Earlier this month, my wife, Hedy, and I traveled to Berlin and Israel as part of The Jewish Federations of North America’s Financial Resource Development (FRD) Leadership Mission. The trip was a dynamic and inspiring opportunity for Federations’ top FRD lay and professional leaders to learn about the historic city of Berlin through a Jewish lens and to see firsthand how the North American Jewish community’s emergency response efforts are helping Israel to rebuild since Oct. 7. It was a life-changing opportunity, and I’m proud to share my reflections from the trip below.
As I stood with my wife, Hedy, on the Tel Aviv boardwalk, watching the sun gently touch the Mediterranean, tears uncontrollably streamed down my face.
It was both the end of Shabbat and our JFNA FRD mission. And, yes, I had shed a tear or two in the past when watching Tel Aviv sunsets—watching Hashem’s providence shine on our promised land—but this was different.
This was my first post-Oct. 7 Tel Aviv sunset, and I was emotionally spent. This mission began in Berlin—Berlin, of all places—before our sojourn to Israel. Within a span of six days, we were exposed to the deepest depths of evil and to the uplifting spirit of love.
Here’s just a taste of our mission of contrasts:
Berlin
The Shoah (Holocaust) still radiates from the city’s streets. The eerie sirens; the Reichstag headquarters building; and Railroad Station 17, where so many who came before us boarded trains to the camps and their death, are all still there.
Yet Berlin is also at the center of a German Jewish revival. Some 300,000 Jews now live in Germany, most from the former Soviet Union, some from Israel, and the rest from elsewhere. And where there are Jews, we, of course, found our overseas partners, the Jewish Agency for Israel (JAFI) and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), working to build Jewish community.
In Berlin, we met an adorable 12-year-old girl, Eva, from Dnipro, Ukraine—Boston’s sister city. Eva’s life is, by most measures, in shambles. She and her mother, with the JDC’s help, escaped Ukraine. But they had to leave Eva’s father and brothers behind as they’re of an age (between 18 and 60) where they may be needed as soldiers. Enter JAFI, with its Shalom Ukraine program, through which Eva is participating in summer camp and pursuing her passions of dance and gymnastics. We watched Eva dance with other Shalom Ukraine participants; her smile lit up the room and melted my heart.
Israel
First, some love. In Israel, we were inundated with stories of how CJP’s Israel Emergency Fund (IEF) is changing lives. Helping now-single parents (whose spouses in the reserves were called back to duty) get through their days. Providing summer camps for children of the displaced, the dead, or the captured. Rape counseling. And so on.
But also, evil. Hedy and I agree that this, our second trip to the Gaza Envelope, was possibly more painful than our first. Maybe that’s because on the first, the hate was just too incomprehensible. Maybe our brains put up walls as a defense mechanism—to keep the abhorrence from penetrating too deeply. But, once again, this time at Kibbutz Nir Oz, we witnessed Hamas’s destruction; we heard a firsthand account of its murder, mutilation, and rape; and of the bravery of those who willingly sacrificed their own lives to try to save their neighbors.
When we at last came upon the home of the Bibas family, held captive since Oct. 7, there were no defenses left to what we had witnessed and heard. Our souls were broken by heartache.
On this second journey into the abyss, we also went to the Nova Music Festival site, which we didn’t visit in January. Exiting the bus at Nova, we looked out on a sea of beautiful young people. Almost as far as our eyes could see, attractive, charming faces. But these were just photographs. Photographs memorializing each of the dead or the kidnapped. Each memorial representing a former life and a broken family. It was too much to take in. But, in truth, I don’t know how we were able to leave—it just didn’t seem right leaving these memorials to our children behind.
As I said, it was a mission of contrasts—and the contrast came later that same day, at the Soroka Medical Center in Beersheva, an IEF grantee. Here, we once again experienced love. Some of that love came in the form of the stories of the incredible efforts of Soroka’s staff (doctors, nurses, janitors—everyone) to save as many lives as they could after Oct. 7, when they were overwhelmed with the wounded. We learned how that staff has continued to provide amazing medical care to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers fighting in Gaza.
And some of the love was encapsuled in the story of Oz—an IDF hero we met at Soroka. Oz nearly lost his life in a boobytrapped house in Gaza, the same house in which 14 IDF soldiers died. Oz tried to warn them not to enter the house. But they did. At Soroka, the surgeons saved Oz’s life. Oz couldn’t bring himself to leave the hospital and rejoin life. His depression was too deep; his heart too broken. Enter the mental health initiative funded by the IEF, through which Oz received the counseling he needed and ultimately, the mental strength to go on living.
That’s our job, too. We must go on living. We must stand up to the evil as our Shoah survivors did—by commemorating life; by celebrating our Jewish peoplehood; by fighting the hate. And, as CJP has been doing for so long, by taking care of one another.
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