Rabbi Heller's Blog

Day 5 A tale of two Yitzhars.

Today we had a chance to focus on the painful present, but also think about the future.

We spent time at Mount Herzl, Israel’s main military cemetery.  Our original intent was to visit the graves of two fallen soldiers who had made an impact on our community, and honor their memories. One was Rose Lubin, H”YD, who grew up in Atlanta and made Aliyah as a lone soldier.  Yesterday I mentioned that Lubin had rushed to defend her adopted kibbutz on October 7, carrying the wounded inside the gates.  A few weeks later, she was stabbed to death by a 16 year old Palestinian teen while protecting the old city of Jerusalem.  She was technically not a soldier, but a member of the police, her grave is in the special section for fallen police officers.  Rabbi Binyamin Friedman, her rabbi, recounted highlights of the eulogy that he had given for her.  We also visited the grave of Dekel Suissa H”YD. Dekel was born in Israel and had been a shinshin, spending a year as a volunteer in our community, primarily at Or Hatorah but also in our Btlab religious school program.  Rabbi Starr spoke about the impact that he had in our community, and I shared reminiscences of his contributions at B’nai Torah.

However, in planning our day, we could not have known that we would also had the opportunity to attend a portion of the funeral of Yitzhar Hoffman, H”YD.   He fell in battle yesterday in the al-Shati refugee camp.  As it turns out, we were not far from him when he was killed, and it seems likely that the smoke in the pictures that I took yesterday was from that very battle.  Yitzhar was 36 years old, a father of two.  In listening to the eulogies from his brother, sister, and fellow soldiers, we learned that he was a unit commander, one of the soldiers who liberated Kibbutz Be’eri.  It had taken three days to clear the area, and he had expressed regrets to the residents that he could not save more of them.  Despite having been wounded once, he returned to his unit.

However, we also began thinking about the day after the war.  We continued to confront what this moment in time means for the future of Israeli society. At the Israel Democracy Institute, we learned about the challenges of integrating Israel’s Haredi community into the larger society.  On the one hand, part of their religious vision is to keep up boundaries between themselves and influences that might tempt them to leave their way of life.  On the other hand, many of them do not serve in the military or have the training needed to work and support their families, and as they grow in numbers, that segment of society will need to participate more actively in Israel’s defense and economy.

We had dinner with Yossi Klein Halevi, who talked about how Israel’s failures on October 7^th, in addition to the horrific impact on individuals and communities, had damaged the countries credibility and strategic position. On the other hand, he reflected that there were blessings as well.  It was amazing that Israeli society could defend itself and provide social services even when the government was too paralyzed to act.  Furthermore, Israeli society went from being as divided as it had ever been on October 6, to as united as it had ever been two days later.   Even now, cracks are starting to show around whether there is a price that is too high to pay for return of the hostages, and whether right-wing plans to return to permanent rule and settlement in Gaza are either ethically defensible or wise.  However, there is still overwhelming support for the war, for those on the right and the left, even among many who distrust Netanyahu or are concerned about the impact on Palestinians.  Indeed, I met with a friend who has been an activist in promoting Palestinian rights and dialogue for over 20 years.  She shared that though it is very painful to her, she feels that the war is just, and must be fought.

Klein-Halevy, as he looked into his crystal ball, predicted that these trends open up the possibility of new streams of leadership emerging.  Reservists coming home from the war, many of them religious Zionists, will want to know that if they or their children return to battle, that it be with a clear plan.  Other leaders will emerge on the left, as those who led movements opposing to the new government immediately pivoted to providing the safety need needed by refugees.  We met the leader of one such group, who on the morning of October 7 began creating a huge network for refugees coming to Jerusalem, including every kind of support, from groceries to transportation to a thrift store that allowed them to find clothing with dignity. He is now running for office.

Those leaders will be needed, because this war is just the first round.  Hamas is a proxy of Iran, and one of its weakest.  Hizbollah, on Israel’s northern border, is a real army, with tens of thousands of missiles, and many troops who had been in Gaza are being redirected for possible service on the northern border.  Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons has also not slowed down.

As a group of community leaders,  we came to support Israel and learn about it, but there is a limit to how much we can impact Israeli society directly.  We had another important intention with our visit, which was think about how we can work together for the benefit of our own community. To that end,  we met with two speakers who spoke about the need for a recalibration of the relationship between Israel and the Diaspora.

Yitzhar Hess, vice chair of the World Zionist Organization, greeted us in the historic room where Israel’s cabinet met for the first few years after 1948! A major portion of his role is determining how Israel and the Diaspora are strengthened by their mutual relationships.  He told us the story of how his own son returned from deep in the Himalayas to fight with his unit, and his gratitude that his son had not already been in Israel, because he would likely have been one of the first soldiers who reached the Gaza envelope, many of whom did not survive. He challenged us to think differently about relationships between our communities, and how engaging with the World Zionist Congress, including participating in an election taking place in just over a year, was key to determining how those resources would be applied.

David Hazony in his book“Jewish Priorities: Sixty-Five Proposals for the Future of Our People” lays out a diversity of visions for strategies for how Judaism might thrive.  One of his key points was that much left-wing antisemitism was seeded in the academic community in the 1970’s and only now is bearing its full fruit, and that therefore we must be thinking about different fronts in the current the  war of ideas, where investments are needed now to  will bear fruit in a generation.   Another was that we needed to look at new ways to engage our community in a positive way with Jewish identity.  It will be interesting to see how these conversations continue upon our return to Atlanta.