she and her children did not leave their home. There was this uneasy mistrust she fears she will never be able to shake off.

For the first six weeks, there was no school. Then, the kind gentle Israeli Arab teacher’s assistant in her daughter’s kindergarten suddenly began wearing a hijab. She and other Jewish parents hate feeling suspicious, but they are questioning if this woman should be around Jewish children.

This is coming from a woman who has worked as a tour guide with Israeli Arab drivers for over 25 years through the Israeli Ministry of Tourism, who encouraged us in 2011 to buy pomegranate juice from Arabs in Akko and buy from Arab vendors in the Muslim quarter in Jerusalem.

Unlike in the rest of the world, where photos of missing dogs stay up for months but posters of abducted Jews are defaced and ripped away, posters of the hostages are everywhere in Israel, visible to everyone.

Including two-year-olds.

Dror asks his Ima Tami, who are these people?

What can she say?

How do you parent young children at a time like this?

I asked myself the same question as a mother of preschoolers on the morning of September 11.

When my children were 5 and 3 on the morning of September 11.

Tami tells Dror, these are our friends, and he says, oh, I love new friends! When do I get to meet them?

She doesn’t know how to answer.

Israelis love to travel.

Sarah used to love to take quick solo trips to Jordan or Turkey.

These are no longer options.

Vivi says her kids are old enough to go to Euro Disney.

But she is afraid to go.

Sure, their Spanish is pretty good, but what if they slip and speak in their native Hebrew and someone overhears them? Would it put their lives in danger?

As Vivi and I sip an iced coffee outside a Yaffo café, she tells me about how the hostage children who were held for 55 days lost their ability to speak.

Why?

Child hostages who were prisoners in apartments or houses were told by their captors that if anyone outside in the streets of Gaza heard them speaking Hebrew – from the tomato vendor on up – they would kill them.

Little details like that just spill out.

Vivi’s fears are not unfounded.

In July, an Israeli Arab man visiting Greece was nearly beaten to death by a mob after he was overheard speaking Hebrew.

They thought he was Jewish.

Vivi said one of her friends, a reservist, told her to stock her mamad with essentials, as an all-out war with Lebanon is more imminent than ever before, if we are not already in it right now.

In another 9/11 10/7 parallel, my Israeli friends cannot bring themselves to bear witness at the places I visited in southern Israel or Kikar HaChatufim, hostage Square located just outside the Tel Aviv Art Museum.

I needed to make a pilgrimage there even more badly than visiting the Kotel.

To this day, I have friends in New York who have still not gone to see the infinity pools where the Twin Towers once stood.

In another 9/11 10/7 parallel, all these memorials, like the one at the Nova festival site, are temporary and evolving as Israelis process their grief.

On the day I met Vivi, I asked her if she would like to go there with me.

My intrepid tour guide friend said to me, “I don’t know if I can do that yet. It’s just too much.”

Then, after a bit, she said, “I’ll go with you on the light rail and will walk halfway there with you.”

A few stops after we boarded, a young man, his lower right leg replaced with a titanium prosthetic, got on the train.

In the hot Tel Aviv midday sun, we walked Sderot Sha’ul HaMelech, a main, tree-lined street on the way to the museum.

As we said our tearful goodbyes at the entrance of the square, she expressed how important it was that I came to visit Israel and how much it was appreciated.

We left each other with a hug, with her saying to me that there was no other option but to keep living and smiling and going on, because that is what our IDF soldiers want us to do. Otherwise, the monsters have won.

With each goodbye, my friends had no reassuring words to give me and I had no advice to give them.

We just were.

Cultivating and building relationships between Israeli and Diaspora Jews is maybe the most important thing we can do right now.

Do not hinge your relationship to Israel or your expressions of Zionism based who is holding the Prime Minister’s seat or who is the ruling coalition in the Knesset.

If you have an extended family member in Israel, or met someone on a trip or birthright 10 years ago, drop them a message on Facebook or Whatsapp.

Or, get to know an Israeli author, artist, poet or musician.

Diaspora Jews: Remember the Am of Yisrael and how you are a part of that.

Because even though we live thousands of miles away and think we have another country, our future as Jews here is tied up with their future there.

The fate of theirs and ours is the same.