This piece is part of our Wit­ness­ing series, which shares pieces from Israeli authors and authors in Israel, as well as the expe­ri­ences of Jew­ish writ­ers around the globe in the after­math of Octo­ber 7th.

It is crit­i­cal to under­stand his­to­ry not just through the books that will be writ­ten lat­er, but also through the first-hand tes­ti­monies and real-time account­ing of events as they occur. At Jew­ish Book Coun­cil, we under­stand the val­ue of these writ­ten tes­ti­mo­ni­als and of shar­ing these indi­vid­ual expe­ri­ences. It’s more impor­tant now than ever to give space to these voic­es and narratives.

1. Black Hat

The cab­in lights are turned off even though it is not yet night and all the shades on the EL AL flight from Los Ange­les to Tel Aviv are closed. I’m read­ing Cyn­thia Ozick​’s essay ​“Ruth” as the small over­head light illu­mi­nates the text before me, when I hear a voice just over my shoulder. 

“We’re get­ting a minyan togeth­er if you want to join.” I look back into the dark­ness and see a young Ortho­dox rab­bi dressed in a black coat and black hat. His small pierc­ing eyes stare down at me through round, wire-rimmed glass­es, and he sports a moun­tain­ous beard. I must look con­fused because he says, ​“I saw your yarmulke.” ​“Oh,” I say, and touch the back of my head self-con­scious­ly. It’s the first time I’ve worn a yarmulke on an air­plane. I’m not used to some­one walk­ing up behind me and com­ment­ing on it. But this is a flight to Israel, I think. These are my peo­ple. Nonethe­less, I reply, ​“No thank you,” and hold my Cyn­thia Ozick book up into the light as if to explain my abstention. 

There was a time not long ago when I would have felt com­pelled by an Ortho­dox rabbi’s request to pray. I would have assumed that, because of his title, his Jew­ish knowl­edge was some­how greater than mine, there­fore mak­ing him more Jew­ish than me. What­ev­er that might mean. Now that I’m a rab­bini­cal stu­dent myself and I pray and study with reg­u­lar­i­ty, I’m no longer under the illu­sion that one’s appear­ance direct­ly cor­re­lates to one’s Jew­ish­ness, nor does one’s Jew­ish­ness eas­i­ly cor­re­late to one’s appear­ance. If only life were so sim­ple! The dis­con­tin­u­ous nature of real­i­ty sim­ply does not allow it. In any case, I think he gets the point. ​“Okay,” the young rab­bi says with a lugubri­ous shrug. Then he dis­ap­pears once more into the darkness.

2. Ful­ly Jewish

In Israel, it’s eas­i­er to feel ful­ly Jew­ish. How do I know this? I don’t. I have no proof, no evi­dence, oth­er than the feel­ing I have walk­ing through the streets of Jerusalem for the first time. It is a dif­fi­cult feel­ing to describe, espe­cial­ly to some­one who is not Jew­ish or to a Jew who has not been to Israel. But to a Jew who has been to Israel, it’s not hard to explain. They know exact­ly what you’re talk­ing about. The feel­ing is like light shin­ing through dark­ness, like wind hov­er­ing over the face of the deep. 

Most peo­ple you walk past in Jerusalem, and through­out Israel, are Jew­ish. What this means is that almost every glance, every bok­er tov, is shared with a fel­low Jew. In the US, we know this feel­ing of deep Jew­ish inclu­sion from liv­ing in cer­tain neigh­bor­hoods or belong­ing to cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties. But I have always felt that the feel­ing is par­tial, fleet­ing, tem­po­rary. In the US, Jews are Jews as Amer­i­cans, but, in so many ways, are not ful­ly Jew­ish in the same way that any Jew is ful­ly Jew­ish in Israel sim­ply by dint of being in Israel. After all, liv­ing in the land is a bib­li­cal mitzvot: ​“And you shall take pos­ses­sion of the land and set­tle in it” (Num 34:2). In the US, there is a default sup­pres­sion of Jew­ish­ness — not as the result of inten­tion­al ill-will but as the sec­ondary effect of liv­ing in a plu­ral­is­tic, sec­u­lar soci­ety. One’s Jew­ish­ness is always off­set or neu­tral­ized by some oth­er greater or less­er com­pet­ing iden­ti­ty. No mat­ter how sub­merged we may feel Jew­ish­ly, say, dur­ing ser­vice or chag, we are over-aware of the fact that the ​“nor­mal” non-Jew­ish world is wait­ing for us just around the corner. 

But in Israel there is no cor­ner and no non-Jew­ish world wait­ing for us just around it. In Israel you’ve already returned! You’re there, in the land itself. For instance, in Jerusalem, I did not feel oth­er. I did not feel like I had to explain myself, nor did any­one ask me to. Instead, those famil­iar Jew­ish faces I passed on the street smiled back at me, the light of their Jew­ish eyes reflect­ed into my own. 

3. The Shape of Prayer

Let me tell you about a shul I vis­it­ed in Jerusalem. From the out­side it is unre­mark­able, a sim­ple, unob­tru­sive design. But the inside. Oh, the inside! Let us first open the front doors, from the out­side world into the lob­by. This is the out­er-lay­er. Peel it back and you enter the lim­i­nal space between the out­side world and the sanc­tu­ary with­in. Here, in this non­de­script foy­er, this archi­tec­tur­al in-between, sev­er­al peo­ple rush this way and that. Ser­vices are about to begin. A mem­ber of the staff says, ​“Come in, come in.” I walk past him, open­ing the sec­ond set of doors from the lob­by to the sanc­tu­ary, as if remov­ing anoth­er layer. 

At first, I don’t notice any­thing unusu­al. I remove a sid­dur from the book­shelf along the back wall and sit on a bench halfway between the entrance and the Ark of the Torah. I watch as the women take their seats in the sep­a­rate, ele­vat­ed areas on either side of the sanc­tu­ary, a kind of bal­cony from which they peer down on the men below. An old­er man sit­ting direct­ly in front of me turns around and intro­duces him­self. He’s from Amer­i­ca. It doesn’t take long for us to real­ize we know some­one in com­mon. And then, with­out an intro­duc­to­ry word or ges­ture, a tall, beard­ed thir­ty-some­thing man steps onto the bimah. His body is rail-thin and resem­bles a long, crooked branch in dan­ger of snap­ping. His voice is low and heavy as he intones the litur­gy with a melan­choly, jazzy inflec­tion. I’ve nev­er heard any­thing like it. His voice lulls me with its exquis­ite sad­ness, a feel­ing that seems to per­me­ate this entire country. 

And it is while I am mes­mer­ized that I notice the sim­ple beau­ty of the sanc­tu­ary itself. Shaped like a fun­nel, it’s widest at the back, nar­row­ing until the front where the two out­er walls con­verge in a point at the Ark of the Torah. The effect is that all the ener­gy and atten­tion of the sanc­tu­ary, includ­ing from the Shali­ach Tzib­bur, whose back is to the con­gre­ga­tion, is focused nowhere else but on the Torah. The ser­vice is uni­di­rec­tion­al; all eyes point for­ward; all ener­gy is direct­ed for­ward. There is no small talk. There is no ser­mon. There is only con­gre­ga­tion, prayer, Torah, Hashem.

The ser­vice is over in an hour. The phys­i­cal space and the spir­i­tu­al mat­ter con­tained with­in it are twined in a sin­gle pur­pose. As we exit the sanc­tu­ary, the con­gre­ga­tion pours forth from the holy ves­sel, emp­ty­ing out into the warm, sun-dap­pled morning. 

4. Seeds

In the Gush-Etzion-Hebron area of the West Bank, my trav­el­ing com­pan­ions and I meet with two peace activists, an Israeli and a Pales­tin­ian. They sit side-by-side on met­al fold­ing chairs under­neath a great eave and talk about the con­flict. One line in par­tic­u­lar res­onates. The Israeli, a man from Seat­tle about my own age who made Aliyah many years ago, said: ​“The next time the Israelis and Pales­tini­ans sign a peace accord — that is, if we ever sign a peace accord again — the first line must say: ​‘This is God’s land.’ What­ev­er treaty we sign needs to be based on that mutu­al under­stand­ing.” I write the line down in my lit­tle green note­book: This is God’s Land, under­lin­ing each word. What I like about this state­ment — besides its meta­phys­i­cal verac­i­ty — is that it high­lights the fact we are all guests on the earth. Sojourn­ers, trav­el­ers. None of us owns the land under our feet. Acknowl­edg­ing this, one’s moti­va­tion shifts from domin­ion to ser­vice. Instead of ask­ing: How do I con­trol the land? How do I bend the land to serve my needs? We ask: What is my role towards the land, which is God’s land? How can I serve? 

5. Cities of the Plain

Stand­ing on the Alfei Man­ashe over­look, on the edge of the cen­tral West Bank, you can see the entire coast­line of Israel, almost as far south as Gaza, and, if you strain your eyes, all the way north to Haifa. The Mediter­ranean Sea is right there — you can almost reach out and touch it. And there’s Tel Aviv just across from us, which looks more like a child’s mod­el of a city than the real thing. Our guide, Yis­rael, tells us this over­look was Jor­dan­ian ter­ri­to­ry until 1967. Dur­ing the Six-Day War, Israel cap­tured the over­look and has retained it since then. ​“Strate­gi­cal­ly speak­ing, it’s the most per­fect van­tage point in all of Israel,” he says, ​“One per­son could come up here with a rock­et launch­er and shut down the air­port.” Look­ing out across the plain, I try to find Ben-Guri­on Air­port. Instead, all I see is destruc­tion: fire and smoke. I find the view unset­tling. I think of the phrase ​“cities of the Plain” and imag­ine God’s fire rain­ing down on Sodom and Gomor­rah (Gen. 13:12). Every­thing is so close, so frag­ile. And yet, these cities and this plain have sur­vived far longer than rea­son or log­ic would seem to allow. There must be some­thing hold­ing it all togeth­er, some­thing I can­not see from this overlook. 

6. Nova

We don’t plan on stop­ping at the Nova Music Fes­ti­val site, but we have a few extra min­utes, so Avi, our bus dri­ver, pulls off the high­way, down a dirt road, and into the large grav­el park­ing lot. 

“Ten min­utes, then we have to go.” Yis­rael tells us.

I step off the bus and hot wind lash­es me in the face as dust swirls all around. I stag­ger towards the sea of Israeli flags just across the park­ing lot. There’s one flag and one pho­to­graph for each per­son killed, sev­er­al hun­dred flags in total, all of them now beat­ing fran­ti­cal­ly in the wind. Near­by, dozens of IDF sol­diers, most­ly young women, assault rifles slung across their shoul­ders, walk around, many of them open­ly weep­ing. I try to look at each pho­to­graph, but I am over­whelmed by the sheer num­ber of Jew­ish faces, Jew­ish smiles, Jew­ish eyes, all of them now frozen in time. I can bare­ly walk straight. The grief is at once desta­bi­liz­ing and intoxicating.

Just then a bomb explodes in the dis­tance. It’s close. We’re only a mile from Gaza. An elder­ly woman walks past and I scan her deeply-etched face to gauge her reac­tion to the explo­sion. Noth­ing. Like so many here she appears lost in her own grief. Off to the left, I see a large tent, and head towards it. Inside, offi­cers, sol­diers, and fam­i­ly mem­bers recite the mourner’s kad­dish. I join in—Yit­gadal, v’yitkadash sh’mei raba—then quick­ly leave. I’m hav­ing trou­ble focus­ing. The agony and dis­tress here is thick, palpable. 

“Time to go.” some­one from our group shouts into the wind. 

I stag­ger back to the bus as anoth­er bomb explodes and I think: Good. All this grief and heat and sor­row is get­ting to me. I imag­ine fire and shrap­nel rip­ping through a den of Hamas fight­ers some­where just down the road. Good, I think again in my intox­i­ca­tion, good, good, good, good, good. 

7. Plum Farm

At a plum farm, some­where in the Negev, I reach up into the plum tree, pluck­ing the small ripe fruit from its branch­es. I place the plums into one of six plas­tic con­tain­ers arrayed in the box below. I try not to taste the plums but I can’t help it. I take a bite. It doesn’t taste like the plums I’m used to which are sweet­er and more pur­ple in col­or. I’ve nev­er tast­ed a plum picked straight from the tree in Israel. This fact alone makes it the sweet­est plum I’ve ever had. And as I reach up into the plum tree once more, I have an over­whelm­ing sense of déjà vu; I’ve been here before, I think. This is not the first time I’ve picked fruit from a tree in the Negev. I pick one plum after anoth­er, gath­er­ing five or six in my hand at a time, before gen­tly lay­ing them down in the con­tain­ers. Once all six con­tain­ers are filled, I car­ry the box back to the truck, set­ting it down in the shade. Some­one hands me a plas­tic bot­tle of water; I drink it in a sin­gle gulp. The sun is heavy and pen­e­trat­ing. I scan the hori­zon and imag­ine sev­er­al pick-up trucks filled with Hamas fight­ers head­ed our way. I imag­ine them attack­ing us. I imag­ine hav­ing a rifle, fight­ing back. Wip­ing the sweat from my eyes, I pick up anoth­er box with six emp­ty plas­tic con­tain­ers, and return to the plum trees. My hand, which is no longer my hand but the hand of gen­er­a­tions, reach­es up into the plum tree, high­er and higher. 

8. What is Israel to Me? 

One night as I walk through Jerusalem I’m struck by a thought— I need to be buried here. It’s not some­thing I’ve thought about before. But as soon as I think it, it seems obvi­ous, a hid­den truth revealed. It makes per­fect sense. If I’m buried in Israel, my grave will be a sign to my future gen­er­a­tions. Your father, your grand­fa­ther, and your great-grand­fa­ther, the sign will say, is buried in Israel. Go to his grave, the sign will say. Go to Israel and won­der: How is it that my ances­tor lived and died and was buried in Israel? Which is anoth­er way of ask­ing: What is Israel to me? 

And if I’m to be buried in Israel, the whis­per con­tin­ues, that means I need to live in Israel. I wouldn’t want to die some­where else, some­where not Israel, only to have my body shipped to Israel. That would be less than ide­al. But I’d love noth­ing more than to live in Israel, it would be the hon­or of a life­time. ​“One who is buried there will obtain atone­ment,” writes Mai­monides in his Mish­neh Torah, ​“it is as though the place (where one lies) were an altar which affects atone­ment, as it is said: ​‘And the land makes expi­a­tion for His peo­ple’ (Deut. 32:43).” 

The views and opin­ions expressed above are those of the author, based on their obser­va­tions and experiences.

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