Editor’s Note: The following Reflector column by Brad Kaplan was written after he co-led a recent four-day Jewish Community Federation of Richmond Solidarity Mission to Israel along with 23 other community members. His words were extremely difficult to write after witnessing the horror of what our Israeli brothers and sisters have endured since Oct. 7.
By Brad Kaplan, Director – Principal Gifts, Jewish Community Federation of Richmond
I am ready. Ready to go see. Needing to go see. Excited to go to Israel and bear witness, and more excited to feel the humanity of those suffering in Israel. I am thankful to be fortunate enough to go on this trip. I am ready to sink all the way into everything that we will see, hear, smell, and taste (Israeli food!).
As Rabbi Sacks says, I am going to be a link between generations. I will be able to tell my children. And help tell their children. That October 7th was our reality as Jews. That reality is not easy. Few truly amazing things are easy.
This trip will be hard. We will sink into the evil and the awful and the barbarism. I am going because my world has shifted since October 7th. I am not that same person.
Flying over the clouds of the Mediterranean Sea I can look back and feel okay that the person I was is gone. Left in its place is what I am now. My reading habits, listening habits, political feelings, sense of community, sense of self have all shifted.
So benign is it that the sports podcast my wife called The View for men, a show I listened to for hours every day, for over 15 years, I just stopped. And not because anyone said anything to make me stop. But it was my fear of not hearing what I wanted to hear. And knowing that my Judaism does not get the same treatment of other disasters that strike this earth. When 1,200 people are brutally slaughtered and there is silence.
Emptiness is a void in sanity. A void in humanity. My sanity and humanity means I must get there, make it to Israel, and be the link that ties me to my grandparents, all passed, and a link to my kid’s kids, not yet born.
I go to Israel for all of it. I need to be overwhelmed by dread and despair and hope and love. There is no trip that has been the forefront of my every thought for so long. I will be there soon.
Day One – Pain
Day one was the south. We went to Kibbutz Nir Oz, getting a two hour and thirty minute tour from a surviving resident. She took us all along the barbarism and sadness and dread that was October 7th.
And then she culminated with her own story while we all gathered inside her burned house.
In the darkness and gathered tightly amongst burned possessions, she told us about the three waves she encountered with terrorists. Her husband not taking his hand off the door, her three kids scared to keep the door closed and to ever open the door, her holding her dogs mouth shut to not make a sound, the smoke that forced them to say goodbyes to the death that did not come, and for their short breaths opening a window, to being unable to open their door with it forcibly shut due to the excess heat of the fire they were attempted to be murdered with.
We take a break from the awful and get to have lunch with soldiers. Get to visit with the special unit that actually took part of the secret rescue mission that brought back two Israeli hostages.
The heaviness of the south continued with a conversation with Zaka about the horrors of their role, a visit to the Nova Music Festival site with tears all around as an Israeli band sung and Richmonders gathered to pray.
And next to the bomb shelter that Hersh Goldberg-Polin was in with 28 other young people. And a stop to see hundreds of burned cars.
Day one had 24 people forced into a forever connection. We experienced something so unique that we will forever be bonded by something we only saw 164 days after it occurred.
Day Two – Connection
Our partnership day was a day of rain, an afternoon of sunshine, and once in a lifetime experience for our group of 24 Richmonders.
The whole trip is once in a lifetime. We all never want to do this trip again. Seeing a Lieutenant Colonel tell his story from the days and months following October 7th, only able to communicate it through his first language of Hebrew, is a memory nobody will ever forget.
But that was the conclusion of what was a day of true connection in our partnership region of Hadera-Eiron. It started at 6:30. At breakfast. Day one’s horrors bonded us all and so breakfast on day two quickly multiplies as 2 becomes four. And then 10 and 20. What takes one day to build deep connections with people from our own city, takes one more day to build connections with people across the world.
We sit down with 15 Israeli teens and get into open dialogues about everything these beautiful and articulate and inspiring and talented kids have on their minds. The kids clearly are wise beyond their years, likely sacrificing some level of innocence and naivety when you encounter all that they have lived with now and in their young lives.
Run into and out of lunch amidst the rain before visiting a volunteer project to see special equipment being prepared and upgraded for soldiers. We discuss the logistics and questions around breakthroughs from civilians.
Snacks and coffee from a local bakery where we discuss even more ways start ups and philanthropy and human capital can move a people forward. Then free time to shop and be around locals sees people wanting to take things back home.
For dinner we get invited to go to someone’s house to be with Israelis. Nili had come to visit Richmond last summer. She was one of the two adults that chaperoned a group of Israeli teens that spent time in our community. Many of those teens came this night, even able to say hello to people like Amy Melnick-Scharf who hosted two of them in her house.
People made fresh challah and people drank and laughed and had an amazing time in this beautiful setting with Jews from all across the world. Then a magic show to have everyone smiling and enjoying life. And then back to the reality here in Israel. Nili’s husband had recently returned from five months of service.
He told us his gut wrenching story. Of October 7th where he was directly in it to his time in Gaza since. A man of strength and power and so clearly broken. And so clearly we were all broken.
His heroism through it all, what this country is going through, the weight that they all carry. Heroism. They are our hero’s.
Day Three – Trauma
We have now seen how awful the 7th of October was. Now have seen it and felt it worse than we knew just a few days ago. Now attached to people and places and stories that we cannot fathom life moving forward. But forwards is the only way of time.
We visit the Israel Trauma Coalition where CEO Talia Levanon gives graciously her time and her wisdom. She is leading efforts to build resilience through communities that are stacked high with heartbreak. She pushed each of us to think about a path forward. She talks about her own choices. How sure there was failure that day but not by the individual. And that individually we do our best. We have to make our own decisions on how we are going to move forward in this life.
Next to Jerusalem and a visit at Shaare Zedek Medical Center with Professor Ofer Merin. He is in charge of a hospital but medical questions are just the start to this complex place. The burdens of staff being called to reserves.
To the burden of Arabs and Jews, living in the same city, working in the same building, often relying on one another. Or the moral weight of saving the life of a terrorist. He also shares the burden of his meetings as part of a special committee to investigate the livelihoods of those hostages. A brutal glimpse into our next meeting.
They lived in Richmond for years. Their story has risen to the forefront of these past months as they have taken the lead on voicing their struggles. Everyone in the room had the number 166 written on their clothes to represent the number of days the hostages have been in Gaza.
And so we hear the story of Hersh Goldberg Polin and his parents. We hear about the beauty of their son. The way he moved through this world with love and passion. And how Rachel and Jon are living each day. Forced into a world where only one outcome is the goal. And how they work every day without knowing success. Because only one result matters, there is still no progress.
After shopping in Jerusalem and praying at the Western Wall, we continue through a path full of heartbreak. We go to a volunteer healing center where people have transformed their home to a place for the victims and families of the Nova Music Festival.
We hear from a 29 year old, his experience laying face into the ground trying to go unnoticed for five hours, to have his pulse checked and to be face to face with someone from Gaza, and to feel lucky to have been running through bullets tasked to end his life but to never impede his path. He survives the 7th and has been coming here since. To feel safe and to feel supported and to gather himself. He and this country of trauma is still supposed to move on with their days.
Then to a local restaurant for dinner where we talk with the managers father. Because of course this whole country is impacted. The manager is Omer Wenkert, another hostage is Gaza. He helped build a place where we enjoy hours of each others company in a perfect ambiance and better food. But not without its tragedy. For another reminder that this is impacting everyone, and every day.
Day Four – Light
Our last day starts with volunteering at a strawberry field. From picking the strawberries in the fields to packaging them for consumption, we get our hands dirty and participate in working the land.
The land that was barren when the Zionists came here over a century ago. They came to nothing and have built this place with so much substance. And built a place where we are so thankful to be. And a place that will to continue to grow.
Construction is everywhere. Cranes and buildings in every direction. And with each new space, comes the burden to ensure it will be here for centuries. So they build the internal structure to the sky to be reinforced for everything that this place has to consider. A sky scraper of bomb shelter first. Followed by the rest of the building for everything else this start up nation is going to do next.
Next we hear the story of Omri Ram. His father tells us his story. He was murdered at the Nova Music Festival along with his two friends. And his dad considers them one of the lucky ones. Because they got to see their son, to see his smiling face. And to say goodbye. For myself as a father of boys, his tale his gut wrenching. Especially as he is smiling and being hopeful and full of optimism. But his light is still with pain.
We get to hear next about the logistics of a volunteer group of 150,000 Israelis that are finding their own philanthropy. Now named Brothers and Sisters for Israel, they are trying to fill the needs for communities displaced and unable to return to normalcy. We are reminded again why and how this place came to be. Our value of education has driven our people forward forever.
It’s why we are at the forefront of many fields in masses way beyond our share of the space we take up in this world. We are a special people. And we sit with two people that we can see and hear and feel can push another generation forward. And we can feel that this place has the capacity to continue to grow and move past pain and trauma and try to find the light.
As our trip pushes towards conclusion, we take time at Hostage Square. We see the table of those who have yet to come home. Who are stuck.
And we are reminded of how many people here can’t see any light. Because they are still stuck in time.
Waiting for their futures to begin and waiting for the fate of the people still held captive after being dragged from their home.
We sit and talk together. 24 of us decided to go through this experience, not all fully understanding the depths of the horrors we would feel. And 24 of us will be forever changed by our time here. I am more ready now.
Ready to be the link between Israel and Richmond. The link between my generation and others. I went and I witnessed. I saw and I sank into it. All of it.
To hear more about the trip, or to connect with Brad, you can reach him at bkaplan@jewishrichmond.org
