At close-knit Kibbutz Re’im in southern Israel, the early morning hours of Oct. 7 started ordinarily, with quiet and community. Nearby, the Nova electronic music festival was winding down in the Negev Desert, marking the end of Sukkot. And then everything changed.
“Ninety-nine percent of us lived a quiet life. Each person had their own house and family,” says former kibbutz chairman David “Dudi” Gabay, a father of three. “Then, Oct. 7 brought disaster in all kinds of ways. Houses were burning next to ours. There was shooting. It’s a matter of luck that we’re alive.”
As chairman, Gabay was responsible for overseeing evacuation efforts for the approximately 450 surviving and displaced kibbutz residents. It quickly became apparent that they wouldn’t return home for a long time.
“We knew we couldn’t go back to Re’im. It was a war zone. So we did what we always do: We took care of ourselves,” he says.
Until December, families took shelter at a hotel in Eilat, with nothing but the clothes they wore when rushing to safety. A $1 million grant from CJP’s Israel Emergency Fund, with fiscal sponsor IsraAID, then enabled residents to move into furnished, safe, temporary housing at two apartment buildings in the Florentin section of southern Tel Aviv.
Funds also supported integration into Tel Aviv schools and resources for a kibbutz business recovery plan. CJP is the first federation to pilot offering kibbutz-specific aid, and will report back to Jewish Federations of North America with learning from the grant.
“Now, people have their own homes in a secure zone. I wouldn’t say it’s a regular life—it’s not a kibbutz—but now we have food on our table and a place to stay. The impact is enormous,” says Gabay, who spent six months in the Israel Defense Forces before returning to his rehomed family in Tel Aviv.
Zohar Livne Mizrahi, a social worker and current Re’im chair, moved with her three children and husband to Florentin. She had loved living in her home community: Her husband was a longtime farmer who grew up on the kibbutz; she relished the wide open spaces and sense of camaraderie. She never imagined leaving.
“It didn’t seem like something we could do, because we are kibbutzniks. We like our area; we like living next to the land in open areas, not on the 10th floor,” she says. “But what we realized is we wanted to stay together. There was nothing more important than that. So we put it to a vote, and 95% of our community chose to come to Tel Aviv, which is unbelievable. A life-saver, really,” she says.
And while apartment living is certainly different from her old way of life, she’s grateful for small comforts: a central community building that functions as a JCC, one- and two-bedroom homes and a fenced park for kids.
“They can run around free, and parents can feel safe,” she says.
CJP has offered similar support to The Upper Galilee Regional Council: Manara-Gadot Project, serving 22,000 residents from 29 kibbutzim in the north. It continues to provide municipal services to residents who remained and to residents who evacuated, in addition to soldiers now stationed in the area during the active war in the northern front.
Kibbutz Manara is a particularly vulnerable community of 300 people, where more than 70% of its infrastructure has been decimated. Kibbutz Gadot, in a safer part of the north, has absorbed as many residents as possible: A $300,000 CJP grant supports kindergartens, temporary housing and social resiliency projects.
Part of these efforts are due to CJP’s partnership with Project Horizon, a social entrepreneurial volunteer group created by Israel’s Business Alliance, comprising 150 civic-minded Israeli business leaders and the UJA-Federation of New York. Their goal is to keep relocated communities together, in safer parts of Israel, until their home communities are permanently rebuilt by the Israeli government.
Indeed, there are still more than 100,000 displaced Israelis in need of humanitarian support; an additional $3 million CJP grant will fund interim housing costs, mental health support, educational programs and employment solutions in 20 additional communities. UJA-Federation of New York is the fiscal sponsor.
“This has been a wonderful, beautiful project. Hundreds of people from companies have volunteered to help communities stay together and to help in the immediate term with education, community resilience and mental health,” says Gabriel Sod, director of government and media relations for UJA-Federation of New York. “It has been inspiring.”
Importantly, each community decides what they need most from Project Horizon, offering customization and autonomy at a traumatic time.
“We have the capacity to be very flexible with funding,” he says.
Importantly, while government funds largely go to infrastructural essentials like construction, he notes that Project Horizon focuses on residents’ daily needs, such as psychological support and youth programming. And, if there’s any consolation for such trauma, it’s a sense of humanitarian support and empathy from fellow Jews in the United States.
“I think a lot of Israelis have realized the fundamental importance of the support of American Jews, psychologically and in terms of investment. Communities are so appreciative,” Sod says.
Gabay agrees.
“Now, most importantly, we’re all together as a group and as a community,” he says.
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