This past shabbat, my husband and I went to the home of friends. When we arrived, our hostess warned us that she had made a lot of food since it was her way of coping with the war. On Saturday afternoon, one of her friends came over and mentioned that she was stuffed because she had made lots of food as her way of coping with the war.
Never having had the urge, I couldn’t relate to making food as a coping mechanism. I would have imagined that my main coping mechanism was watching or listening to the news, but today I found myself moving furniture, scrubbing the floor, and washing- scrubbing the handles on my kitchen cabinets. I began to realize that it was another way that I had of dealing with this war.
And this war isn’t a very easy thing to conceptualize. On the one hand, the simple truth is that we have enemies that desire my death and the death of all of my children, grandchildren, friends, and neighbors. They would enjoy seeing my blood running in the street. They target apartment houses, soccer fields, schools, pizza restaurants, and shopping centers so much desiring blood that they praise those who blow themselves up to accomplish their goals. They have never lied about how much of our country they want (all of it). So that should be simple.
But it isn’t, because we as Jews and Israelis don’t have the same values. I don’t know one person in this country who wouldn’t want a solution that allows us to live and let live. Were the Arabs to say to us (and mean it) “we just want to live our lives, raise our children, plant our gardens, go to theater and concerts and movies with you Jews (or separately from you Jews)†there is no one I know on the left or right who would have a problem with it. Land could be shared. Municipalities could have more or less autonomy. All of it could be solved, but we need them to care about their own lives more than they care about ruining ours.
We want simply to live. We have so much to give. When we left Gaza, the Arabs who had been working with us in agriculture begged us to stay. They had good jobs and were providing for their families. They knew that what we left would be destroyed by the other Arabs—and it was.
So we experience sadness and desperation and the pain of losing our beautiful young soldiers and sailors and the men and women and children killed in this war. But we also experience something amazing: the magnificence of the Israelis. We see kindness that is unparalleled… people taking in people they have never met so that they will be safe; singers performing for people who are in shelters; television programs that exude love and caring for our people; people collecting toys and games for the children who are in shelters; others collecting toiletries and snack foods for our soldiers. I have never seen such kindness. This nation pulls together as one. It reminds me of the rhetorical question in the liturgy “who is like your people Israel?†At times like these, they are magnificent.
But the kindness doesn’t stop there. I have received emails from many many of the people we know in the States telling us that they are thinking of us, praying for us, supporting us, standing with us. There is such kindness in the world. May it help us defeat the hate.
