The solidarity mission to Israel is officially “over.” The past four days have felt like four weeks. I know my life shifted on Oct 7th. A nightmare unfolding. Boundaries that always seemed certain are no longer certain. My boundaries were transformed from the safety to the possibility …
The months since October 7 have been full of darkness. And the darkness persists when I think of our hostages, stuffed deep in tunnels in Gaza, under who knows what kind of horrific conditions. They are enveloped in darkness and I am enveloped in darkness, even in my otherwise sunny, carefre…
I’m not asking you to speak up. I’m not asking you to share my agony. I am asking you to understand the agony that Sam and I feel and that all Israelis feel and that many of the Jewish people in the world feel. We felt it on October 7 and the pain is just as sharp now. I will not waste y…
It’s not revenge. It’s not retaliation. The events of October 7, the evisceration, decapitation, dismemberment, the rape, the hostage taking, the massacres, the wanton cruelty, the celebration of death. None of this merited a retaliatory war. The war that Israel was forced into on Octobe…
Yesterday I ended my independent travels in Israel for the time being, and joined the group that inspired this trip in the first place, the partnership of Jewish Federations of the Southeast US and Czech Republic with the Hadera-Eiron Region of Israel. We met at the airport and immediately w…
In recent days the abhorrent charge of genocide by Israel against the inhabitants of Gaza has made world headlines and captured world opinion. Today I will talk a little bit about some of the experiences of my friends on the border with Gaza, who experienced nothing less than attempted genoc…
Somewhere along the road to delegitimizing Israel people started calling it an apartheid society. I put the blame squarely on the shoulders of former president Jimmy Carter, who popularized this slanderous term and loaded Israel with another burden of hate. Well today I traveled from Kfar Sa…
I’ve been in Israel now for a few days but jet lag has been hanging on to me. I feel young at heart but my body is acting old. Isn’t that how jet lag works? You feel like an extra 20 years have been added, and not in a nice way! But whether it’s the burden of years or the burden we all…
I spent my first night in Israel in Kfar Saba, a town with a long history and some very interesting features, just a bit north of Tel Aviv. The next couple of days I will be in the desert town of Mitzpe Ramon, founded only in the 1950s as an immigrant community (mostly Romanian and Moroccan …
Back in the ‘70s when I was in college there was a widespread myth that Israel was a militaristic society, bristling with aggression and violence. This trope came from my “progressive” liberal fellow students with whom I of course felt a close affinity though none of them had been to I…
The minute you get to the airport in Tel Aviv things are different. For example in the main hall of Ben Gurion Airport the faces of hostages still held by Hamas peer up at you as you come down the automated walkway. Not celebrities, not corporate logos, not sports stars or vacation destinati…
I traveled to Israel in January, 2024 to meet the people of a country embroiled in a long-term national trauma. No person in Israel was left untouched by the horrific massacres and desecration of human life at the hands of Hamas terrorists on October 7. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis are …
