The Hostages

I ask Chat:

What are the different Hebrew words for hostages?

Hostages, some still in Gaza,  חֲטוּפִים 

 

 חֲטוּפִים, שְׁבוּיִים, חבל 

It isn’t that I don’t know the word. Living here and not knowing the Hebrew word for hostage would mean I live under a rock. But my spelling is atrocious, so I ask to make sure it is correct. For you. 

Correct spelling in Hebrew makes a world difference.

A nanosecond reply:

Transliteration: chatufim

Meaning: Kidnapped people, abductees 

•  or שְׁבוּיִים

·       חָטוּף (chatuf) – male singular

·       חֲטוּפָה (chatufah) – female singular

·       חֲטוּפִים (chatufim) – plural (mixed or all male)

·       חֲטוּפוֹת (chatufot) – plural (feminine)

 Often used for civilians taken by force, e.g., on October 7 

I stopped saying thank you to Chat when my daughter AI-shamed me for thanking a computer. 

On a roll, I ask for the names of the חֲטוּפוֹת (females) and חֲטוּפִים (males) in Gaza. 

The robot directs me to the Chabad website for a more complete list. Chabad is an international organization dedicated to serving the Jewish people and bringing those who have lost their way or who never had a map—back to Judaism.

It is 6 am. Why ask now? So that I can pray with more intention (I am sharing here). It is one thing to have the hostages in mind. It is quite another to name them. 

Names, as my good friend Raya told me years ago, are important.

I read that there are 54 hostages still captive in Gaza. 

Fifty-four people, some young, some old, still captives, stolen from families and country, some mutilated, some raped, all starved, either dead or languishing in tunnels, alone. It is almost 2 years since their abduction on October 7, 2023. 

Of the 54 about 24 may be alive, 30 are confirmed dead.* 

How does that happen? How are deaths confirmed and by whom? Why do the dead matter so much, anyway? They are gone, no? Shouldn't we concentrate on the living? 

I ask why do the dead even matter, a rhetorical question, with more than a twinge of guilt. I know they matter. I am part of a big club. Members of the club have all lost someone, seemingly for eternity because that person went missing, never to be found again, likely murdered, kidnapped, or drowned. A human who left and never came back. 

We got our body back. It was not pretty.  

When he went missing 52 years ago I felt, albeit with the naiveté of a teenager, a glimmer of hope that he would come back alive, that he could come back, not as a גוף a body, the container of the soul, but as a living, breathing human being. 

It is denial to say (and I like denial very much) that it is the ones who are alive, the living that we  really do need, that we need to bargain for, need to get back at any price, the living more than the dead. 

But in Chicago, standing in front of a bronze plaque with our brother's name on it, the son of our two parents with bronze plaques next to his, I pause and give honor, shake my head. There is no feeling quite like this. It shatters denial with only a thud.   

But still, even though I know the answer, almost to test Chat GPT I type in: 

Why is burying deceased hostages in Israel so important ?

Introduction: 

Burial is deeply important, says Chat (not making a pun intentionally with the word deeply) not only emotionally and nationally, but also religiously and culturally.

There are five reasons that burial is important:   

1. Jewish people have a religious obligation. They are commanded to bury the dead promptly, decorously, an act of kindness that cannot be reciprocated. 

Deuteronomy 21:23: “You shall surely bury him the same day.”   

Before we die, when we are very much alive to hear the Old Mighty's commandments, we hear a commandment to be holy, this in our lifetime.קְדוֹשִׁים תִּהְיוּ (Leviticus 19:2).

 A commandment to bury on the same day is an affirmation of the body's sanctity even after death. It should not become as bodies do after our hearts stop beating.  

2.  Seeing to the return of the deceased to Israel is a moral and national duty.  

It provides closure and honor to the victims of terror, the captives. 

3. Burial in Israel restores identity. 

No longer a statistic, the life has a name and all of the honor that name affords. The body's proper caregivers are family and friends. 

4. Burial in the land of Israel returns the deceased to the ancestral homeland of every Jew. There is spiritual merit in this. 

It is why the Jewish dead are flown to Israel via El Al Airlines for burial. No matter where in the diaspora a person dies, that person symbolizes a link in an ever-growing chain of national and historical continuity. From ancient prophets to modern heroes, a Jewish person, dead or alive, is one of the people of Israel. 

5. Returning a body delivers a blow to terrorism. 

It is one swift kick in the uh, psyche, especially today, to sociopaths who resort to this tactic, using the dead as bargaining chips, such unconscionable objectification. Bringing them home is resistance, active protestation to foul play. 

There we have it, five neat categories. And Chat didn't even mention that feeling I had at the bronze plaque.

So add the sixth and we have an explanation, cogent reasons why we need them all. Every last one of them. 

therapydoc

*From Times of Israel reporting (24 hostages alive: 22 Israeli, 1 Thai, 1 Nepali):

Over a week aga a cry rang out with the news of the death of a young soldier, Yisrael Natan Rosenfeld. The nation, memorializes him, classes are dedicated to this beautiful young man. The shiva in a small tent, standing room only, 500 others. People in Israel travel all over the country to pay respects to people they do not know. This is what it means to give honor. More assassinations followed last week. 

Yisrael Natan Rosenfeld

 

 

  

The Kindness of Strangers

 War! What do we even do it for? Absolutely nothing—say it again.

That's Edwin Starr singing the original song WAR. He's railing against the war in Vietnam back in 1969. 

I wore a black arm band. 

Because genocide is a problem

The war in Gaza, the war with Iran, the war with Hezbollah in Lebanon—these are defensive wars despite what the media says about Israel's so called colonial, genocidal intentions.* 

Waiting around for a miracle isn't our style, people. 

There are reasons for wars, none less convincing than wishing to avoid genocide. Simchat Torah, October 7, 2023 Hamas warriors invade the homes of sleeping Israeli citizens from across the Gazan border. They murder innocents in their beds and over 2,000 celebrants at a nearby music festival. 

Our enemies relish attacking us on holidays. It is a thing. 

No small band of marauders, either. This is a rampage of cold-blooded murders, rape, sliced genitalia, body parts, decapitations, the crushed skulls of infants, all in a very short time. The young and the old are captive, still held hostage, starving, traumatized. The words BRING THEM HOME are on the mouths of the lips of every Israeli every single day, many times a day.

Yesterday I started to write about the hostages, the חטופים (cha-too-im) and couldn't. We had an event we needed to get to in Jerusalem and the trip included a trip to Bet Shemesh to pay respects to a friend who lost his wife. We had to get going.

Then something happened on the road, a testimony to the kindness of the people of Israel and I changed course.  

New words 

For some of you, new words: 

A new Israeli citizen is an oleh chadash (male) or an olah chadasha (female). 

FD and me as a couple? O-lim chad-shim. עולים חדשים

2 stories.

1. An upper-middle-aged couple in a mall for the first time, new Israeli citizens. 

Maybe you've been there, stressed in a new or foreign country. You don't speak the language, not intelligibly, and you have a problem. Maybe it's a lost wallet or phone, a missing child or mother-in-law (joke!). You don't know what to do and ask a random stranger who shrugs because of the language barrier. 

That doesn't happen here. That doesn't happen in Israel. They don't shrug. They take a minute to try to understand, to help. Especially if you say you are a new immigrant, olah chadasha. Magic words.

The two of us are lost in an unfamiliar shopping mall, very green, exhausted having circled the mall several times in search of the right parking lot. Apparently there are several. We are hot, thirsty, and loaded down with packages. A new toaster. A coffee pot. New cut glasses (very nice). 

We ask people and they inevitably point us to the wrong lot. We can't find an information office. 

I break down in an elevator, so tired, almost in tears. I say aloud: Is there anyone here who speaks English who can help us find our car? There is and she does. She accompanies us to our vehicle.  Hugs and kisses.

Easy enough, but rental cars, driving on the hills of Israel, needing service for said car, this raises the ante. 

2. FD wants to take the scenic route from Bet Shemesh to Jerusalem. I'm driving the S-curves on the hills, a good sport but not enjoying myself. I do not like the car, a Picanto. A few years ago we had rented a Picanto with a bad transmission and on our way up north for a double Bat Mitzvah the car stalled near an Arab village about an hour before Shabbat. This, the second stall. It felt fatal, terrified my grandson in the backseat on the lookout for terrorists, but eventually the car started up and we made it to our destination, thanked the Old Mighty with feeling. We took a bus home from my nephew's little Israeli village and I still have a touch of PTSD when I think about that day.

And here we are again. In a Picanto and it stalls, again on a hill. The motor cuts out completely and it is not starting up. My heart is racing, cars are honking. FD lifts the emergency brake, I hit the flashers.  His 100-year old mother in the back seat remains where she is cool as a cucumber.  

He jumps out of the car, takes my place at the wheel, tries again. Nothing. He tells me to order a taxi, take it to a gas station, we aren't far from Jerusalem. Bring back a can of gasoline.  

But a car pulls over on the shoulder, a beautiful car. There is a beautiful person inside we will soon find this out. All I can think is that this is good.  Why would someone pull over if not to help?

I get out and rush over. He has lowered his beautiful windows. In Hebrew I say we are olim chadashim. We are new immigrants. And we are out of gas! 

FD figured that part out. 

Let me help you. 

I'm thinking FD should take over for me. Israeli men like to speak with men, not women. It is still a thing. I wave him over from his perch directing traffic and step back. 

They talk for a minute, I'm told to hop in. This fellow will take me to a gas station. We will bring back the petrol.

An angel, this guy. 

I tell Amnon (this is his name) multiple, multiple times, that he is a malach (mah-lach), an angel. He keeps waving this off. Any Israeli would do the same thing. 

No, only one Israeli did this. 

We argue over who pays for gas and Amnon ends up paying for it. He tells me that I am taking away his mitzvah if I pay,  taking away his good deed. And, he has an app, whatever that means. The gas is cheap. 

There is nothing I can do. 

On the rides to and from the gas station he asks many questions. Why now! Why would we come to Israel during a war? Israelis are leaving, he tells me. I explain that my daughter and her family took the first flight they could get, this a few months before the war, to fulfill their dream of becoming Israeli citizens. We followed the following year, as did one of her brothers, our son and his family, all of us unafraid of the war. All of us fulfilling our dreams. And now a second son is coming this summer with his wife and kids, 4 school age children. His wife visited Nova on a mission to Israel following the October 7 massacre and came back to say: We are moving to Israel.

Amnon is blown away. You come, replenish, refresh our nation. 

I tell him that the summer we arrived another 600 Jews from all over the world made Aliyah, too. 

He did not know this. Unbelievable, you have no idea, you give us so much hope, you cannot imagine. Jewish people are still coming here. Really?

Really.

Welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.

He's thanking me!

therapydoc 

*Jews are forever complaining that Israel is butchered in the media, the reputation of my country has suffered, has always suffered, a complete public relations fiasco. The poor victims, the Palestinians, the world has their backs. This after Hamas takes their humanitarian aid, has stolen it for years to buy weapons. This after Hamas gets them into the war with a lion. Write, people. Talk. Reverse the PR. Many drops in a bucket fill up a bucket and it doesn't have to take long, either. 

What a Ceasefire Really Means

What does a ceasefire mean to the average Israeli? 

For some it means not getting caught in the shower when missiles are headed their way. 

For me it means I meet a neighbor on the street, a kid that I had sheltered with regularly for 12 days, and we take a moment to talk for the first time, exchange words of hope, some of them in French! 

We both hope the ceasefire lasts forever. 

You know, right, that there's an 8-hour time difference between Chicago and Tel Aviv. Israel 8 hours ahead. But it does not get in the way of love, talking to the people we love with FaceTime or WhatsApp. It all works. Not as great as being physically together, but the next best thing.

My brother and sister-in-law (sister, really) talk and I feel their anxiety, the anxiety of the entire extended family back home.*

Sometimes they call and I'm working because of that time zone thing. I write:

With a patient, will call later.

When I call back I'm under the false assumption that we will be celebrating the ceasefire between Israel and Iran. But no, the reports in the US have successfully polluted my family's interpretation of events. There is pervasive worry that the American bombs did not 'do the job.' The explosion did not take out the uranium, is what I am hearing, appalled. Iranians can still develop their bombs, and worse, they may even have a few nuclear weapons stashed away somewhere in them thar' hills. 

Maxar photo, B2-bombers, 6 holes on the nuclear reactor site

Being a doctor, I am quick to respond. The problem is that you caught a virus, I say.

Iranian propaganda is virulent. What do you guess Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is telling his people? Is he going to tell them that the Americans obliterated their nuclear program? Is he going to say that Iran has effectively lost the war? 

Uh, no. That is not how dictators communicate. Honesty is not their strongpoint. What Khamenei tells his people goes something more like this:

We won! We brought the Israelis to their knees! They begged for a ceasefire. 

LOL. 

Adorable. 

This, as Israeli planes fly overhead in Iran, booming jets piercing their atmosphere. The IAF, the Israel Air Force, still proudly owns Iranian airspace ya' see. Although I hear they left with the ceasefire. So there's that. Victory for Iran, right?

IAF over Iran

The truth is that the mishigas (mish-ih-gahs, craziness, nonsense, Yiddish but also Hebrew) about how American bombs failed their mission is poppycock (come on, people, the USAF unleashed 30 tons of warheads made out of steel, aluminum, radar absorbent metal, tritonal, all kinds of alloys to make things go boom at  that nuclear site). The protest, the lie, is to save face, it is political. Tell the Iranian people that they won. that there is no substantial damage, no set back. Even if they don't believe it, the Americans surely will. 

I tell my family that it is all good, too, because Iran will not want to break the ceasefire, the lie in place. Breaking the ceasefire would mean that they did not win, that they have to keep fighting. But they won, so everyone in the Middle East can shower in peace now.  

They want you to be afraid, I tell D and T. 

In Israel the cultural spirit is courage, not fear. We respect fear but look it in the eye. This is a Zen idea,  too, honor your fear but be ready to pull out your light saber. 

Israelis have done and continue to do what our forefather Jacob (Yacov) did over 3000 years ago. 

Yacov is about to meet up with his brother Esau (Genesis 32:21). Esau a powerful, violent guy most likely intent upon revenge, wanting to kill his younger brother for having grabbed the birthright, finding the nearest camel, and hitting the sand dunes. 

Yacov is afforded lots of time to come up with a three-pronged plan for when he meets up with his brother again. When faced with annihilation, a powerful enemy:

(1) don't forget to placate him with gifts, first,  to soften him up. Everyone likes presents.

(2) but prepare for war

(3) and pray  

We pray, as should everyone, that the war is over, that no more lives are lost (7 Israeli soldiers, only yesterday in Gaza). So no, we are not celebrating, we mourn and we pray for the return of those still in captivity in Gaza, the hostages.

Our dear hostages, you are not forgotten, 22 Israeli, 1 Thai, 1 Nepali

7 gone in Gaza yesterday 

* home for a Jew is Israel, that is our tradition. But we all have second homes, right? Jews are all rich, aren't they? 

Namaste,

therapydoc

The Lion and the Lamb Idea

 'We slept through,' FD mumbles. It is 515am. We're up. 

At first I think he means we slept through an alarm to shelter downstairs in our miklat (mick-laht) then realized that is impossible. There is no sleeping through an azakah (ah-zah-kah). We slept through only because there was no alarm last night. 

'And the Cubs won,' I mumble back. 

I checked the score after thanking the Old Mighty for returning me to life, the first thing a Jew does each day, Modeh ani (moe-deh-ah-ni). Other cultures might do this, too, but it has extra meaning for Jews, is my guess.  

Last night we watched some of the ballgame on television. What a feeling, mastering the technology of streaming from an iPad to a television. Two doctors figuring out what had previously evaded them. 

This is like getting the Wordle in two. You rise from feeling incompetent and a loser (Wordle in four to six) to brilliant. 

But I'm not feeling great, despite the Cub win, too much news about the war being far from over, too many soundbites about Iran's nuclear capability. 

Last November when patients in the US panicked after Donald Trump's election I prescribed a moratorium on the news. If it upsets you don't listen, don't engage. Don't read. I've followed my own advice for the greater part of this year and I live in Israel! News about fighting a war on multiple fronts has been highly disturbing, gut wrenching, sad. It is existential and surreal that our soldiers, children, are in danger. The Israel Defense Forces are us. They are our relatives, the children of nieces and nephews, grandchildren of cousins, children of friends. 

Now, as civilians we are in danger, too, and it is more and more clear the obscenity of war.  I think of October 11, how Hamas started it with their invasion from Gaza, decapitating, mutilating, raping women, stealing humans. This is so ugly, all of it.

So I take my own advice, only read the headlines. Reading headlines is like reading the title of a graphic comic book, the gravity doesn't sink in. 

זאב עם כלב ירבץ ונמר עם עגל ירבץ The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard lie down with the calf

To an end to the war, may there be no lives lost today or tomorrow or evermore from war. . 

therapydoc

An Ugly America

Eddie Redmayne-Caberet, not pretty

As anyone who knows me knows, I've been a little out of it when it comes to what is happening in the United States. When I left in August to become an Israeli citizen (not giving up my American citizenship!) things did not feel great in the great in the USA. My country felt a little ill, frankly. Abuse and exploitation everywhere.  Name it, humans abused it, exploited it. Children even. Violence, so much.

When I was a child we played outside until dark. When I raised my children neighbors relied upon neighbors to keep an eye out. I left a country where kidnapping is a serious concern as are snipers, terrorists.

When I left in August, 2024, just five months ago, I had quit my news addiction. The news pinged my brain, not in a good way. I felt too reactive to the negativity, to the sadness and pain. Violence had become a cultural norm, endemic. Mass murder. How? Why? 

When I left America the country lacked the unity, the pride, the hope, the love of decades past. Despite the successes of civil rights activists, human rights activism, lip-service to equal rights, democratic egalitarianism felt dead to me, the rich richer, the poor, well, the Bible says there will always be poor people and poverty is more than a comparison we make with others who are better off, if only in a monetary sense. Making more meaning is nothing to sniff at. 

As a child of the 50's being an American, well, one couldn't do any better. A child couldn't have been born to a more hopeful, prosperous, positive culture. Take my fifth grade class, for example. We had a subject called patriotism. It was a subject. Learn the word. Love of country. We hated the Russians! We feared the Russians! We had nuclear drills that required hiding under our desks! 

America, my G-d, did we sing that song. Heartfelt. America. G-d shed her grace on thee.

O beautiful for spacious skies,

For amber waves of grain,

For purple mountain majesties

Above the fruited plain!

America! America! God shed Her grace on thee,

And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea!

Crazy times. But good. Positive. Upbeat. Strong. Communal. Loving. 

Eddie Redmayne-Caberet, not pretty

More than you need to know, but FD is starting work as a doctor in Israel and I have a day with no classes. I took some time to catch up on the news in the US, only news that doesn't depress the hell out of me, and Peggy Noonan's old articles. Most felt dated, but one in particular rang true, depressing or not. And I had to talk about it to someone for I've been feeling it for years. 

Peggy Noonan

Ms Noonan, also an idealist like myself, probably not much younger or older than me, nails it by telling us that art glorifies all that is ugly, sad, dark, painful, grimy, gloomy, grim, lonely.  'The uglification of everything' it is called and it is very American today. No one is kind, people are vengeful, emotionally incapable and dumb. Nobody laughs anymore. She sees it in the movies. 

Just last night I scrolled through Netflix searching for something light, sweet (but not too sweet) and couldn't find anything. I settled on Ted Danson, A Man on the Inside which really is way, way too sweet but when a person is starving and all there is in the house is ice cream, well, what can one do? 

Ted Danson, so charming if too sweet, Man on the Inside

This is not what Ms Noonan is seeing in America. 

It is not what we see in Israel, just saying, but at least we get a little closer over here. 

Maybe America will change with Trump's presidency, but his denial of sexual harassment as a problem makes me doubt it.  

Not like there isn't any of that here in Israel, but the attitude in general is not ugly, it is not depressed. Israel is a strong nation hopeful for an era of peace, an end to exploitation of citizens living under strong armed dictators.

Here the songs are positive, wistful, speak to a better life, allude to there being more to life than. . . this. That particular message is a natural response to the deaths of 800 young men lost in the current war, Swords of Iron. 

Other songs, however, are related to unity and love, to the hope of our children, to art and creativity, anything that lifts the serotonin. I know because the first thing I did after hanging my hat in the new country, was put it back on and find a choir and in choir the new songs are in addition to the old songs, as if folk is a tradition, history is current. Song in Israel is  more popular than ever, it is a fusion of prayer and pop culture, speaks to love, to being in good company, to singing and creation that lifts the heart, the soul. The United States is diverse, sure, but in Israel the neighborhoods are diverse and yet everyone speaks the same language, aspires to the same humanitarian goals.  

I pray that the culture in the US turns itself around. We therapists have always worked with the ugly, the depressed, the pained and the lonely. A living, sure, but also a calling. 

We couldn't do this work if we didn't believe that happy is better. 

therapydoc

 

Journal-1

BringThemHome-the hostages in Gaza-NOW

Journals tend to begin with a journey, like a vacation, or maybe a change in life circumstance. A move, becoming a citizen of Israel would be one of those. 

Subtext: Now I have the right to wonder if voting matters in two countries, not just one! 

An old time blogging colleague writes Life in Israel, and that is totally worth checking out. But everyone's life is different. Here's one therapist's point of view. 

Journal 1, October 7

Actually, today is October 8, 2024 

Today marks a year plus one day since the most obscene, most unimaginable chapter in the history of the State of Israel. I can't even begin to put the details of the October 7, 2023 to the page, suffice it to say that what you have read, if the details are exceedingly grotesque and inhumane, well, it all of that is true.  

Why should we be surprised. Jewish history is punctuated with massacres. Crusaders out to slaughter. Murderous Cossacks roving into towns hunting Jews. My own grandmother, her soul should rest in Heaven, once told me that Polish marauders, Cossacks, barged into her village, her home, and seeing her in a rocker nursing my father, spared her life. She didn't say much other than that. The czar let the Jews of the village leave that day, assuming they had money for passage, the day a fast day. We celebrate that fast at the end of this week, Yom Kippur.

As a rule, the sparing of Jewish suffering has never been a thing. Witness events in France, Switzerland, Argentina, Brazil, the Netherlands, Poland, the United Kingdom, South Africa, you name it. The streets in North America aren't safe, there's mayhem on college campuses. Having suffered pogroms and a holocaust, a surge of antisemitism is foreboding. And then, October 7, 2023. And it happened on holy land.   

G-d's Country

Another version of God's country

That attack defiled a holy land. 

Israel is the real G-d's country, Jews and Christians believe, as opposed to Wisconsin, where Heileman's Old Style is brewed. Holiness is in Eretz Yisrael, Israel, if it is anywhere. 

G-d's presence is what makes the land holy, Her/His holiness, not ours. We may aspire but most of us don't come close.  

And Hamas had the chutzpah to defile it, suspending wartime norms: rampant rape, decapitation and the severing of other body parts, mutilation, wholesale slaughter of 1200 innocents at a music festival. And then joy, the celebration of perpetrators. Nasty, very not holy stuff.

Yes, I'm still working it out.  

Difficult to digest, this hatred towards Jewish people disguised as a hatred Zionism. News flash, they are one and the same. Difficult to note the many videos and programs that remind us of what happened. 

But that is what we all did yesterday from sun up to sun down. An entire nation grieved their dead their stolen — kidnapped hostages still in harm's way. We grieved between sirens, jarring warnings that missiles approach. Get to a safe place. You have a minute and a half.

For some, sirens are triggering, as they are meant to be, unresolved PTSD of October 7 and the weeks, now month, a year that followed. Not a good year. Traumatizing for some but for others a way of life, how one lives, lived prior to this war. Missiles from Lebanon in the north, missiles from Gaza in the south, going on thirty years. 

For Israelis at the borders sirens are not something new.  

But to the average new immigrant (me) and to perhaps millions of Israelis, the sounds of missiles are new, as is the fear. When our defenses are down, the sound of sirens screaming, the booms bursting, despite the psychological defense of denial, despite living life as if there is no war, we feel fear.

It is how the enemy lives, too.

Blessings and Peace, 

 

therapydoc

 

Why Would Anyone Move to Israel, Especially Now?

FD and I are at Gate B14 to board a flight to Fort Lauderdale. 

No, it is not a vacation. This is the first stop. We are moving—intending to spend the rest of our lives in Israel. 

(I’m sorry, you know who you are, that I never had the chance to visit your farm). 

 

See, we're finally going. Not a vacation, not a Sabbatical. Not to visit the kids. 

We love America, the old America, the tolerant America. Not that we are leaving because the old America has changed, that melting pot, although it really has changed. And we're not leaving because of antisemitism, although that is not a bad reason to leave if one is a Jew. We get it. The Age of Jewish Enlightenment/tolerance is over. Hate has been in the air for decades and it reigns.

We'll be flying El Al, perhaps the only airline flying to Israel, the only armed airline. We leave tonight. 

 

Yes, we know that Iran vows retaliation for the assassination of a beloved leader, read murderer, a plotter and a planner of the destruction of the State of Israel and the annihilation of all Jews. That's the plan for all of us, everywhere, in the Palestinian-Hamas-Arab playbook.  

 

FD reminded me recently that there exists an entire generation of young people who know nothing about September 11, 2001. They weren't born or weren't cognizant of what happened here in New York. The deaths, the collapse of the Towers. This explains at least partly, why they might support the Palestinian people over the Jews. They don't get it that that other team, the one that isn't into Democracy, intends to come for them, too.

 

The culmination of this war is obviously in G-d’s hands, not President Biden's, although we appreciate his support, and it is not in Bini Netanyahu's. G-d seems to have empowered the Jewish people with intellect and talent and most important, a Torah that is true, and a Talmud, a compilation of books that include prophecies indicating that we will be, in the end, victorious. There will be blood, unfortunately, there will be pain and suffering and violations (read the book of Zachariah) but in the end the Jews will prevail. 

 

We believe this. That we belong there not here. This has been a lifelong dream beginning well before a massacre on October 7 that took thousands of Jewish lives and hundreds of hostages, many of whom are unfortunately gone, martyrs. The dream is inextinguishable in the Jewish soul, it is thousands of years old, precedes all pogroms and massacres. It precedes children and women and men young and old, brave soldiers and soon-to-be soldiers. Such cowards, these Palestinian/Hamas (they are one in the same, people, don't believe what you read) hoodlums honestly. Gangsters. Stealing babies. Mutilating babies, women, men. 

 

There are a few psalms, Tehillim, we say daily, psalms that literally mention Hamas by name. Take a look at Psalm 140. I’m not telling Jews anything they don’t know. 

Hamas is a word that means violence. They named themselves VIOLENCE. Wow.

Enough politics, let's talk about me. 

The response from the community to our move? Only heartfelt well wishes, so many of them, so much love, such an incredible atmosphere of hope and even, shall I say, jealousy because in the Jewish community Aliyah, becoming an Israeli citizen, is the goal. It is NOT a better you than me These are sincere people, people who truly wish that they could do this, too, that they could muster the finances (no small task, there's never enough). The decision not to move is also about family obligation. My demographic is a sandwich generation. How does one leave elderly parents, many with serious health problems, or children? HOW DO YOU LEAVE PRECIOUS GRANDCHILDREN? Most do not. 

 

But living in Israel is the ultimate commandment, the most important mitzvah. 

Many, maybe a third of the commandments of the Torah are about what one must do when living in the Holy Land. The land of Israel, let's just say it, not Palestine. Palestine is for Palestinians. Israel is for Yisraelim. Jews. 

 

Rabbi Cohen said it in one of many beautiful vorts (a vort is a short speech to the congregation, good luck with that). He said that many years ago, in line at Ikea, everyone looked up at a TV at the aftermath of an explosion, a bomb set off in Jerusalem, a pe-gu-ah, a terrorist attack in Jerusalem, perhaps on a bus or a packed downtown restaurant —Orthodox Jewish people searching for remains, bones and skin, heads, legs and arms, pieces of human beings, innocent civilians, blown to bits by a bomb.

 

What did Rabbi Cohen hear from the shoppers nearby? WHY WOULD ANYONE EVER WANT TO LIVE THERE?    

 

Well, because this is the land of milk and honey. This is the land that Heaven sent and this lovely land is mine. You land, you look around, and you marvel and don't stop.

It is in our blood, it is in our spirit, and many of us long, literally long for Jerusalem. You can’t buy this feeling, it is in our collective DNA or memory, ask a Jungian.

 

We become citizens of Israel soon after we land on Israeli soil, when an agency, perhaps the Israeli consulate, presents us with ID cards, assuming the office is still staffed. There’s this war going on, you know. 

FD's mother, 99, is coming with us. She is already an Israeli citizen but had to come back to the States for a few years, a terrible loss, my sister-in-law. How does one lose a child?  But now my mother-in-law is ready to come home, and so are we.

 

There isn't a person in the community I haven't hugged goodbye. If I missed you I’m sorry. I've been crying for three weeks, sadness, joy, a compote of emotions. This is crazy-making, and as you all know that's a DSM diagnosis.

 

I’ll post pictures next time.

 

As we say (as you chutzniks, ha ha) say, having not yet subscribed to this modifier of craziness quite yet. Next Year in Jerusalem. 

Come see me.

 

Blessings, 

therapydoc