Six days on the home front – one story

In the last week we’ve been plunged into a darkness, inundated with stories of horror from Hamas’ vicious attack. Here, in Israel, we’ve been mourning a national tragedy and thousands of individual ones. But behind the scenes, on the home front, there are thousands of points of light. Here’s one.

Monday. Like most weddings in that first week of the war, the celebration was cancelled but the hatan and kallah held a private ceremony with immediate family. My wife was close with the bride’s mother from college and couldn’t leave her to dance alone, so after the ceremony she drove over. When she got there she met the caterer for the now very-small affair, who was the same caterer who had fed the guests at a bat-mitzvah we did just over a year ago. As they spoke he lamented that he had bought all the food for the wedding, which had been cancelled. Hmmm…

Tuesday. My wife received a phone call from the States. A friend wanted to provide some meals for the people on the home front – families dislocated from their homes in the south, those with spouses who had been called up, whomever was in need. My wife contemplated. Hmmm…

Wednesday-Thursday. Together with a  friend, my wife made some phone calls and they soon had a list of families who would be receiving catered Shabbat sponsored by donors in the US and prepared by a caterer in Jerusalem with supplies for a wedding event which did not happen. The sponsors scrambled to raise money for twenty families, the caterer agreed to deliver the Shabbat meals to Jerusalem. But one family, refugees from Sderot, was being hosted in a community far from the pickup point in a remote suburb. Hmmm… They agreed that the package would be delivered to our home, and wife would arrange to bring it to the family.

Friday. There was one problem. In all the back and forth, the delivery person for the caterer was given our address but not our name; the name on the package was that of the intended recipient. When the delivery person came and couldn’t find the recipient, he left the food in front of the door of a neighbor. When the name neighbor saw the package, he was perplexed – why would someone leave a food package in front of his door? Hmmm…

When the package did not arrive in our home, my wife called the caterer who called the delivery person who told the story … and soon the package was in our home. This was now getting close to Shabbat, and we had to move fast to get that package to its recipients. My wife called to confirm that they would be home, at which point they expressed their deepest appreciation, but that it was unnecessary, as the people in the neighborhood hosting them had provided food. At the same time my wife got a call from a friend in our neighborhood – there was a group of soldiers who had just been pulled from the front lines and stationed in our neighborhood. She didn’t know why, but she wanted to know if we had any food to provide them for Shabbat. Hmmm…

Sunday. My wife receives a phone call from a woman she does not know. She said that her brother, who is our neighbor, had a food package delivered to his door for a family which was displaced from their home in the south after repeated missile attacks by Hamas and was now being hosted in one of the northern Jerusalem suburbs. She wanted to know what she could do to help the family.

As for the caterer, he heard about another group of 10 families and made them Shabbat meals as well.

Our enemies want to know the source of our strength. Hmmm…