We Truly Are All Family

I almost got a chance to address the Conference of Presidents during a Knesset committee meeting, but the chairman told me that in the end he wouldn’t let me because I’m not a “hostage family.” On this day of palpable national trauma, I wanted to share what I would have said, and I swear I wrote this all before I was rejected on those grounds…

Shalom, thank you so much for being here with us.

My name is Avidan Freedman.

I am a rabbi, educator and activist, I made aliyah from New York about 15 years ago, and I live in Efrat…

Usually.

But not last night.

Last night I slept in a tent in the frigid Jerusalem air. Why?

Because my family members are held hostage by Hamas.

Which hostages are my family members?

All of them.

All of them.

73 of my brothers and sisters have been held hostages for 501 endless days.

When I say this and when we say this- we have to understand.

This isn’t a simile. This isn’t a metaphor. This is God’s honest truth.

If this weren’t the truth, I would not have gone on a hunger strike for 8 days, and then again for 10 days, on behalf of the hostages.

If it weren’t true- not just for me- but for all of us- an 83 year old grandmother and hero named Orna Shimoni would not have decided to initiate that hunger strike.

If this weren’t true, there wouldn’t be people who to this very moment are still continuing that hunger strike- nearly 150 days later!

As we all have been sitting outside the Knesset for the past 4 months on this hunger strike, passers by often ask us- who do you have there? are you family?

And we say- yes. We are family. They are all our family members.

And literally 100% of the time the response is a nod, a bow of the head, and the response:  that’s true. They are our family members too.

And these aren’t just words.

They’ve actually been scientifically proven- a study done showed that a staggering 93% of Israelis regularly think and are concerned for the fate of the hostages, and this concern has a real impact on our health. Why? Because we truly are all family.

And I know that you all feel this too. You feel it in your hearts, in your kishkes, even if you are thousands of miles away. I’m sure you also think about the hostages all of the time, worry about them, pray for them, act for them. But you aren’t relatives! You don’t have any connection to them!

Nonsense. Of course you do. We are family. That’s the truth.

The relationship between Diaspora Jewry and Israel, is not instrumental. Its not transactional. It’s a story of family.

And so it made me so sad to hear a statement this week to the effect that the hostage issue is an “internal Israeli issue” that the Conference needs to leave to Israelis. It’s not.

You are not “stakeholders” on this issue. You are concerned family members, and that means that your voice carries weight too.

This affects us all.

If Israel makes the decision not to continue to stage 2 of this agreement- and I don’t like to call it a deal because we’re not talking about real estate or merchandise but about family- if Israel decides that instead of saving the 59 hostages who remain there after stage 1, it will return to prosecuting a war in even more intense and harsh ways- the backlash against Israel will be felt on the campuses and on the streets of America.

And even were we not to be concerned, God forbid, with the effects of Israel’s actions on the safety of world Jewry- if Israel makes a decision that goes against what the vast majority of Israelis want- that is a decision that is liable to change the very face of our country, of our family, to change it in a way that makes it unrecognizable, by abandoning moral commitments that have always been at the core of what held this family together- here in Israel and across the oceans.

So what I am asking you today is nothing more than to be who you are, who we are.

We are family. This is a family issue.

Our family is in trouble.

Your voice at this time, your commitment to the completion of this arrangement, is absolutely critical.

Please.

Do everything you can to save our family.