By Tal Bahar, Community Shlicha
One evening in July, I attended a Jewish Community Federation of Richmond event dedicated to Jewish life in Ukraine.
Following an impressive presentation by Sam Revenson and words of bravery from teens, Ksenia and Ava, who stood and talked about life itself. I could only think about how horrible this life they talk about is, how miserable this reality is. I felt guilty. “How dare I even complain?”
I thought to myself. After all, it is true that both Israel and Ukraine are fighting a war they did not choose, but the State of Israel, my country, manages to create an illusion as if the normal and protected life continues alongside the war. We are so successful that we have become victims of our own success.
When the crowd dispersed, I hugged them. My heart was out of place, and my head didn’t stop thinking. And from all the thoughts that were running through my head, I suddenly remembered an incident that happened one Shabbat a year-and-a- half ago in Jerusalem.
Before that, it is important that you also know what everyone who has ever been an Israeli soldier knows: when those wearing the olive uniforms walk in Jerusalem, we automatically become celebrities. We don’t pay enough attention and already phones are pulled out and photos taken, sometimes even without permission and sometimes with a huge hug.
For that matter, I’m sure there are dozens of photos of me circulating around the world from the three years I served as an officer, and I’ll probably never know about them. What can you do – a soldier, and more with a weapon – a wonderful display. The looks are always raised and I remember feeling obliged to smile the biggest smile I could. Always. And every look like that I got, made me stand up a millimeter higher.
On the Sabbath in question, when I was in command of cadets in the military officers’ course of the Education and Youth Corps, we were on a “Vocation Shabbat” in Jerusalem. My fourth such Shabbat. Residences adjacent to Shaar Zion, classrooms adjacent to the Western Wall.
There is nothing more fulfilling and exciting than a whole Shabbat in our capital, at the Kotel, especially as I knew that this was probably going to be my last time in such an occasion in uniform.
This time we were joined by the charming family of a charming Major from the Jewish Identity and Consciousness Unit. His children are in the age range of 0-16. While we received Shabbat on the Western Wall plaza, in the hour between profane and sacred, Shushi, one of his sons, such a sweet 6-year-old with a kippah and curly Peyos and sparkling blue eyes, pulled at my pants and asked a lot of questions about my weapon.
I knelt down and began to explain to him, very patiently and in detail, what each part was responsible for. And Shushi is curious, so he keeps asking lots of questions and I answer. Like this on the floor in the Western Wall plaza, me with the weapon and with a sweet, sweet 6-year-old boy with a kippah and curly Peyos and blue eyes.
For a moment I look up and see a woman with glasses and curly hair, looking at me with a broken look with tears in her eyes. And I smile as big as I can, as I usually do, and continue to explain to Shushi about everything he asks me. Suddenly, a hand rests on my thigh. I look away and seethe curly haired woman with glasses looking at me with cheeks wet from tears. And again with a big smile I put a hand on her shoulder. Suddenly in a choked voice she said:
“Thank you for everything you do for all of us. May God protect you. Take care of your precious life.”
The woman, who didn’t know that I wasn’t even a fighter and the weapon on me was just for safety if I had to protect her, among others, turned her gaze to Shushi and patted his head and then gave me a big hug.
So, I hugged her back tightly when she cried so much. And I started to cry too. The woman caressed my cheek and stood again about a meter and a half from me. She continued to cry and look at me with a look that became even sadder. I don’t know any other reality. But she, in her red eyes that looked at me with a sobbing and pitiful look – she knows. I saw, I saw that she knew.
And suddenly I felt that my body was becoming heavy. I was able to see in the reflection of her tears everything that she sees in me and in Shushi. She knows what another reality is. She knows, and that’s why an officer at the Western Wall sitting on the floor and explaining about weapons to a sweet 6-year-old boy is not a normal reality for her. Or at all.
And this thought, about how legitimate my reality is, a reality in which we use this weapon that we are so used to because we have to, without a choice, because how the hell can we do otherwise, is a sad and painful reality for everyone who looks at us, from a distance of one-and-a-half meters and more , from the other side of the world – shook me.
It shook me at that moment, and a few hours later, and when I was released from the IDF on the seventh of September ten months ago, and when the war started one month on the seventh of October nine months ago.
I was shaken by the realization that there are dear people I will never meet again, I was shaken by the feeling of longing for people I never knew, I was shaken by the knowledge that the world is not with us. that the truth has lost direction. And honestly, sometimes I blame the lack of knowledge and ignorance more than the people who’re holding on to this moral confusion.
I look at the natives of the other nations of the western world, who only know what it is to live without wars. In the past I was a little jealous, in the past I wanted to know how it felt. How does it feel to get up in the morning without the almost innate trauma, without knowing that the enemy is standing on the fence at all borders.
How does it feel to express an opinion on faraway continents in an enlightened illusion based on TikTok videos, to develop a defective ability to distinguish between good and evil, to be so privileged that the mission rests on politics and not on life itself. For them war represents hatred and death and corruption of the government that sends soldiers to a continent far far away for nonsense.
And maybe that’s a little true. Because when the damned terrorists infiltrated the State of Israel from the Gaza Strip, all they saw through their eyes was death. All they felt was hate. And it’s sad and terrifying because generations upon generations are growing up kept in Gaza and Judea and Samaria under refugee status, who are sure that being a martyr, “Shahid,” and murdering Jews is a noble goal.
And it’s even sadder because this is the reason that from the day I was born, as an Israeli, I have known what terrorist attacks are, and what terrorists are, and what to do when an alarm sounds and where to run if there is an attack.
And when I carried a rifle with the IDF uniform, I knew that for those terrorists I might be a mobile target. And I knew that I would sacrifice my life for the random person standing next to me at the bus stop.
Although the war in Ukraine is tragic and two years too old, the war in Israel is a reflection of our abnormal reality. And perhaps because of this grim reality, the sad fact is that war for us is also love. It is also life. Because when the terrorists invaded our borders on the sad Shabbat of Simchat Torah, they slaughtered and raped and burned and murdered and kidnapped.
The only reason we entered this war is because we love life and want to end the terrorist organization that endangers it, love our people and want to bring them home.
I wonder to myself who we would be, the Jewish people, if we had not been persecuted for over 3000 years. Maybe we didn’t have the wisdom, the sensitivity, the independence, the sense of family and community, that kept us as a people and a nation, siblings for many years, even when they tried to destroy us, and the Holy One, blessed be He, saved us from them, or we ourselves saved ourselves from them, or both.
I wonder to myself who we would be, the people of Israel, if we didn’t live by our sword. Maybe we didn’t have the courage, resourcefulness, assertiveness, curiosity and urgency to invent, defend, establish a state. Keep it safe and sound, for the people in it and the land on which it is founded.
What is left?
To drink lots of water and to take an Advil, or three, for the headache after all these thoughts.
This reality requires us to think long and hard, to fight with truth and love against lies and hatred.
To hope for peace, pray that our 120 loved ones will come home, and as fast as possible.
All what’s left is to continue to be grateful that we have the power to protect ourselves, and to continue to hope that we will not need to use it one day.
To reach out to Tal Bahar, email tbahar@jewishrichmond.org
