Upon returning from visiting Israel this summer during wartime, I told a friend, “Israel is doing better than I have been these past nine months.” The remark startled her, but she could tell I meant it. While most might think that now is not the time to go to Israel, allow me to demonstrate why the moment is, surprisingly, just right.
Working for a non-profit that takes Christian college students to Israel meant that these past few months had been challenging on a professional level. But having lived in Israel for over two years has meant that the past few months have been excruciating for me on a personal level. For those in the Israel advocacy, education, and travel industries, what happens in Israel affects them daily–corporately, professionally, and personally. Those in this field do not have the luxury of looking away from the news or turning off the red alert app on their phones. The daily events in Israel entangle our hearts and minds. But when I finally was able to bring my body where my heart had been, everything changed.
There is a holiness to Israeli life. Taking a bus in Israel, ordering a coffee, and even going to the grocery store are acts of defiance to death and destruction. They say that the colloquial 614th commandment in the Torah is “to survive.” Israel is the living and breathing fulfillment of this commandment. Israel has lived through the worst attack on the Jewish people since the holocaust, almost a year of war, political turmoil, and over 100 of its men, women, and babies held hostage. It is a feat of sacred defiance for the people of Israel to continue going about the business of living.
The Jewish people are no strangers to suffering, and this latest tragedy also falls within another sacred Jewish tradition-turned-colloquialism— “They tried to kill us, it didn’t work, let’s eat.” But how often have we relegated past atrocities to the tomes of history while still performing the mundane? Walking from a bus stop in Jerusalem, the phrase in the air was, “They are trying to kill us. It hasn’t entirely worked. Yalla, let’s eat.”
Visiting Israel during peace is diametrically different from visiting it under the shadow of war. There is a special intimacy one gains with Israel having visited during such a time. There are hardly any tourists, so sites and shops seem to remain almost entirely for you as though they have remained open just so that you would come and see them.
If we don’t act soon, whatever COVID didn’t kill, this war will finish off. The old city of Jerusalem felt like a deadly plague had struck again, but only this time; many of these shops had finally shut their doors for good. Tourists who have been deferring their trips since 2020 have thrown their plans back into a holding pattern, and the Israeli economy and travel industry cannot bear any more delays. If you want to feel like a celebrity, walk as a visible tourist in Israel. You will instantly be transformed into an emissary of hope with every step you take, and you will be the subject of every old city child’s favorite pastime. “Germany?! France! America?! Where you from??”
While civilians carry more guns than before, and bomb shelters are open for their assigned use (and not as dusty storage sheds), Israel feels like a community set on a sacred task: the protection of life–your life and the lives of Israelis, and, perhaps in a spiritual way, the very nature of life itself.
Walking among the broken glass of the student village in Kfar Azza, my heart was steady and quiet. I had screamed and wept in my car all through October, wailed daily through November, sat in numbed silence through December, and my father held me as I shook with rage in January, But now that had all passed. I walked through the dry bones of my grief with our students. Many were learning of these atrocities for the first time while standing in the places where they had been perpetrated.
They cried and held one another. Others were numb. I realized that for me, these steps were the closure that I had needed. I had long known what had happened within these bullet-ridden walls, and the events of that day had been the substance of my past months’ nightmares. These places were real, the victims were real, and some were still living in the nightmare of captivity. As we loaded back onto the bus, we passed around toilet paper rolls, blowing our noses and wiping our eyes. Driving away from there, my eyes were fixed on the horizon, more determined than before.
This stage of grief had finally been closed.
“We can’t heal from our PTSD yet because our trauma isn’t ‘post’,” our tour guide told us. “It’s still ongoing.”
Israel is far from healed. As we stood on the blood-soaked killing field of the Nova music festival grounds, the sounds of far-off mortars ripped through the air. We felt the force of the explosion rock through our bodies.
“It’s ok, it’s ok, it’s ours” our paramedic reassured us immediately.
We were perfectly safe here where so many had not been, but the war in Gaza was close by. Our heroic survivor, Shye Klein, quickly continued telling us about what he had survived in this place as the sound of the artillery shells rang in the eucalyptus leaves.
The fresh graves on Mt. Herzl were composed of soft limestone earthen mounds of former lives, with handwritten plastic placards as gravestones. Our same paramedic comforted a weeping student near a grave by saying, “It’s ok, I survived Nova. If I can smile again, so can you.”
We journeyed from the graveyards and crime scenes to a schoolyard in Ofakim. This was a city where terrorists had famously driven, loaded in the back of white pickup trucks. Today, we arrived by tour bus. The schoolchildren were giddy to see us. We played games, helped them with their English homework, and answered questions about life in America. “Thank you for helping these children smile again,” the principal told us with a quivering voice.
Israel isn’t healed yet, but in a very small way, I know we helped close the wound. Being in Israel can help heal the parts that are ready to be healed, even if you have to sit with the parts that aren’t—for yourself and for Israel.Visiting the living means you will advocate for life and participate in its sacred defense.
The writer is the Associate Director of Advocacy and Strategy at Passages, a Christian organization dedicated to taking Christian students to Israel and mobilizing young people to support the Jewish state on campuses and in communities across the US, and to stand up against antisemitism.
