“There was fear and concern from Israelis about what it must be like to be Jews in the US right now, with the uptick in public antisemitic acts,” said Rabbi Rachel Ain of Sutton Place Synagogue located in Midtown Manhattan, who was a member of the delegation, which was organized by UJA-Federation of New York.
The rabbis who made the visit were “three Reform; eight Conservative; 10 Orthodox; one nondenominational,” according to Eric Goldstein, CEO of the organization, who headed the mission.
Speaking to her Conservative community as Shabbat set in last week after her return home, Ain said: “While we were away we heard about the broken windows of Saba’s Pizza, a kosher pizza restaurant on the Upper East Side [of Manhattan]. We know that people have been nervous with various protests around the city. I understand those concerns. And yet, I take comfort in knowing that we have a close relationship with our local [police] precinct and our security agencies.”
BRIEFLY LEAVING their own local violence behind, the rabbinic mission arrived in Israel on Monday, May 24, and left Wednesday evening, May 26.
“As the war raged, we heard that our family in Israel was feeling increasingly isolated and alone. After talking to several rabbinical leaders, the overwhelming feedback was that they wanted Israelis to feel our support, and, also, they would benefit from the opportunity to spend time in Israel and be able to share that experience with congregants back at home,” Goldstein told The Jerusalem Post.
Asked about the quick turnaround from discussing a trip to making it happen, he explained that they “were able to mobilize quickly because of our deep relationships with rabbis across the city who were willing to do whatever was needed to make the trip happen as soon as it did,” adding that COVID-19 did not get in the way: “COVID protocols are part of the new normal for traveling. We followed all applicable guidelines.”
“It was quite an eye-opening experience in many ways,” said Rabbi Ya’akov Trump of Young Israel of Lawrence-Cedarhurst to his Orthodox synagogue on Long Island in a message before Shabbat last week.
He added that the “point of the mission” was to give moral support to the people and businesses they visited.
“Some of the vendors we supported have not seen business for a long time and some folks are in a deep state of trauma, and just seeing a group of [over 20] rabbis from outside Israel who came because they care, and the community they represent cares, was a huge gesture,” said the rabbi.
“It also gave us rabbis the chance to process and reflect on some of the very complex and tragic aspects of this ongoing crisis. We were also able to discuss among ourselves and hear different points of view on these issues,” Trump added.
“The metaphor that was shared over and over was that it was as if we were making in many ways both a bikur holim visit [visiting the sick] as well as a shiva call, in that we were comforting the community in the time of loss. While death wasn’t what we saw, there was just such deep pain,” said Ain in the message to her synagogue.
The delegation saw the damage caused by the Gazan rockets but also came to the scene of internal Israeli strife between Arabs and Jews.
“Coming to Lod a week after the destruction had quieted down, now that the ‘shiva’ is over, one hardly knows anything took place,” said Rabbi Steven Exler, senior rabbi at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale in the New York City borough of the Bronx, which describes itself as an “Open Orthodox synagogue.”
“Jewish residents of Lod and many volunteers from around the country quickly came to restore the shuls and schools and apartments that had been damaged, financial support flowed in from the world Jewish community, and almost everything looks back to normal,” Exler wrote in a diary that he kept during the trip.
He added, in speaking to the Post, that “the hardest part of the trip was without a doubt our visit to Lod.”
Still, in his diary, he wrote that “the Jewish residents were not grieving alone... we had sat around a circle with Faten, an Arab Israeli, and Dror, a Jewish Israeli. They work in a community center called Chicago, in the Ramat Eshkol neighborhood of Lod where the violence broke out and was the most extreme. The Chicago community center is the only intentionally Arab-Jewish community center in Israel. Dror works on intergroup relations, and Faten is one of the founders and directors of the community center.”
“Despite the sadness and anger and pain and fear, I felt that there is still the will from the people, despite the leadership, to make things better,” said Ain.
As for the overall itinerary, “some key moments include[d] a visit to the ITC [Israel Trauma Coalition] Resilience Center in Ashkelon, and a visit to see the Kedma project in Kibbutz Nir Oz (which is a UJA-Federation partner initiative geared toward building resilience in the Gaza border communities),” according to Goldstein. “We met with groups and leaders, including members of the Knesset; Arab and Jewish leaders; Israeli residents whose homes were destroyed by rockets; and many of our nonprofit partners on the ground.”
“We had the chance [to visit] Sigal Arieli, whose home in Ashkelon was destroyed by a rocket five days before. When we hear on the news that there were no fatalities, we sigh a breath of relief and go back to our lives without realizing that the Arielis will be among the hundreds of families who will not have a home for at least the next year after this crisis,” Trump reflected.
In her message to the Sutton Place Synagogue community, Ain wrote, “I am so proud to have brought your messages of support and love to Israel, and I bring their messages of thanks home to you. We met with so many people of varying backgrounds – Jewish, Arab, Palestinian, religious, secular, young, old, and everything in between.”
During the visit, she posted on Facebook that one aspect of the trip that did not inspire her was a conversation that included two MKs, one from Yesh Atid and one from the Likud.
“The conversation was a lot of posturing without a lot of nuance. Not sure what I took away from that session except I couldn’t ever be a politician,” she posted.
As a follow-up, the rabbis were scheduled to come together this week to “discuss how their experiences can shape discussions with their congregants and a wider audience here in the US,” said Goldstein.
MEANWHILE, SAID Exler, in addition to the need to counter the “social media and mass media response to Israel” and “to raise a voice in her defense,” the follow-up for the rabbis in New York will also be to counter the violence right in their own backyard, underlining their double mission, wishing to express sympathy for the Israeli plight even as they themselves fight against antisemitic violence in the US.
“Returning to New York, we are all looking for and working on ways to respond to this deeply painful and alarming wave of antisemitic attacks,” Exler told the Post.