The Ineffable Moments

I got choked up the moment I saw the land of Israel from the tiny airplane window. The sun shining over the splotches of green fields among the large dirt patches, the tiny dots of houses and buildings sprinkled across the landscapes, the sparkle of the Mediterranean Sea. I nearly wept as the plane bumped down onto the tarmac. I felt like I was reuniting with an old friend, one with whom I share a loving, complex, and painful relationship. It was hard to discern if my tears were those of joy, grief, anticipation, relief, uncertainty, or longing. Anxiously, I pulled out my journal and scribbled: “Israel is no longer the same country I left years ago, nor is it the same country it was three months ago. Pain, shattered souls, brokenness, war, fear, resilience, hopelessness. What will I see? What will I hear? What will I feel?”

I did not fully comprehend how this final question would frame my brief and intense mission to Israel. With the generous support of the UJA Federation and beautifully executed by shlihim [emissaries] Elad Bar Ilan and Gali Rabin, I traveled to Israel with an intimate group of three rabbis and two Jewish professionals from NYC. As I reflect on my time there, I am overwhelmed with how to best share my experiences with you, my beloved community. I continue to process the intensity of what I heard and saw.

There are the extraordinary yet ordinary people I met, like Ismail Elkarnawi and his three cousins, Bedouin men from the city of Rahat who drove into the heart of the massacre on October 7, risking their own lives to save the lives of dozens of others because, as Ismail said, “This is what people do for each other.” Shikma Bressler and Roy Neuman, the leaders of the civil protest movement, who continue to fight the current government and demand a just and democratic state. And Michal Sella and Mohammad Darawshe at Givat Haviva, a shared society campus and initiative bringing together Arabs and Jews in culture, art, language, and dialogue, who day in and day out dedicate their lives to “creating pieces of peace,” as Muchammed so beautifully put it. 

But I understand that it was not only the people and the stories, it was the feelings that began to surface—the ineffable moments. The body language, the pauses between words, the longings behind people’s gazes, the kindness of strangers. 

It was… 

The choked-up welcome we got from our tour guide, Asaf, as he thanked us for bringing him hope and a sliver of normalcy after needing to get a job in a bakery because tourism no longer exists as it did three months ago. 

The long pause of Nadi Abu Arara as he explained the dire situation of his orchard, how his Thai workers fled on October 8, and how his former Palestinian employees, who are no longer permitted to work in Israel, are struggling to put food on the table for their families: “I still send them some money,” he said as he shook his head and clipped another clementine from a tree. 

The quick and loving glances between friends and activist Rula Daood, Itamar Avneri, and Alon-Lee Green, leaders of Omdim Beyachad/Standing Together, as they spoke about how 12 new branches of their shared society movement have opened since October 7; how they know that a shared society is the only way forward; and how they hold onto hope. “No one ever thought Israel would have peace with Egypt—look at us now.” 

The constant physical reverberations and booms of the artillery bombs being launched into Gaza I felt while I was in the south, shaking me to my core, making my colleague ask what we were all thinking. “When we hear and feel the booms, does it mean that innocent people in Gaza are being killed?” 

The hug Lotan, our guide and kibbutz resident, gave me as I thanked him at the end of our time in Kibbutz Be’eri. A hug that captured the young father’s survival story of 19 hours in a shelter with his family, the murder of his mother- and father in-law, his anger at the government and the army for abandoning him, the trauma and resilience of his three children, what it feels like to attend 40 funerals and shivot in one week and then to celebrate the wedding of your brother in-law, and his certainty that the kibbutz will be rebuilt. 

The gut-wrenching silence of Kikar He-hatufim (Hostage Square) in Tel Aviv, which welcomed us with a countup reminding us of the days, hours, minutes, and seconds our 132 siblings have endured the horrors of captivity. 

The laughter of the children of Kibbutz Zikim and Netiv Haasara, who survived the attacks of October 7 and yet are running around the hallways of the hotel they now call home. 

Each moment came with an onslaught of feelings. The emotions I felt during my time in Israel were often paradoxical, and yet they demanded to be held at the same time—fear and a sense of security, pain and healing, fragmentation and unity, anger and love. This is the real complexity of what it means to be human, to live with grief, to see past the illusion. The multiplicity of truths and the messy uncertainty that comes with it, I think, is what it feels like to rediscover the remarkable power of hope in the midst of acute despair. 

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Weintraub recently traveled to Israel with several New York area rabbis and Jewish professionals, supported by the UJA Federation of New York and The Jewish Agency. The cohort met with leaders, activists, and families affected by the October 7 terrorist attacks and visited some of those sites. She reflected on her trip in an in-depth conversation with Max Orenstein, BJ’s director of communications and marketing. Read the full conversation.