Ten Months Later - Reflecting on Israel from Afar

By Lynn Alster

Vegetable and fruit picking and distribution 

BHC ShulNews readers may recall that during the initial months following October 7, 2023, a few personal messages to concerned friends and family made their way from me in Israel into the BHC newsletter.

Now, in this summer of 2024, my husband Jitzchak and I are briefly trying out our hiking poles within the warm welcome of the Bethlehem BHC community in the quiet beauty of the White Mountains.   Thank you.    

When we met for the first time at the lovely celebration party honoring Dave and Dorothy, your BHC editor and I shook hands - and she asked me to again share my view of Israeli life now, 10 months later.  So, as part of our thanks to you, here it is.

For myself, life still feels a bit like riding bumper cars careening from wall to wall while the clock ticks down.   At the same time, we are trying to gain perspective and garner wisdom for the future. 

Looking back, I would try to understand how to live with grief.  Looking forward, I would seek a clearer vision of the future.

My sense of the Israeli manner of dealing with loss differs from how we had reacted to grief during my American childhood. 

Back then, here in the US the sound of grief was the lowering of voices to whispers, the look of loss was bowed heads with hats on hearts, support was transported via hugs between soft bodies, and the smell of healing was steaming casseroles thrust forward between oven mitts. The major task of overseeing the bereaved and bereft was assigned to sisters and brothers, or occasionally a close soulmate.  Tears might fall briefly when a leader, hero or heroine was stricken down. Even within our families, grief felt slow moving and quiet; passive acceptance coupled with words of hope that the future will look bright and the bereaved will heal.

There has been much loss in Israel – some even contend that the general population subsists at varying levels of “post trauma”.   Israelis, in my experience, don’t generally dwell on grief. When they do grieve, it is often verbal, active, and loud. And angry. Today, in Israel, almost no new calamity shocks.  For example, I have seen Israelis nod with an “I told you so” reaction to each new, appalling update of anti-semitism in Europe or America that blare across the newsfeeds from outside Israel’s borders.  And while every fallen soldier or civilian or hostage is a tragedy, the public almost seems to accept that such tragedies are the new Israeli norm.  

A norm of loss is very hard to take in, day in and day out. Parents, siblings and children gasp for air when their own drown in the seas of war.  Nerves are overstretched by abandoned homes, their owners caught in a game of roulette to be hit (or not) by rockets, by wives secretly praying that there will be no knock at their door but that the kind, well-trained army representatives who inform of a fallen soldier, if they must come, should knock at any different door.  Forests, those fir trees that we as American children gathered pennies and nickels to fund, are burning down from hatred through rockets landing in those forests.   Although some of the Israeli press downplays the Arab population’s losses outside of Israeli’s borders, not all do.  So, the left squints for its now fogged vision for peaceful co-existence, Zionists mourn the disintegration of international recognition of their cause, and the right grows increasingly frustrated by obstacles it encounters in its chosen path for restoration and renewal. But honestly I don’t recall seeing any whole hearted attempt to integrate our national and personal grief and losses.  (Nor, many say, to analyze and correct our errors.)

Lynn’s front door: “We are ending our house this summer while here in Bethlehem to.a family of people they don’t know - including two kids- who have been displaced from their home in the north for months.” -LA

For the future - right, centrist or left - nearly all perceive that weakness is not an option lest the country disintegrate or be dismantled.  Jut out your chin, raise your head higher and fight, push back. Be aggressive and look ahead. For those who can, pick more vegetables in the field of the absent farmer, keep cooking for the families of the drafted soldiers.  For others, intensify study of Jewish political, historical or religious sources, or demonstrate with flags.  Some believe that empathy weakens and throw anger back in retaliation. Others believe that the ethos of the invincible strong Jewish warrior, honoring the fallens’ names and memory and picking up the sword where it fell, is the only choice.   And, sadly, many function must daily at a high level while hiding their underlying drumbeat of fear deep inside.    

This constant struggle extracts a daily toll, depleting reserves of all kinds – financial, emotional, spiritual, physical. 

So, how do Israelis manage? We look for sources of strength.  Study the Jewish sources, create social support mechanisms, divert and support each other, dig deeper, work harder, jump in, bask in other Jews’ support.  We celebrate each new child as if the world were renewed, and revel in one another’s accomplishments large and small.  The older step into the shoes of those absent to fill their tasks, and many brazenly shout out their personal political views in public, while some bite back their tongues to maintain friendships in their private lives. 

Is it meaningful and even exhilarating at times in Israel? Yes. Is this what we thought the world would look like now?  For the majority, no.  

Energy is directed toward the future. The thoughtful Israelis I know are preoccupied by the question of how to change what has been broken. What is the best recovery plan?  What will be the legacy of the great Zionist experiment of this century?  And what is my individual role?

I take comfort in this: It is true that there are many different Israeli opinions screaming its views at one other, each absolutely convinced it holds the true answer and the other guy is daft or mindless.  But that is not a new feature at all.  In fact, these are the loud, expressive, powerful voices of democratic debate in Israel – all in the language of the Bible.  And what could be more Jewish than that?    

My best to you,

 Lynn

Lynn Alster and member Debra Simon were 13-year-old best friends in Queens, NY. and stayed in close touch Lynn and husband Yitzchak visited Bethlehem last summer and enthusiastically participated in the BHC book club, film festival, music series, and religious services.