This bulletin should be arriving
on your doorsteps just over a week after Israel went to the polls to elect a
new Government. Israeli politics are unpredictable at best, and as I am writing
this over a month before the elections (time gets very confusing when writing
articles in advance) I am not going to make any predictions for what the result
will be.
That said, as I sit to write this
article, it is only a few weeks since I have returned from a CCAR (Central
Conference of American Rabbis) solidarity mission to Israel. As well as time in
Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Tsfat, the Golan Heights and other important stops on any
Israel trip, we also went to the south to visit communities on the border with
the Gaza Strip.
At Netiv HaAsara, one of the
communities we visited, we drove outside the walls of the community and stood
on a small hill looking over the security wall on the northern side of the Gaza
Strip. We were close enough to see a man wandering around on the other side, in
a place where a week and a half earlier it would have been unsafe for either of
us to stand. At Kibbutz Kfar Aza we walked down to the very edge of the Kibbutz
and looked across at the lights of the various communities in the Gaza Strip.
We followed a pathway which has had rockets raining down on it over the last
few years.
We understand that Israel borders
the Gaza Strip, but seeing it up close and personal brought a deeper insight
into the proximity of the two communities.
Regardless of who wins the
Israeli elections (and with the way that politics over there go it is unlikely
there will be an outright winner, with many claiming victory) we need to deepen
our bond and connection with the State of Israel. Not simply on a political
level, but because we as a community have always understood the message: kol
Yisrael aravim zeh bazeh – all the people of Israel are responsible one for
another. We have a responsibility and connection to these people as members of
our global Jewish family.
One of the thoughts I had, as I
visited these communities, was the fact that during the recent Operation Pillar
of Defense, many of these families were forced to leave their homes to stay
with friends and family elsewhere in the country. Earlier that same month, many
of our members were forced to leave their homes as a result of the lack of
power and heat as we felt the impact of Hurricane Sandy. They left under a
barrage of terrorist rockets and we left under the force of a hurricane.
Both of us are now back in our
homes. But while we can probably sleep soundly in our beds, with little concern
(at least for now) about another hurricane; in Israel although they are
sleeping in their own beds, I am sure that for these southern communities there
is still a fear over what will happen next in Gaza.
We cannot fully empathize with
what it is like to live in a community on the front line of a conflict such as
the one between the terrorist of Gaza and the State of Israel. But we have
experienced the need to leave our homes, we have a shared history with these people,
and together we need to ensure that we have a shared future. These people are
our family, and we must consider what we can do to support our family both near
and far; because after all kol Yisrael aravim zeh bazeh.
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