January 18, 2025

I’m sitting here this Shabbat on a terrace in a town called Kiryat Gat. It’s bucolic. It feels and sounds like what I would imagine the Garden of Eden felt like. The sun is just perfect, for sure given that it’s January. Lauren and I just ate the most perfectly prepared Shabbat lunch. I hear sounds of children at play and the hush as well of people laying down for a Shabbat nap. I’m drinking a glass of wine made a few miles from here and life feels like it should be perfect.

But where am I? I’m at the temporary home(village) of Kibbutz Nir Oz. This has become our sister community. To remind you, they are the ones who had 25% of their community either killed or kidnapped on October 7, 2023. Indeed 29 of their members are still in captivity. And so once again the paradox is acute. The Eden-like sun beating down, while at the same time, every person with whom we are sharing time is wondering with an existential sense of bated breath to know if tomorrow they will see their loved ones returned. They wonder if they will come home alive or not. They wonder if they will come able to move or not. They wonder if they will emotionally come close to resembling who it is they once knew. They wonder if their own worst nightmares about what happened in Gaza are the same or worse than they imagined. We feel strange taking up their space and eating their food. They tell us they want and need us here because they need their kids to know that they are acting and navigating as normally as possible. They can’t continue to load trauma on to their children who have absorbed more than anyone should in a lifetime. And so, we went back and forth from talking about Netflix in one minute and about the fate of the hostages in the next. The tension mixed with the sweetness of relationship is both fulfilling and depleting at once. They are such loving and generous souls, and we want so badly to continue to hold them as our own……and they have become that to us as we have to them.

Just one other note about this first stop in our day(and I could go on, believe me.) When I asked the grandfather of the family what he did for work in his life, he told me he was an EMT and nurse. He then asked if we wanted to hear a story. We of course wanted to hear whatever he wanted to share. He went on to tell us that because he was an EMT, he was the person who went from house to house on the 8th of October in order to wrap the dead and bring them to a safe space. He said he needed to be the one so that others would never have to carry the images in their minds. For some reason, I naively asked when he went to sleep that night. He said he never did because this work had to be done. And then he said, “I have to say that I don’t sleep much since then because the pictures don’t leave my mind either”. All of this was said with a sweet humility replete with generosity and a sense of duty. He finished his story, picked up his granddaughter and made jokes to make her laugh.

And a visit after to our new and already important friend. We met him because his son was and is fighting in one of the elite units of the IDF. You will remember because many of you helped us purchase direly needed drones to see inside homes with lurking terrorists for this unit. We’ve stayed connected ever since. We went for dinner and once again had a meal prepared for us that could have been enough for an entire day. But more importantly, our time was peppered with intense conversation about first and foremost their son who is fighting in the most dangerous of circumstances still, 15 months later. I’ve been asked not to say where, but it’s surreal to believe that he is fighting there. I wondered out loud how he and his comrades can’t be completely done at this point. What they’ve seen; what they’ve been compelled to do. His parents haven’t slept a real night’s sleep in 15 months. And they wonder and worry about the trauma that will need to be processed. More stories added from guests at dinner who speak of their son fighting for hours in a bathrobe on October 7th because of the surprise attack; not hearing for days if their boy was dead or alive. I know these seem like old stories, but they are fresh and raw for them; and again, for us.

We finished the day by driving back to the weekly rally for hostages, but instead, of the bigger one in Tel Aviv which many of you see on television, we went back to Kiryat Gat to be with our friends from Nir Oz. This week especially, it felt uniquely important to be with them. There were a few thousand attendees; and here almost every person had a direct and personal connection to someone in captivity. We yelled with them, “Bring them home, NOW”! With the prayer that perhaps “now” will start tomorrow. And then quietly, but steadfastly we sang Hatikvah.

I can’t end Shabbat without mentioning the simply magnificent Shabbat dinner we had with Joel and Gail Rosenfeld and their family. Without a doubt, their home is home, and their family is our family, all three generations. We laughed and ate and cried and drank. Joel looks so forward to greeting our mission group as the rest arrive tomorrow to begin what will be days, I am guessing none of us will ever forget.

I guess I should add with no fanfare, that over breakfast before we headed down south, a few of us at breakfast and others spread around the city were forced by a red alert into the shelter because of a red alert. The Houthis are deciding to try to interfere with the agreement about to come. The IDF intercepted and we are totally fine. But an experience it was.

May tomorrow begin a redemption we and this region need so dearly. Pray with me for that redemption to come speedily.
Thank you for continuing to follow.