By Sivan Rahav-Meir
After a day and a half with London’s Jewish community, the following are some of the memories I will take with me:
On the way there, Efrat, the El Al flight attendant, told me that this was the first flight since the outbreak of the war with no family members of the hostages on board. “They are going all over the world to speak. They are amazing people with whom it is a privilege to fly.”
Girls in the Hasmonean High School in London tell me they conceal their Star of David necklaces. Yet they also tell me that they have never been so proud and happy to be Jews.
How uplifting it was to enter the Ner Yisrael Synagogue to welcome Shabbat and to discover the congregants reading Psalms—many with tears in their eyes—on behalf of Israel. A fundraising project for Israel was displayed on the wall, solidarity delegations to Israel are being organized, and the names of thirty IDF soldiers who made aliyah from the community were displayed.
I heard from several Jewish congregations (Raleigh Close, Bridge Lane, Hadley Wood) how every one of their members has become a personal ambassador for Israel. “I have taken on the role of [IDF spokesperson] Daniel Hagari,” a physician told me with a smile. “Every day my work begins with answering questions about Israel.”
The principal of a Jewish high school asked me how to answer teenagers who see pro-Hamas TikTok videos and ask difficult questions.
At the end of any average conversation, the person would invariably sign off with the exclamation: “Am Yisrael chai!”
On the flight home, I sat in a row with two screaming babies. Previously, I would have been annoyed with such a disturbance, but now, after hearing stories about babies being taken hostage, I suddenly saw the parents and their babies in a completely new light. Make all the noise you want, little cuties!
And may we hear an abundance of good news.
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Here’s another story that shows how we continue to break records when it comes to acts of kindness, not only on the part of those who live here, but on the part of those in the Diaspora as well.
Haim and Hinda Heckelman run a catering business in Jerusalem. They were hired to cater the wedding of a Jewish couple from abroad, but because of the war, the couple and their relatives decided to hold the wedding closer to home, but here’s where the story gets interesting:
“We were sure the event had been canceled,” Hinda related. “But then at the last minute the couple surprised us and announced that they did not want to cancel. To the contrary, they wanted to increase the number of portions originally ordered to include the women affected by the war.
And so, the event was held last night at the International Convention Center in Jerusalem. They invited about 550 women, some of them single mothers, some displaced from their homes and living in hotels, some of them arriving by bus from Sderot, Ofakim, Netivot, and small communities near the Gaza periphery.
“In addition to being invited to a lavish feast, the guests were honored with a special entertainment program and lots of love and caring from the newly married couple and their entourage.”
Mazal tov to the couple who wishes to remain anonymous. Your home, from the very beginning, is being built on extraordinary lovingkindness.
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Ever since the war began, many special stories have been sent to me. Here are three of them:
- For many weeks, members of Kibbutz Sa’ad near Gaza have been welcome guests at the Nevo Hotel at the Dead Sea. Yesterday they went out and bought food and cooked an elegant meal of sumptuous dishes in the hotel kitchen for the entire staff of 150. Upon entering the dining room, each employee was greeted by the kibbutzniks with loud applause.
{IMG chayalim in tefillin
- Yishai Turgeman sent me a picture of soldiers putting on tefillin and explained as follows: Noam is a commanding officer of soldiers in a fighting unit. One day he did not have a chance to put on tefillin. As the sun was setting, even though his tefillin bag was only a few meters away, he could not put them on because of the state of alert that demanded his full attention. The other soldiers, however, felt his deep frustration and dismay. So, what happened the next day? If, for just one day, it was impossible for one soldier to put on his tefillin, the next day, every soldier in his unit, one after the other, religious or otherwise, put on tefillin.
- Minister of Health Ariel Boso repeated what he heard from 72-year-old Adina Moshe from Kibbutz Nir Oz upon her release from captivity. A moment before her release, Adina had argued with a Hamas terrorist, saying it would be preferable that another woman, older and in worse shape than her, should be released first.
From a hotel kitchen to a pair of tefillin to the brave hostages emerging from terrorist tunnels, new chapters in lovingkindness and spiritual grandeur are being written every day.
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I recently saw a picture that uniquely inspired me. The caption of the picture read: “Fire in a Tanya class.” But where’s the fire? We see three Jews sitting around a rabbi, Baruch Slonim, in a synagogue in the city of Modiin. Based on the caption, it is evident that they are learning Tanya, a foundational Hassidic work.
At first glance, you might not think there was anything fiery going on there. After all, just three people came to the class. But you would be wrong. I wrote to Rav Slonim and asked if he would permit me to write something about the picture which I believe aptly describes the revolution brought about by the Hassidic movement.
This past Shabbat fell on the 19th of Kislev, a day of celebration for Chabad Hassidim. Many special events and grandiose celebrations are being held throughout Israel and the entire world. Yet the Hassidic movement emphasizes the significance of every “little” person and every “little” good deed because the main thing is quality, not quantity. Soulful connection and perseverance. It’s enough to hold a Torah or Tanya class regardless of the number of participants.
Hassidism calls upon all of us, particularly during challenging times, to focus on creating a little more goodness and light, drop by drop.
The rabbi enthusiastically agreed. He said, “The three souls learning Chassidus are three worlds! And soon there will be thirty and then three hundred.”
I looked again at the picture. Yes, fire. May we all keep using it to light up the world with every “little” thing that we do.
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“Shalom Sivan, we have already seen weddings occurring during the war, but the bar mitzvah of a 49-year-old we have yet to see. We are in a paratrooper unit that has been serving on the northern border for two months. The machine gunner in our platoon, a man named Robert, informed us that he never celebrated his bar mitzvah because he was born in the Soviet Union where observing Judaism was prohibited.
“In heart-to-heart conversations, he asked many questions about Judaism and tefillin, and so we decided to celebrate his bar mitzvah despite the war. We set the date for his birthday and everyone who was able to share in his joy arrived for the occasion.
“The Tikvat Olam organization donated an elegant pair of tefillin and a tallis so that today, Monday, the 21st of Kislev, Robert put on his new pair of tefillin and was called up to the Torah, coming full circle on his 49th birthday.
“Let’s hope that all of us can live up to this verse regarding tefillin: ‘And all people of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the Lord; and they shall be afraid of you.’ (Deuteronomy 28:10)
Mazal tov, dear Robert!
From Asaf Maki and all your fellow soldiers.” n
Sivan Rahav-Meir, married to Yedidya and a mother of five, lives in Jerusalem. She has been a journalist in the Israeli media from the age of six and has interviewed thousands of people on television, radio, and in print. Globes named her Israel’s most beloved journalist, Forbes listed her as one of the most influential women in Israel, and the Jerusalem Post ranked her among the 50 most influential Jewish people in the world.
Sivan lectures in Israel and abroad on Judaism, Israel, and new media. In recent years, she began writing The Daily Thought, a brief commentary on current events that is circulated in Jerusalem and translated into 17 languages for global distribution. This volunteer-run project provides spiritual uplift for Jews and non-Jews all over the world.
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