12/13/2023
9/x Updates from my recent trip to Israel.
On the morning of Nov 30, we met with three members of the Hartman community who have loved ones fighting in Gaza. These were hard to hear.
Orit Avnery was just 10 months old when her father was killed in the Yom Kippor War (1973) when he himself was only 24.
"I was living for ten months, and then there was a crack, and then the rest of my life," she said.
Orit described a sense of closure on the day after Yom Kippor this year, 50 years after the day her father was killed. She was grateful for the life she has gotten to live, including her five children, four of whom are currently in the army.
One son at army headquarters in Tel Aviv, so she doesn't worry too much about him.
One, who is fighting in the north, is just 24 years old, just as her father was, with a 10 month old child, just as she was, when her father was killed.
Another one is single and the fourth has been married for less than a year; they are both fighting in Aza.
“My life right now is ‘no news, good news,’" she said. “But I can't tell them not to go, because we are fighting against darkness, against an evil that we cannot live with.”
"I’m not that type of woman, but my whole family is reading the whole book of tehilim (psalms) every day, and I am now praying every day to God and even more, to my father to be with him, to protect my son," she said. "You owe me this much," she says to her long passed father.
Ayala Deckel
"My husband is a reserve commander so he is always the first called up. But this is the first time our kids, ages 10, 12 and 14, are big enough to understand what it means that he is going."
"Last leave he got, he was home for only three days. He slept, showered and went to visit his comrades in the hospital and families of those killed to tell them about their loved ones. It's important for him to do that, since he never got that for his father, who was also killed in the Yom Kippor War.
I want him to tell me everything because we need to keep our kesher zugi, partnership connection, even though we don't talk everyday, or even every week.
I hope I get him back, and I hope the man I get back is still him. I can't cry now - I have to be strong. I'll cry later.
Last, we heard from Renana Ravitsky Pilzer who was born on October 7, 1973.
"I thought there was history and then there was us. I had thought Yom Hazikaron (Israeli memorial day) was something that happened to other people, long ago not me, not now, because I live in a "Western Liberal Democracy."
She told how her husband was called up on a Friday and went to Bar Ilan junction, which is in a religious neighborhood. His orders then changed, so he had some time on his hands on erev Shabbat, so he went to a haredi shul in his IDF uniform. He was warmly welcomed, davvened with the community and then was invited to a home for Shabbat dinner. He explained he would need to leave when summoned, and was reassured that it was not a problem. The kids only spoke Yiddish, but they were full of curiosity and admiration, offering him blessings of protection.
When the soldiers were summoned, he left the Shabbat meal and joined the other soldiers - most of whom were secular - in the middle of the junction, where they were smoking, using phones, and other activities which are traditionally forbidden on Shabbat.
The elders of the community surrounded the soldiers singing blessings before they went off to Gaza.
