A Day of Contrast and Emotion

 Tuesday, February 20, 2024

Today was extraordinarily busy and emotionally demanding.  At breakfast we saw a very large number of families with children.  More than 200,000 Israelis have been displaced, and many of them are living in hotels all around Israel, including this one in Jerusalem.  They were evacuated from homes near the northern border with Lebanon because of Hezbollah shelling and from the Gaza envelope because of the war there.  The children and parents are packed into hotel rooms, the children’s play area is the hallways and elevators, and there is a considerable amount of chaos in the hotel.  There is no end to these living accommodations in sight; the children are being schooled.

We had a briefing on what to do if and when the sirens sound.  Depending on where in Israel we are, we will have from 15 to 90 seconds to get as safe as possible.  All buildings have recommended safe areas—in the hotel, it’s stairways.  If we are in a van or bus, we are to duck down below window level so that any shrapnel which could come through a window won’t hit us.  And more.  We are told you can hear the rockets, hear the Iron Dome anti-rocket missile, hear the boom when they collide, and still must be careful because of the falling debris.  The Iron Dome is about 90% successful in shooting down incoming missiles.  Everyone in Israel is living like this continually.

All over Israel there are yellow ribbons tied around anything which will hold them in support of the hostages and the efforts to bring them home.

We had four incredible activities today, each one of which could take an entire blog write-up.  I’ll try to be thorough but brief.  The first was a visit to Metzilot Hamazon, which is an NGO dedicated to providing food to Israelis in need.  It is located at the enormous wholesale market from where all the fresh produce in Jerusalem is distributed.  We had a short lecture about the founding of the NGO and its operation.  As with most such distribution centers, a substantial amount of food goes to waste, not being sold or being somewhat imperfect.  The NGO operates pop-up markets all over Jerusalem where patrons pay what they want.  At the entrance is a constantly updated sign showing how much food they have rescued:

Our volunteer activity there was to remove grapefruit rinds, and then separate the rind into two parts: the very thin yellow portion and the thick white part underneath.  The yellow part is used in making marmalade and the white is made into candy.  The pulp is kept separately for usual fruit uses.  Here I am washing the grapefruit to get off any pesticides:

Here’s how the grapefruit is worked:

Here we all are working:

It’s a tedious business!  We cleaned up our work area and next went to the offices of the Joint Distribution Committee. 

Since 1917, the JDC has supported people in need all over the world except in North America.  We had a tour of the Jerusalem facility, and a talk about the incredible work they do, focusing on the disaster relief for which they’re famous.  They are apolitical, non-partisan, and extremely fast and flexible, getting to disasters in very short periods of time, most recently helping with earthquakes in Turkey and India.  500 people work at the Jerusalem office and when October 7 hit, they jumped into action.  They’ve been responsible for placing kindergartens and schools in the hotels where evacuees are.  They’ve worked with small businesses hurt by the war to help them stay afloat.  And most importantly, they are helping with both physical and emotional healing of people hurt or traumatized by the war.  One piece of emotional healing has been hibuki dolls, dolls which literally hug a child, and which, they’ve found, children talk to and are soothed by:

We had a visit with the Joint archivist, who had pulled material of interest to our Rochester contingent.  Rabbi Philip Bernstein was in Europe for 16 months immediately post WW II, visiting Displaced Persons camps and helping with resettlement.  The archivist had a letter:

The letter was written to Rabbi Bernstein about a Mrs. Atty or Attie (it’s spelled both ways in the letter), a member of his congregation at home, who had the ability to place 25 refugee children for adoption.  No one knows what happened!

 We stopped at the Mahane Yehuda market for lunch on our own (tempted by the incredible selection of marzipan):

We then drove to Tel Aviv and went to the offices of the Jewish Agency for Israel, an NGO which supports immigrants and helps them with resettlement.  Before Covid-19, an average of 30,000 people from all over the world made Aliyah—moved to the Jewish homeland.  This dropped some during Covid, but then, immediately after Russia invaded Ukraine, 75,000 Jews from all the countries of the former Soviet Union came.  The Jewish Agency has 25 absorption centers where immigrants live for 6-12 months.  After October 7, 17 of them were evacuated, and now they’re helping all these new immigrants deal with their beginning familiarity with the country and the language as well as being displaced from their homes.  We met with five Russians, two couples and a single man, who related their stories of coming here.  They all said that despite the major disruption in their immigration process they are extremely happy to be here, and they were full of praise for the help they’ve been receiving.  It was lovely to hear.  Their English was remarkable, having been learned as a foreign language in Russia.

Our final visit was the most emotional.  We went to the Hostage and Missing Families Center, housed in a building in Tel Aviv. 

We met with two people who have family member missing and presumed in Gaza as hostages, although there’s no certainty that they’re alive.  We heard the stories of the invasion of the kibbutz’s in the Gaza envelope, the hiding of family members in safe rooms and the shooting of the doors by the invaders, with the abduction of people.  Lee Siegel’s brother, Keith, is missing:

He has a Rochester connection: another brother is David Siegel who lives in Rochester.  We also heard the story of Oded Lifshitz, told by his granddaughter.  Oded and his wife were abducted, separated, and she was released in one of the negotiated swaps.  In her 80s, she was taken into Gaza and driven around, paraded and displayed as a prize to cheering crowds.  She also was physically accosted by the crowds and was protected from more harm by her abductors!  The stories we heard were simply horrendous, and we were all close to tears.

We returned to Jerusalem.  It was a day of enormous contrasts and incredible emotion.  And we start all over again tomorrow morning.