385/10/23

The day when time stood still in Israel. And still does.

Yesterday was Simchat Torah, the last of a month or so of holidays on the Jewish calendar, which is determined by the lunar cycle.

October 7, 2023, was also Simchat Torah.

On this holiday, observant Jews celebrate the final one of 52 weekly readings in the Torah – known as the Old Testament to some – and then the cycle of constant learning starts afresh. At page one. “In the beginning….

In Israel, for secular Jews, Simchat Torah is yet another holiday, when big celebratory meals bring families and friends together.

But this year, as with all the previous holidays in the calendar, “happy” does not capture the mood. On my kibbutz in southern Israel, very close to where the Hamas massacre occurred, there was an eerie quiet yesterday. No large family gatherings. I only heard birdsong.

Driving to the area pool yesterday where I now swim, I passed a towering sign on the highway: “365/10/23.”

Today is 385/10/23.

In so many ways, time truly has stood still for the last year. And for most, this time of year, which is brimming with joy and life, will be marred by what was and still is.

If you have not already done so I recommend that you listen to a recent State of Tel Aviv podcast with Israeli journalist and scholar, Nadav Eyal. (You can access that podcast here.) We discuss the lethal blow that October 7 was to the identity and security of the soul of Israel. To be simplistic, moving forward, as a nation, cannot happen until we bring home every remaining hostage in Hamas Hell. Because not only was the border fence breached on October 7, but the Israeli psyche and ethos was gravely challenged. Punctured. Deeply.

The essence of Israel, its core reason for existing, is to offer a safe haven to all Jewish people. And if anyone should be endangered or captured while living out the Zionist ideal in Israel - to be one and equal among nations - then the national credo is that no one is left behind.

No one. No matter what.

And certainly not 101 elderly, babies, women, men, and soldiers – male and female. The hostages range in age from one and a half and five years old to 86.

After my swim, I spoke with the lifeguard. He approached me and began to say – “chag sameach”. Happy Holiday. A standard greeting at such times. And he stopped midway and said, “there’s nothing happy this year.”

He wondered aloud if we will ever be able to feel the way we once did. Just happy. Content. Our conversation meandered to a discussion about how we each manage the anxiety and stress, which is intense and constant. He is in his early 20s.

I recall spending Yom Kippur with relatives in Haifa, 1981. Just eight years after the war of the same name, when Egypt, Jordan and Syria launched a surprise attack against Israel, resulting in one of the deadliest offences in the nation’s short history. There were long days when it was a real possibility that Israel might be conquered. Cease to exist.

My relatives were fiercely secular, the product of a hard-core, old-school, socialist kibbutz upbringing. One side of my mother’s family arrived in Mandatory Palestine from Russia after the 1918 revolution. They were among the founders of one of the first and still thriving kibbutzim, the iconic Degania Bet. Founded in 1920 very close to the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee), the Kibbutz was also home to Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, who led the country to victory in the 1967 Six Day War.

When the sirens wailed at the beginning of the Day of Atonement – Yom Kippur – in 1981, a heaviness weighed on everyone in the home. They spoke only about that dreadful day, eight years earlier, when they were attacked. And the sirens then.

Being the products of kibbutz life – which was often aggressively hostile to any vestige of religion or observance – they served dinner soon after. After sundown. On Erev Yom Kippur. Roasted pork cutlets.

For real.

So – as they channeled their residual Yom Kippur trauma – I experienced one afresh. I’m pretty sure that was the first time I had ever seen a pork chop in a Jewish home. And on Erev Yom Kippur, no less. After the fast was supposed to have begun.

I, too, vividly remember the Yom Kippur War, 1973. I recall the tension and fear that permeated our home. We were not at all religious, but my father was a Holocaust survivor and a strong Zionist. As was my mother. My father carried so much internal tension and anger. He would surely be diagnosed with PTSD today. Surviving as a teenager under Nazi rule took its toll on him and what he perceived to be existential threats triggered very strong reactions. I remember him saying, over and over, that this might be the end of Israel. And. Then, what? He worried aloud. “Don’t tell me it can’t happen,” he said to me then. “Because it did happen.”

For all our renowned intelligence, we Jews make some very bad mistakes, repeatedly. Two of the worst attacks, ever, were launched against Israel on religious holidays. Our Arab neighbors are paying attention. They know that Israel is less prepared than it should be on such days and they revel in the poetic triumph; of dealing a lethal blow and marring the observance of our holidays and holy days, for decades to come.

On the evening before Simchat Torah, Wednesday night, Hezballah hammered the area just north of Tel Aviv with rockets. For decades, the posh suburbs of Ramat HaSharon and Herzliya were overlooked by Hamas and Hezballah. No longer. Very close by is the Mossad HQ, located at the Glilot junction, with a large mall and cinema complex adjacent. The symbolism of hitting Mossad is too tempting. And because many of their rockets and missiles are less than accurate, the surrounding civilian towns fall within the radius of error.

The following morning, Thursday - on the day of Simchat Torah - a fresh barrage rained down on various towns in northern Israel. On the evening news, we learned that five reserve soldiers had fallen in battle in South Lebanon that day.

And now we brace ourselves for the continuation of the Israeli retaliation to Iran’s missile attack on October 1, and whatever fresh hell that may bring our way.

Secretary Antony Blinken continued his shuttle diplomacy in the region throughout the holiday, working desperately to negotiate what is being called a “mini deal” for the release of four or five hostages. Rumors have been swirling for days now, in local media and online, that this was in the works. The Americans, of course, would very much like to maintain the status quo in the region, at least until after the election. The thought seems to be that if five hostages are released by Hamas on “humanitarian” grounds that may buy some time and hold off the expected Israeli attack on Iran.

And so, on Sunday, the heads of Mossad, CIA and others will convene in Doha, Qatar. Word is that Hamas has not agreed to participate in these talks.

This initiative is reminiscent of the surprise release of four hostages last October, in two groups of two. Hamas said they were freed on “humanitarian grounds.” One year on, every single one of the 101 should be released on humanitarian grounds.

In journalist Amir Tibon’s newly released book “Gates of Gaza”, which traces the history of his kibbutz, Nahal Oz, from its founding to October 7, he recounts the story of the release of the first two hostages on October 20. Judith and Natalie Raanan were American women who had been visiting family at Nahal Oz when captured. Once released, they shunned interviews (Judith did one some time after her release). They have maintained strict privacy.

Tibon writes that their release was the direct result of the American government exerting strong pressure on Qatar to demonstrate that it had influence over Hamas. By managing to negotiate the release of the four (two elderly women from Nir Oz were freed a few days later), Qatar satisfied the Americans that they should sit as the primary mediator in any negotiations involving Hamas and Israel, trumping Egypt and Turkey, which were also vying for the position.

It would appear that yet again, Secretary Blinken is hoping to manage a repeat of last October’s limited release of hostages; anything to manage the conflict between now and the US election. I am certain that his expectation is that such a “concession” may be enough to convince Israel to sit tight until after the vote.

We shall see what Sunday’s Doha confab brings.

In Israel, the war is taking a very heavy toll.

This small country cannot withstand the number of deaths and seriously injured from more than a year of combat. And if Israel engages further with Iran, the likelihood is that a long, protracted and costly war will ensue. Iran is a country of 90-million. It dwarfs Israel in terms of land mass. And it has a very sophisticated and motivated military. In addition to the military strain, Israelis are absorbed in domestic conflicts over many issues, including the exemption of all ultra-orthodox men from serving in the army. Meanwhile, men in their 40s, with families and businesses, show up. This cohort has spent much of the past year with their army units, in battle.

My Sunday podcast partner, Ya’akov Katz, sets out the situation very clearly in an “X” post this morning.

The government speaks of “total victory” but the population has no clear idea of what that means, in real life. It’s a great slogan. But after one year of this new day-to-day reality, Israel is fatigued.

Last night, following a bleak Simchat Torah holiday, TV channel 13 aired a documentary chronicling the last year in the lives of Rachel and Jon Goldberg-Polin, parents of 23-year-old Hersh, one of six hostages murdered in late August in a Hamas tunnel.

The horrific conditions in which Hersh and his five fellow captives had survived are well known. Starved, dehydrated and emaciated when murdered, we learned recently that they had subsisted for months on a diet of energy bars. Their torment is unimaginable.

Throughout the past year, a close friend and neighbor of Jon and Rachel’s – who also happens to be a journalist – filmed them struggling to push through each day. There were intimate moments in their home when they spoke of how they were finding the strength to advocate, tirelessly, as they did. We saw them at protests urging the government to prioritize making a deal that would repatriate all the hostages. Rachel. Stopping strangers in the street to increase awareness of the plight of her son and the other 100 hostages.

The Goldberg-Polins are not political people. But they quickly understood that those with their hands on the levers of power were not treating the rescue of the hostages as the top priority. Not by a longshot. As Jon states in one segment, there is always a reason to delay. “Netzarim corridor. Philadelphi corridor.” Etcetera. Etcetera.

Jon and Rachel are also not left wing “Kaplanistim” (shorthand for those who protest against the government in Tel Aviv) anarchists, as so many invoke as a default explanation for anyone who dissents from the government lines. These are modern orthodox American Israelis who believed in the founding ethos of the state of Israel.