The kidnapping of the boys in Gush Etzion, the murder of the Arab boy from Shuafat, Operation Protective Edge in Gaza. One event follows another. And somehow, on one small evening in the city of Elad this week, it all came together.
Sunday, 8 p.m., the amphitheater in the city. A rally to encourage the youth. MK Yoni Shtavun of the Jewish Home organized this rally after several painful conversations with these young people. "I thought we should do one evening just for them, to encourage them," he says as the park begins to fill with hundreds of boys and girls. The mother sitting next to me is almost crying with excitement. "What a difficult month they've had," she says. "During the period of uncertainty, after the kidnapping, they volunteered to manage all the visits and events of solidarity with the Yifrach family, they really went above and beyond. Not to mention the prayers and Torah study day and night, and the nights when they simply couldn't sleep. And now, on Shiva on Eyal, they run the tent of comfort with thousands of visitors. I really worry about them.".
The rally was organized when Operation "Brothers' Return" was in the headlines, but it took place when the treatment of our cousins, not our brothers, had already become the headline. That very evening, it was allowed to be published that Jewish boys were suspected of the murder of 16-year-old Muhammad Abu Khdeir. It seems that when the news was published, the secularists rushed to make sure that the murderers were religious, the religious to make sure that they were Haredi, and the Haredi to make sure that they were no longer Haredi. All sectors rallied around these marginalized and distressed boys, trying to stick them in a different environment.
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Rabbi Dov Singer, like his mother Rachel Frankel, was first exposed to the general public in light of the events, but it seems he will not return to obscurity. The head of the yeshiva where two of the kidnapped students studied has spoken at countless forums and events in the past month. In the car, on the way to the event, he heard the latest news, and this is what he said to Elad's confused and grieving youth: "We came to talk about other things, but there is very bad news tonight. I still don't believe it, and I still hope it's not true. If it turns out that a Jewish boy brutally murdered an Arab boy, it's unfortunate on every level - but first and foremost it's terrible blasphemy. When we say the names Gil-Ad, Eyal and Naftali, we don't say afterwards 'May they be remembered with blessing' but add 'May the Lord avenge their blood.' That's the role of the Lord, and if someone, God forbid, takes the role of the Lord - then that's blasphemy. Are you running the world or is he? It's the most serious stupidity and the most serious wickedness to take on his role. We need to fix this, and how do you fix hatred? With love. We need to add more and more love.".
After him, Maya Moreno-Ohana, an IDF widow, takes the stage. MK Shtavun, who received the Chief of Staff's Medal for his performance in the Second Lebanon War, invited her to speak to the youth about overcoming crises. Maya's husband, Lt. Col. Emmanuel Moreno, is the only IDF soldier whose photo is still forbidden to be published, even eight years after he fell. He was killed in a secret operation during the Second Lebanon War, and if his face is revealed, other unknown operations in which he was involved will be revealed. He left Maya with three daughters. She has since remarried and given birth to two more children. Moreno-Ohana also planned to come and speak about coping with grief, but current events changed her plans and "red alert" alarms disrupted her speech.
""I'm coming to you from the south. Right now, Qassams are falling near our house," she tells Elad's youth. "We hear 'red paint' when I'm hanging out laundry and when the children are playing in the yard. Sometimes the missile is intercepted right above us, and sometimes it falls close. My message to myself and the children is clear: I will go to the protected area, and then I will continue hanging laundry from the same shirt where I left off. I will not stop my life.
""You know, a few years after I married Emmanuel, my pregnancy ended, unfortunately, in the loss of the baby. I remember Emmanuel telling me one strong sentence at the time: Our concern is not success, but how we deal with difficulties. It's a sentence that stayed with me later, after Emmanuel fell. It took me time to recover, but I remembered that the main thing is not to always succeed, but to be able to deal with difficulty.".
In this week's parashah, Parashah "Pinchas," Moses sees the Land of Israel from the other side, but does not enter it. Commentators who discuss the parashah mention that Moses' dream of entering the Promised Land is also confronted by reality. After 40 years in the desert on the way to the land flowing with milk and honey, the people of Israel finally arrive in a land that also has wars, struggles, and difficulties. This is the case from the days of Joshua ben Nun to "Brothers' Return" and "Protective Edge." So why did Moses insist so much? What is the meaning of his great ambition? The answer is that the very life here - with all the complexity on the way - is a privilege. Moses wanted to be part of the historical story, with its good and its bad.
In the middle of the rally, my sister-in-law calls from the south. She, her husband and four children want to come to us, to Jerusalem, starting tomorrow morning. They did arrive in the morning, and in the evening the first alarm sounded in the capital. As the cliché goes, we came to strengthen and we left strengthened. It seems to me that every frightened Jerusalem family that suddenly hears an alarm should have had an experienced southern family attached to them this week. Their children walked calmly to the police station, taught us to distinguish between the sounds of explosions and shootings, and most of all demonstrated the ever-worn and so important word – resilience. Their cell phones, by the way, vibrate every time there is a red light in the south, and that alone is enough to scare us. Us, but not them. It is amazing to discover what character hundreds of thousands of Israelis have had to develop in recent years. It is amazing that we dare to claim after a few alarms in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv or Zichron Yaakov that "now we understand what they in the south are experiencing there." We don’t understand.
7The musical part of the evening at Elad arrives. The singers who were invited here have prepared a mournful, sad list of songs in advance. Nevertheless, less than a kilometer from this amp, the Yifrach family is still sitting in a shiva. When the first notes are heard, the youth stand up. They hug each other, move slowly from side to side, sing quietly. Some are still wearing the "Bringing the Boys Back Home" T-shirts. Some are already wearing the "Continuing Their Way" T-shirts. After a few songs, they take advantage of the few seconds' break between one slow song and another, and spontaneously begin to sing "Am Yisrael Chai." They really force the musicians to adapt to them. Then they move on to the song "Am Hanetzkeh Le Mech Mech Mech Erdere Orda". The trapped energies of an entire month suddenly erupt in jumps, roars, and here and there in tears. The adults in the audience at first send looks of concern, because maybe it's not so appropriate, but then they join them inside, in a huge dance circle.
Jewish status:""He who blessed our fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, will bless the soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces, who stand guard over our land and the cities of our God from the border of Lebanon to the desert of Egypt, and from the Great Sea to the entrance of the Arava, on land, in the air, and at sea" (from the prayer for the peace of IDF soldiers)
