Dear Lisa and Neil,
I hope you’ve had a healthy and peaceful start to the new year. After being in Israel earlier this month, I’m glad to be resuming my regular updates to you on CJP’s response to the war in Israel. The crisis continues – and while what we see, hear, and read in the news is often difficult – there is so much good happening in Israel. I plan to update you weekly about the Israel Emergency Fund – and how your generous support is helping to make a tremendous impact.
Please read on for my reflections from Israel… and if you’re interested in joining an upcoming CJP Solidarity Mission to Israel, please see the bottom of this email for details.
Last week – along with my colleague Amy Mitman – I was incredibly humbled and proud to lead CJP’s first Solidarity Mission to Israel. Along with 18 community members, we spent 2.5 days on the ground in Israel, bearing witness in real time to the utter destruction and despair, while also absorbing the resiliency and bravery of a people who have risen to meet this moment with a spirit that can’t be put into words but can be felt in every breath you take while there.
Our group had the immense privilege of visiting with CJP grantees, including spending time at the temporary Tel Aviv homes of the members of Kibbutz Re’im, made possible by a $1 million grant from CJP’s Israel Emergency Fund. We were joined by kibbutzniks who shared their painful stories. One woman described how dislocated she feels, not just physically but in her sense of self. For many years, living so close to the Gazan border, she drove Gazans to their doctors’ appointments in Israel. She formed relationships, and worked tirelessly at what she described as being a “peacenik.”
Since October 7, after she watched her home desecrated and her friends murdered around her, she told us she has “lost her compassion” and doesn’t yet know how to understand her own sense of identity.
And yet, life continues as affirmed by the joyful smiles of the 17 toddlers and young children of the kibbutz when they received Beanie Baby stuffed animals from our group. Time and time again, Israelis told us—the hugs you are bringing matter. They reminded us that we brought them hope and that when we came to see what happened with our eyes, we aren’t letting the world say it didn’t happen. I like to think that the Beanie Babies for the Kibbutz Re’im children are ongoing hugs from each of us in Boston, holding them at night.
As we prepared for this intense journey, we had been optimistic that we could find a way to build a narrative of hope into our experience. And yet, the reality of this moment, as explained to us in extraordinary briefings from Colonel Miri Eisen, scholar Daniel Gordis and Israel’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism Michal Cotler-Wunsh, is not yet a story of hope or optimism – but rather one of determination and resilience built on uncertainty and even palpable terror and fear.
Without question, there were moments across our trip of smiles and levity. We shared lunch with a reserve tank unit right on the Gazan border popularly known as the “Phoenix”, given that the tank operators are all older and operating refurbished, formerly retired tanks. We heard their jokes, camaraderie, and care for one another.
We had an inspiring visit to a company right within the Gaza Envelope that is revolutionizing the plastics industry. They are persevering with a mission to save the planet even as members of their workforce were killed on October 7, and most others are now driving more than two hours to work each day from a hotel room they’ve been living in for the last three months. And as we had dinner at an extraordinary restaurant in Tel Aviv, where the kitchen staff is comprised of at-risk youth rebuilding their lives, we heard birthday parties, friends gathering, and laughter.
But Israel is at war and the Jewish people are in pain. I have returned feeling like I stepped into the pages of history. It feels imperative to me that as leaders of the Jewish community, we all go to bear witness to the atrocities in southern Israel.
There is no photo or string of words I can put together that can replicate the feelings of walking amongst fresh death. You put your feet one in front of the other amongst the ruins of Kfar Aza, but it is the feeling you take home of standing amongst the physical trails of people being dragged from their beds by their hair. You can still hear in your mind the screams of the women who were raped and then murdered, with no outrage yet from the international community.
When we sat in Hostage Square with families begging for help returning their loved ones or when we visited with injured soldiers or met a returned hostage, we saw the hollowness in their eyes. You can’t help but wonder what “being OK” eventually will mean for them. We heard Israelis excruciatingly acknowledge that the price Gazans are paying is terrifyingly high, and that the realities of war are torturous as the future of Israel is in the balance.
On our last day, we had a visit to the kotel (Western Wall) planned. It felt important to us that we give our group the opportunity to reflect on this trip with their hearts and spirits. As luck would have it, 50,000 other people had the same idea and our visit coincided with a prayer service calling for the return of the hostages, led by both Chief Rabbis of Israel and attended by many hostage families. We stood, we prayed, and most memorably for me, we felt the reverberations of the blow of the shofar, sounded for many minutes, lifting directly to the heavens, knocking on the Western Wall, and hopefully reaching the souls of those still held in captivity.
There is so much we should be proud of at CJP — our grants are changing lives on the ground, they are giving hope, they are meeting the moment. We are not shying away from the complex realities of the war – and we are not denying the multiple ways of looking or thinking about the cost of war to all. My colleagues put a mission together that changed our lives. And yet, there is so much more to do. There are too many people still in need. The hostages have been in captivity for more than 100 days. Hold them and their families in your soul.
It was almost impossible to leave, and unimaginable that as our group flew over Europe on our way home, as an Orwellian proceeding putting Israel on trial for genocide began below us at the Hague. For that reason and so many more, we must all go bear witness. We must see with our own eyes what happened on October 7. We need to hear the voices of Israelis — Jewish, Arab, Druze, and more — and we must not let others tell us what happened on that day.
More from Israel
My CJP colleagues Ariel Libhaber and Noam Bentov also recently traveled to Israel to assess and discuss both current and future needs in the aftermath of the war. They shared their reflections on JewishBoston.com; you can read them here. I’m so grateful for all they are doing to support our partners on the ground.
Solidarity Missions
We have two more opportunities for travel to Israel on a solidarity mission. These trips will be short and meaningful while offering our Boston community the chance to volunteer, meet with soldiers and victims’ families, and stand with Israel – in person.
Remaining mission dates in early 2024 are January 28–February 1 and February 11–15.
If you’d like more information, please contact Dani Weinstein at DaniW@cjp.org
Israel Emergency Fund
Our Israel Emergency Fund Task Force will resume its regular meetings on January 23. I look forward to updating you on the upcoming grant distributions made to support the variety of needs in Israel.
In the meantime, I wanted to share this short piece on our grantee Machshava Tova. With your generosity, CJP is helping the organization provide laptops, as well as a sense of normalcy, to Israeli children displaced by the war.
Thank you for all you’ve done – and will do – to help strengthen our community, Israel, and the Jewish People. We are beyond grateful for your partnership and leadership. Together, we will continue to stand proud with Israel. Am Yisrael Chai!
With deep gratitude,
Sarah Abramson, Ph.D.
Executive Vice President, Strategy and Impact
