Yesterday I explained that this year my High Holiday Drashot/Sermons would focus on individuals or groups that, paraphrasing Time Magazine’s ‘Man of the Year’ award, have ‘done the most to influence the events of my year’.
Today I
will continue this theme by describing five individuals and an extraordinary location
that Stephnie and I encountered a couple of weeks ago.
In July,
Stephnie noticed an advertisement in the Jewish Chronicle magazine, posted by
the Technion UK charity, inviting readers to join them on a five- day
‘Solidarity Trip to Israel’. Our
curiosities were piqued by highlights such as:
·
Visting Meta, the parent company of Facebook
·
Meeting David Horovitz, the founding editor of the
Times of Israel (which was the clincher for Stephnie who is a huge fan of his
voice)
·
Touring an Air Force Base (which turned out to be IAI
– Israel Aircraft Industries)
·
Meeting with IDF Combat Reservists and currently
serving soldiers
·
Spending a day at the Technion in Haifa, Israel’s
Institute of Technology, which is a world-renowned leader in the fields of
hi-tech, medicine and engineering and also the country’s oldest university, and
producer of four Nobel prize-winners to date
·
Spending an evening in a Druze village and so much
more!
I have
been blessed to have visited and toured Israel dozens of times since my
childhood but I had never experienced a trip like this – Stephnie kept
describing it as ‘Israel Tour for Adults’!
She didn’t have the benefit of attending a Jewish School and had only
ever ‘toured’ Israel in her late teens on a ‘Christian Tour’ so this was an
experience not to be missed.
It didn’t
take much persuading on Stephnie’s behalf to ‘get me to sign on the dotted
line’ as they say. So, we set off on 7th
September, our bags packed and the ELAL seats booked.
It’s not
a spoiler to say that, on reflection, this trip has been one of the greatest
adventures of our lives to date, both individually and as a couple.
I could
literally spend hours describing our itinerary but as you’d probably like to
return home before nightfall, I have chosen to share stories from the following
people who have inspired me and given me hope that this New Year will hopefully
be a better one than the twelve months that have preceded it.
If
you’re interested in your own ‘virtual tour’ including videos, text, photos and
360o photos, click this link, you’re in for a treat - https://technionuk.org/trip-album/
Most of
the people we met began by describing what had happened to them on 7th
October, nearly two years ago.
Let me start
by telling you about Netanel Afek.
He is a young Rabbi and father of five boys ranging from
three-and-a-half to eleven. He has extensive
experience in education and training.
He
described how he was literally pulled out of his synagogue and immediately
joined his Northern Brigade Unit in and around the Gaza envelope protecting the
area and preventing further terrorist attacks for two months.
He was
then invited by the Army Rabbinate to join a special unit called ‘Yasar Darom
5645’ which undertakes the extremely challenging work of searching and recovering
fallen soldiers and murdered hostages in Gaza.
He said that Israel does everything it can to bring them back. Along with another soldier, he has spent, to
date, 850 days in Gaza. Netanel and his
business partner have set up a programme called ‘Up to You’. This enables hundreds of soldiers and their
families, many of whom are bereaved and which also include those of the
hostages to tell their stories to the world as part of their recovery therapy.
Then
there was Lotem, a 46-year-old reservist and Battalion Commander
(overseeing 500 soldiers), who explained the challenges he faces as a civilian
having to balance his personal life and job as a business manager in a kibbutz whilst
serving 500 days in the IDF in the last two years.
Lotem
described, in candid detail, the sacrifices that he and other soldiers are
paying (along with their families) to defend the State of Israel.
He told
us that he saw Hamas using children to plant mines in a village in the hope
that the IDF would shoot them and that they could be used as a PR tool against
Israel. The troops waited until the
evening before dismantling the mines. He
followed this by telling us that a family (consisting of elderly members,
adults and young children) went into a house to supposedly ‘collect food’ and
when the troops entered, they found that the very same people had booby-trapped
it.
These are
but a few of the incidents that Lotem has had to contend with before he returned
home at night to play with his young daughter.
One of
the highlights of our trip was a visit to Ein-Al-Asad, a Druze village
which happens to be the smallest in Israel with a population of only 920
residents. One of its inhabitants, Wasim
is studying at the Technion, following in the footsteps of his older brother. He warmly welcomed our group to his village
and proudly introduced his entire immediate and extended family to us.
On a
balmy evening in the town square, we were introduced to my third ‘person of the
year’. Dr. Sawsan Kheir, a psychologist and academic, told us about the horrific
situation currently affecting her people in the Syrian Druze villages under the
control of Ahmed Al Shaara, the President of Syria. She explained that to date, 36 of these villages
have been entirely eradicated in the province of Sweida in the south of the
country with 789 people murdered. The
area has been under siege for two months and they have no access to
humanitarian aid. Over 228,000 people
have been displaced and there have been many deaths due to the lack of medical
aid. She described the savage manner in
which 100s of her fellow Druze were murdered but I will spare you the
stomach-churning details.
Currently,
103 women and over 550 men are being held hostage and suffering all kinds of
physical abuse (and this includes children).
No other country, except for Israel, has done anything to assist them
and indeed, when she tried to come to their rescue, there was a global
outcry. Sawson is travelling around the
world to raise awareness of the persecution of her people. Sadly, the stories she related were very
reminiscent of what we have heard regarding the events of October 7th
in the Gaza envelope.
‘Person
#4’ is Jotam Confino, a young Danish Israeli journalist who has been
living in Israel for the last seven years and writes for major outlets such as
the New York Times and The Telegraph. Post
October 7th, he has dedicated himself to trying to report the truth
regarding the ongoing situation in Gaza.
However, he faces stiff opposition from his peers and editors. He was particularly disappointed with the decline
of journalistic standards since the start of the war.
He
explained that there are five news sources currently based in Gaza and these are:
·
The ‘Gaza Health Ministry’ which as we know is under
the full control of Hamas
·
NGOs (Non-Governmental Organisations)
·
Gazans
·
Fellow Journalists
·
The IDF
Of these,
the first four are dedicated to providing misinformation, exaggerated truths
and blatant lies to the media and politicians.
He told us that he believed that the IDF should allow journalists
into very limited areas, such as the humanitarian zone and give them the option
to risk their lives there without protection.
However, he explained that since Hamas controls every single element of
what takes place in Gaza, Journalists reporting accurately would face
everything from harassment to death if they chose to challenge their authority.
Jotam
admitted that eventually he would have no option but to choose another career
as he felt that his mental health was being significantly impacted by
continuing on his current career path.
My
penultimate person is Dr Eitan Yaakobi, a faculty member of the Computer
Science Department at the Technion whose speciality is ‘Information Theory’
which focuses on methods that can be used to measure information. This is broken down into two specific areas,
that of communicating and storing data.
He
predicted that eventually humanity is going to run out of ways to both store
and retrieve data, granted that our current technology may not be accessible in
a century from now, both in hard format (e.g. Hard Drives and Optical Media
such as CD’s, DVDs and Blu Ray disks) and online (such as Microsoft OneDrive
and Google Drive). For example, who here
now has the ability to play old VHS tapes?
His
solution is to use our DNA to store the data, such as computer files, which he
says would shrink it into the ‘size of a shoe box’. Granted the number of cells in our bodies,
the storage capacity would be limitless and crucially DNA lasts for millennia
and it can be sequenced by currently available technology.
The know-how
and ethics behind this idea is beyond the scope of the Drasha but to say that I
was blown away by what he was suggesting would be an understatement! Although
it sounded like the stuff of science fiction, this is actually taking place now,
just not yet on a industrial scale. This
constitutes a paradigm in considering ways to advance the storage of data in
the future.
My final ‘person’
is an organisation comprising of more than 5300 employees where Jews, Arabs and
Druze work in complete harmony. This is
the Rambam Hospital (officially known as the Rambam Health Care Campus)
in Haifa and its creation of the largest fortified underground hospital in the
world.
During
the Second Lebanon War of 2006, Hezbollah fired more than 100 missiles within a
one-kilometre radius of the hospital. Professor
Rafi Beyar then Director and CEO decided that the hospital must never again
find itself in such a precarious situation and set in motion the establishment
of this truly eye-popping (if you’ll excuse the non-medical term) structure.
They built an underground hospital which also doubles
up as a car park (remember first and foremost a hospital) and which is
completely self-sufficient with its own generators.
It
consists of three floors and was fully functional during Covid and the recent
Iran War (including providing a creche for children). It is 16.5 metres below the ground and 9
metres below sea-level. Each floor is
20,000 square metres in area and each car parking space is wide enough to
accommodate a bed and there is capacity for 2000 beds.
Following
October 7th, it took 36 hours to convert the car park into wards and
once Hezbollah started firing rockets, the entire hospital relocated there for
a month-and-a-half. The structure is
resistant against conventional and non-conventional rocket attacks and chemical
warfare. There are 24 fortified operating
theatres which contain filters to sterilise and cool the air in each room.
These are
but six examples of the extraordinary people, Jews and Gentiles whose pride in
being Israeli is truly inspirational.
On Rosh
Hashanah, Gd judges humanity on what it has achieved over the last year and
what it aspires to do over the next. Chazal,
our Rabbis, tell us that before we can receive forgiveness from Hashem, we need
to ensure that we have done everything we can in order to be pardoned by our
fellow human beings. The individuals I
have cited, along with the staff at the Rambam Hospital, are dedicated to saving,
protecting and enhancing the lives of their fellow countrymen and women (and in
the case of Rabbi Netanel also respecting the dead), as well as treating
neighbouring refugees from Syria. This
extends to finding ways to ensure that our personal, sensitive and meaningful
data is stored safely in perpetuity.
The
Journalists we met, like Jotam, are working in extremely difficult
circumstances to present Israel’s case to the world and inform the outside of
what is really transpiring in Gaza. That
they are being ignored, highlights why their voices need to be heard. The world doesn’t know what is taking place
due to their being silenced.
Through
their unceasing work, Rabbi Netanel, Lotem, Sawsan, Jotam, Dr Eitan and the
staff at Rambam try, and sometimes succeed, to shine a light that can help us
navigate through the darkness that seems to be enveloping our lives. May Gd protect and enable them to continue to
do so over the next year and beyond.
There remains
one more individual who has influenced me over the last year and I look forward
to sharing his story with you on Yom Kippur.
Once
again, wishing you and your loved ones a Shanah Tovah Umetukah, a happy, sweet
and healthy new year from Stephnie and me.
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