August 30, 2024
Being Seen: A Visit to the New North of Israel
By Sarah Mali, Director General, Israel, Jewish Federations of Canada-UIA
This week, with Jewish Federations of Canada-UIA (JFC-UIA) colleagues and a lay leader from Vancouver, I travelled to Israel’s North in an effort to give support to our partners, local leaders and professionals, to hear firsthand about the lived experiences of the residents and to gain a better understanding of the challenges of deep destabilization that the region is undergoing.
JFC-UIA's Coast-to-Coast communities and the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, partner with the most northern communities of Israel in Etzbah Ha-Galil, being the Eastern Galilee. All Canadian federations are concerned for the North and keen to show support.
We had to defer our trip, originally scheduled for Sunday, due to Israel’s preemptive strike in southern Lebanon and a travel advisory for the area from Home Front Command. We had the luxury of rescheduling. Those with whom we met never enjoy that privilege.
“In the North nothing has changed” is a soundbite we Israelis hear frequently since October 7th. By that we mean that the barrage of relentless fire has not ceased, the government has yet to step in with a plan and the evacuated populations are still uprooted with no end in sight.
What we discovered is that alongside the truth of this claim, a lot keeps moving in the north. The 60,000-100,000 evacuated residents have moved locations multiple times, from hotels, to temporary homes, from temporary homes to other ones that more naturally fit their needs. When we met with education leaders in the region, they described classroom sizes and students altering on an almost biweekly basis, some children leaving and others joining. We saw classrooms and safety rooms being built days before the start of the school year to accommodate students whose families want to say in the area but cannot yet return to their own homes. At the school we visited in Ayelet Ha’Shahar, a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle, more commonly known as a drone) had fallen across the street only the day before.
What was also striking (excuse the pun) was the intense, agonizing, and all-consuming fear of air strikes and terrorist incursions from Lebanon. Mothers (their husbands on reserve duty on the front lines), community leaders and teachers alike shared the awful day to day dilemmas of whether to drive two kids in one car or to leave one at home should anything happen on the journey, or how one gets 25 young children at school in no time at all into bomb shelters. Sirens don’t make it in time to warn of an attack - UAV’s and missiles fall from the sky with remarkable frequency and with no warning or with a synchronous siren. In fact, one of the teens told us that the only way they know they are in danger is if they hear that an adjacent town or kibbutz has had a siren go off.
Benny Ben Muvhar, the Head of the Regional Council of Mevo’ot Ha’Hermon showed us the devastation to his visionary Rehabilitation Centre. One piece of the Iron Dome defence mechanism had hit the building protecting it from a UAV. One would imagine that the building would be slightly damaged but in fact the piece of defence machinery, as it hit the rehabilitation facility, shook the whole building to its core. Although two weeks have passed since the attack, the appraiser has yet to assess the building since they themselves are afraid to come to the region. So, this remarkable building designed to help people, from the region and beyond, cope with and heal from their disabilities and injuries, has been itself impaired, violated and perhaps permanently damaged. It’s hard to take in.
The roads are desolate, the stores closed, we found one coffee shop open at 3pm. And if anyone needs a reminder, this is peak summer and this is prime location for Israeli and foreign holiday makers to enjoy a little countryside and hiking before the end of the summer vacation.
In writing this account I recalled the saying to “find your true north”. I looked up the saying and it means: “When you find your true north, you discover your authentic self. It's a combination of your purpose and your beliefs. You decide what you value most in life and put that at the forefront.”
In Sde Eliyahu, Ayelet HaShahar and Mevo’ot Hahermon (look them up on a map if you want to know how close they are to the terror machine of Hezbollah), we met mothers, children, teachers, heads of schools and community politicians who are aligned. They believe in their home, and in their right to inhabit it. It’s not easy. These residents from the 10 month old 5km boundary of northern Israel put their own lives at the forefront. These communities do not receive a governmental relocation stipend as they are outside of the 5km buffer zone. Nonetheless, they all seemed deeply connected with their purpose and values despite the day-to-day turbulence of their personal and communal worlds.
They repeated in tragic refrain how glad they were that we had come. That they felt seen and cared for. That it was a rare thing.
When I asked the Head of School what she was excited for regarding September 1st and the beginning of the school year she told me, eyes welling up, “I’m just so glad all the children will be together, and I can’t wait to see their smiles.”
Friday, July 19, 2024
Israel as a Blessing: The Birth of the First Pan Canadian Educators Journey
By Sarah Mali
This week we were proud to welcome the inaugural cohort attending Jewish Federations of Canada-UIA’s Pan Canadian professional development journey to Israel. Twenty-eight educators from Edmonton, Ottawa, Calgary, Winnipeg, Montreal, and Toronto are together for an experience of the heart and mind in war-torn Israel.
Over the course of one week, teachers, school board psychologists, curriculum writers, and heads of school are bearing witness to the events of October 7th, learning to frame and teach what Israel is like post the horrors, sharing and connecting with a cross-Canadian community of peers, and immersing themselves in the beauty of the land and the people of Israel.
It strikes me as significant that this program with its focus on the narrative of the land and people of Israel who are currently under attack locally and globally takes place in advance of the reading of the Torah portion of Balak which we read this Shabbat. Balak, tells the story of Bilaam, who is hired to curse the Jewish people and, instead, repeatedly blesses them.
We initiated the JFC-UIA Pan Canadian Educators Fund for the purpose of these missions, together with Jewish federations across Canada, the Azrieli Foundation, and The Jewish Agency because we realized that the professional community of educators undergoing systematic antisemitic attacks on their identity and values, and non-Jewish colleagues who wanted to give a complete picture, were the very people with the responsibility for teaching our children and forging the futures of our Jewish communities across Canada, and the understanding of Canadian students of all backgrounds.
In addition to funding, each federation recruited participants from their own community. UJA Federation of Greater Toronto played a lead role in building this first cohort with JFC-UIA. Montreal Federation CJA has a similar leadership role for the next group, scheduled for December.
We recognized the insidious nature of antisemitism on campuses, and within school boards and educational institutions nationwide, to demonize and delegitimize Israel and, at the same time, the Jewish people. These attacks ignored the fact that Israel and the Jewish people experienced the worst horrors since the Holocaust and ignored the indigeneity of the Jewish people to the land of Israel.
And so we invited teachers and administrators alike, Jewish and non-Jewish, to come to Israel and experience the country and its people through the eyes of Israeli educators and others at Kibbutz Beeri, Sderot, the Nova site on Kibbutz Reim, the Hostage Forum, Mount Herzl, the new National Library of Israel, the Museum of the Jewish People: Anu and much more. We heard from Canadian-Israeli journalist Matti Friedman, Professor Gil Troy, and bereaved mother, Jacqui Vital - born and raised in Ottawa - whose daughter Adi z”l was murdered on 7.10.
We did this so that educators would return to Canada resourceful, courageous and with the tools and tactics to tell the real story of Israel and the Jewish people.
Balak wanted nothing but to curse the People of Israel. And the sad and brutal reality is that we are facing the cruel force of these curses in our workplaces, online, and in the public arena in Canada and around the world.
We must recall that despite Balak’s desires, Bilam ultimately blessed Israel. It was a strange blessing, ambiguous in nature, but it wasn’t a curse.
Our job is to deepen our relationships with Israel and Israelis, build our professional peer groups, with Jews and allies in the broader community, and fortify our own sense of self. Bilam told us we are a “people that dwell alone”. But rather than incur self-isolation we ought to be saying: we are proud of who we are, our distinct history and ethical responsibility and we are committed, together with our sisters and brothers in Canada and elsewhere, who share humanistic values, to make the world better - for all of us, particularly our children.
August 13, 2024
History as an Anchor
By Sarah Mali, Director General, Israel, Jewish Federations of Canada-UIA
The first act of any doctor upon meeting their patient is to take a history. Our personal health timeline is important and can indicate the weaknesses and strengths of the body we have carried since birth.
So too, our collective histories. Our regional foes attempted this week, in a dark effort at psychological warfare, to frighten Israelis into paralysis by intimating that the dreaded attack from Hezbollah and Iran would fall on the Jewish fast day of the 9th of Av. This date is widely understood as commemorating the destruction of the two Temples in Jerusalem, millennia of periodic defeats of Israel, and the terrible savagery by our enemies aiming to annihilate us through the Holocaust and unto today. Yet, counter to paralyzing us, incurring this history to those who have survived history has inspired the opposite response.
There was a defiant ‘business as usual’ bustle across the country this week, notwithstanding, or perhaps in defiance of, the constancy of deathly threats. In a satirical clip that has gone viral here, an Israeli man is speaking on the phone to a family member, while stirring a pot of chicken soup, and asks; where will you be for the attack? A play on the typical benign Jewish line, where will you be for shabbat or Yom Tov?
When we are called upon to look at our past we inevitably reconnect with the trials and tribulations that our foremothers and forefathers underwent. We are a people who have survived and thrived over our history. Our ability to withstand today’s oppressive reality may even increase our ability to withstand it further. The scar tissue that regrows after a physical trauma may only be 70% as strong as the original tissue, but psychologically that which does not kill us may literally make us stronger.
In the late 1930’s, in the lead up to World War II, the British government feared that in the event of a German air raid on the nation’s capital, Londoners would panic and face terrible collective trauma. Churchill predicted that London’s four million citizens would flee to the countryside. And yet, despite a Nazi blitz that lasted more than eight months and claimed the lives of 40,000 Londoners, the experts got it wrong. The British attribute this to the proverbial stiff upper lip of English culture but a Canadian psychiatrist, J. T. MacCurdy, had a different interpretation.
In his book written in 1943, “The Structure of Morale,” MacCurdy suggests that it is the reaction of the survivors that determines “the morale of the community.” He notes that while those who survived a near miss might be left traumatized, a remote miss made one feel ‘invincible.’ As MacCurdy explains it, rather than cause fear and panic, these survivors, the majority of the population, experienced the opposite reaction:
“We are… prone to being afraid of being afraid, and the conquering of fear produces exhilaration. When we have been afraid that we may panic during an air raid and, when it has happened, we have exhibited calm… and we are now safe, the contrast between the previous apprehension and the present relief and feeling of security promotes a self confidence that is the father and mother of courage.[1]”
Applied to our present situation, and the current campaign to elicit fear and malfunction: when we take a grand look at our past and realize we have withstood many forms and mutations of antisemitism over time, we understand ourselves as remote misses of history. Our resilience is strengthened and our courage amplified.
At Jewish Federations of Canada-UIA (JFC-UIA) we see in our and our federations relationships these same qualities in the history of our ongoing philanthropic relationships in Israel, from Metulla to Eilat. The Coast-to-Coast communities of Canada have more than twenty years of partnership with the Galilee Panhandle, the most northern and currently vulnerable part of the country. When we ask the region’s citizens what has helped them with their evacuation efforts or, alternatively for those who have not had to leave, what allows them to stay, they refer to their personal history and in the same breath include the consistency of the thoughtful efforts made by our Canadian Jewish federations to ensure a deep sense of connection as a community, to their towns and cities and to one another. These same sentiments are echoed from the citizens of Be’er Sheva and Sderot and Eilat, the historic partnership cities of Montreal and Toronto federations respectively.
A particular case in point occurred this week when the Mevo’ot Hermon Therapeutic-Rehabilitation Centre suffered heavy damage in a UAV attack on the Upper Galilee, after it was apparently hit by an interceptor during a Hezbollah attack.
The Centre serves people in the north and the people of Israel, more broadly, of all backgrounds. The Centre and its pool provide essential therapies for children and adults with a range of needs. Treatment and programs offered help children with special needs, victims of work and road accidents, people in rehabilitation after orthopedic surgeries, adults after a stroke, and those with chronic diseases and congenital disabilities.
Benny Ben Muvchar, head of the local council and JFC-UIA’s longstanding partner in the region with Coast-to-Coast federations and the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, was in the centre with his son a few moments before the impact. Speaking with our team, Benny, visibly upset, brought history to bear when he told us that the Rehabilitation Centre was his baby, and that for more than 20 years he has been building and nurturing it with JFC-UIA and pioneering federations and communities across Canada. And, as if strengthened by referencing his own words on the past, he drew a breath and said, “We will build this Centre back better for the future, for the families of the region and the people of Israel.”
The Jewish People have a glorious and painful past, it is one of our greatest treasures and deepest resources in times of persecution. Our history is our anchor.
Israeli poet Dalia Kaveh wrote it best:
Like a Russian matrushka,
One doll inside the other,
There are enfolded in me
My mother and my grandmother
And the mother of her mother
And her grandmother
And all the generations,
A quiet row of women
Like a column of strength.
[1] Referenced and quoted in David and Goliath, Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants, Penguin Books, 2013
Tel Aviv in Words and Images
Olga Davidovich, JFC-UIA Director of Emergency Operations, together with Sarah Mali
Friday, December 29, 2023
This week we spent time in the heart of Tel Aviv, at Ichilov Hospital, the major hospital in Israel, which has been the recipient of significant Emergency Fund dollars.
The hospital staff explained that as part of the emergency operations required during the war, departments were set up in the underground parking lots at the hospital. One of these departments is the Dialysis Unit, primarily serving elderly patients who are unable to reach a protected room when the missile alarm sounds. These patients and doctors spend hours and days in the parking lot without seeing daylight to ensure the patients' safety.
JFC-UIA emergency funding, derived from funds raised by federations and from foundations, were critical in the speed and generosity in which they were allocated. Our support helped ensure that these departments were able to be set up with the technology and resources necessary, as soon as possible, in a safe place underground.
Preparations for accommodating additional departments, such as Young Rehabilitation and Geriatric Rehabilitation, are being made in other parking lots at the hospital in case the war expands to the northern part of the country.
In the underground car park allocated in the eventuality of more serious air threats, Director General, Sarah Mali, together with Cole Rotman in Israel on a volunteer visit, and senior medical and hospital professionals.
Ichilov Hospital currently houses many injured who survived and are in recovery from the horrors of October 7th. These men, women, and children receive extensive assistance in physical and psychological rehabilitation thanks to our emergency dollars. We were fortunate to meet with Reuven, a resident of Kfar Azza, who happened to be out of the kibbutz on the fateful Saturday, turned his car around and drove to Kfar Azza and fought courageously against hundreds of terrorists until he was shot multiple times in the chest and leg. While lying on the ground in the middle of the battle for 3.5 hours, he was fully conscious and realized he was losing a significant amount of blood. He told us that he was unsure whether to plug the bullet holes or leave them open, and so in his ambivalence he occasionally closed the bleeding wounds and left them open to let the blood drain out. When he arrived at the hospital, he discovered that his very uncertainty had saved his life, as this was exactly the procedure he was meant to do. Reuven told us that he was unconscious for 14 days. When he finally was up and walking, he met a nurse in the hospital corridor who took one look at him and burst into tears. He didn’t recognize her and asked the reason for her tears. She looked at him and said: I was in your 3.5 hour-long operation. I left believing you would not survive and now I see you walking along our hallway. You are a miracle – what joy!
We then walked to the Hostages and Missing Families Forum in which JFC-UIA, on behalf of Canadian Jewish federations and small communities, has been deeply involved since the Forum's tragic and forced inception. The Forum is the official volunteer run organization for all hostage families and ensures the financial security and trauma care of the immediate and extended families of all hostages in Gaza as well as ensuring that the hostages never leave the hearts and minds of Israeli society and world public opinion. It is powerful to see social media experts, masseuses, cooks, and therapists alike coming together to hold and support this community through its torment.
Bashir Ziadna, an Israeli Arab, shared the story of his family, who worked in the cowshed in Kibbutz Holit before being abducted on October 7. One family member was murdered on the spot. Four others - a father and his three children - were kidnapped to Gaza by Hamas. The younger children, Aisha Ziadna, 17, and Bilal Ziadna, 18, were released in recent weeks. Their father, Yosef, 53, who suffers from diabetes and a heart condition, and his son Hamza, 22, are still held captive in Gaza. Bashir Yitzchak, as he introduced himself to us, is displaced from Sderot and shared his dream to complete his law degree and give to society in Israel.
Our time at the Hostages and Missing Families Forum ended with a small ray of optimism, with a hug from Ofir Engel’s father, Yoav. The released 17-year-old boy’s father from Ramat Rachel in Jerusalem, told us that he comes regularly to support the hostage community and to do what he can for the release of others like his dear son.
Olga Davidovich, Sarah Mali, Yoav Engel and Cole Rotman
We concluded with time at the Nova exhibition at the Expo Center in Tel Aviv. This is a regular hall that was redesigned to appear like the rave after the depravities committed by hundreds of Hamas terrorists who savagely murdered 364 young dancers and abducted 40. The exhibition presented items collected from the party, which were broken, burnt, and torn.
The families and friends of the victims, as well as the general public have placed letters of mourning and longing for their loved ones, and for the people of Israel, on burnt cars, torn clothes and board games.
The statement that concluded the devastating display called for hope:
"WE WILL DANCE AGAIN”.
Friday, December 15, 2023
For this last day of Chanukah, shining with its full 8 lights, I want to share with you two related texts.
The first is a letter I received this week from Coral Grant, the Executive Director of Jewish Federation of Victoria and Vancouver Island. She sent me a note from Cohen, a seven-year-old boy from her community with special needs, asking that all the $21.48 from his tzedakah box be sent to help Israeli children.
The second text is a poem by Racheli Moskovitz entitled A Coat of Many Colors in which she connects the current generosity of the Jewish People with last weeks' Torah portion and positively rewrites the moment of the brothers' abandonment of Joseph. She ends with: See Yosef, your brothers were there for you.
A Coat of Many Colors
My son returned from battle, his duffel bursting with things that I had not packed for him.
Socks donated by a community in Argentina.
A quilted blanket smelling like someone else's home.
A blue towel from a family from the Moshav.
Tzitzit from Jerusalem.
A fleece jacket, gifted by a high tech company.
A scarf knitted by an elderly lady.
Undershirts purchased by a Paybox group.
A sheet that was given to him by a friend.
Gloves bought by teenage girls.
A jacket from the closet of someone who came and requested to give.
I spread out all of these garments and weave together a new coat of many colors.
See, Yosef, your brothers were there for you.
by Racheli Moskovitz
Don't forget my friends that hope, unlike optimism, is something which we humans materialize by our acts of kindness and belief that we can build a better world. Acts small and big, in equal measure, daily.
Shabbat shalom and Chag Chanukah sameach,
Sarah
Sarah Mali's Blog
Friday, December 1, 2023
I have a dear friend who, this past summer was run over by a car. A very popular woman, there was a cacophony of WhatsApp groups, visits, flowers and gifts for the first few weeks when she was in ER. She told me that the hardest part was when she came home, and the real work of rehabilitation started. That is when she needed her friends.
The minute the horrific events of Simchat Torah unfolded, world Jewry, in a move that can only be described as covenantal in nature, swooped to Israel’s aid. Jewish Federations of North America recorded that US$650M were raised in a little over a month of which the Canadian Jewish federations raised close to US$100M. In those first moments and weeks, we needed, what the anthropologist Margaret Wheatley calls ‘heroic leadership’. Heroic leadership assumes that we are somewhat in control, that we can fix things or at least help fix things. There is something about this leadership I love because it has a sense of clarity and cohesion, it is unequivocal, umbilical and immediate.
This philanthropic sprint, short of a full-blown war up north - heaven-forbid, is drawing to a close and yet the marathon for Israel’s survival and thriving as a beautiful, safe country has only just begun.
Now the Israeli populace faces a gaping hole of uncertainty around security issues on its borders. This has meant that 130,000 displaced people from the north and south will not return home in the foreseeable future. Israel’s well-earned social fabric is dissolving, as border communities splinter in an attempt to find semi-permanent residences as a next step out of their temporary dwellings. There is an inestimable amount of trauma and psychological treatment needs. And we know in this environment, weaker elements of the population are left behind.
This is all in addition to the untold physical destruction and infrastructure damage.
Although the heroic efforts to save Israel will always be important, we are entering a different phase, and we would be wise to recognize the need to switch roles. In this mid-long-term phase of recovery and rebirth the philanthropic community should put its heroic cape to one side and begin to act as leaders who are, to continue the Wheatley distinction, hosts.
To begin to tackle these multi-faceted and emerging challenges, here are four principles of how ‘leaders as hosts’ would lead:
- Convene all stakeholders particularly those with the most to gain/lose such as the Israeli populations on Israel’s borders, together with the right group processes;
- Provide resources of time, to ensure that data is gathered from the field, in the case of Jewish Federations of Canada-UIA (JFC-UIA), through the Representatives of federations on the ground in their respective regions and be strategic about the stages of funding allocations. Do not always rush in!
- Learn from past experience of emergency campaigns and allocations as well as regular trial and error, through check-ins and reporting. Feedback loops help make our impact more deliberate and precise;
- Offer unequivocal support. Be present. Be patient. Be forgiving. And be willing to step up and contribute, for the long haul.
At JFC-UIA we apply these principles for the intermediate and long-term recovery of Israel and serve as trusted guardians and stewards to ensure the highest and best use of funds, in accordance with Canadian communities’ wishes, over time. Simply put: We ought to slow down, listen to the people and make smart, systemic moves. AND continue to give. Passionately and with the same resolve.
In this weeks’ torah portion Vayishlach, Jacob wrestled with the unnamed adversary or ‘angel’ in the dark of night. Some interpreters read this all-night struggle of Jacob’s as being with himself. Jacob had to obtain the grit and strength of his brother Esau, in order to emerge triumphantly as the sun arose, as Israel.
Israel, the Jewish People, has to do a similar kind of integration of roles now. We must be able to act swiftly. But we must also pace ourselves to allow for the emergent processes to develop out of the crisis situation. We do not know what tomorrow will bring. But as we embark on a long night of rehabilitation let us be sure not to let our own need for immediacy and tangibility get in the way of the restorative timeline Israel needs.
Sarah Mali’s Blog – Tuesday, November 14, 2023
This week, I went to visit Elinor, a former young Emissary who volunteered for UJA Federation of Greater Toronto for a year in 2008.
A young career woman, she rented an apartment in Nachal Oz, the pastoral kibbutz only 800 metres from the border with Gaza, to live alongside her sister, brother-in-law and their three young daughters.
I visited Elinor at Kibbutz Mishmar Ha’emek, the one she tells me that they have been to in the past when there have been attacks on their home in the Gaza envelope.
But this time was different. The rockets weren’t only from the sky. The terrorists tore into the kibbutz. Ilan, Elinor’s brother-in-law, the security officer of the kibbutz and the only one with a weapon, fought valiantly to stop the terrorists but there were too many. He called upon everyone including the security team (who had no weapons and couldn’t get to the weapon room) to stay indoors. Elinor, hid in her safety room for 16 hours in the dark holding a knife and the door shut tight.
And as we sit in Yokneam for sushi, I watch this beautiful woman count her blessings and it goes something like this:
It’s a miracle they passed over my door.
It’s a blessing the kibbutz security team, weaponless, listened to Ilan and did not leave their houses.
It’s a blessing that I didn’t see anything.
It’s a miracle they found his body.
It’s a blessing they found his body whole and recognizable.
It’s a blessing that we know that whatever he did he had no chance. No regrets.
It’s a blessing his girls know he died a hero.
And then she says, as if unconnected, you know that my co-Emissary in Toronto, Gal, she came to the funeral and with others from 2008, to visit me during the shiva for Ilan. And we try and work out how long they have known each other: 15 years!
And my host families from Canada, they also are in touch with me, and supporting me, she continues.
And I recall what my colleague Eran Shmueli David told me about Kyriat Shemona and the way in which, as a community, they were able to support one another to evacuate the city from the north because the Municipality, together with their Coast-to-Coast partners, had systematically invested in the Better Together program for community integration and responsibility.
And it struck me that there are blessings and miracles that are out of our own hands.
And then there are the blessings and miracles that we seed all the time through our acts of kindness and philanthropy. Most of the time, in our daily life, we don’t pay much attention to the latter and wish for the former.
And then the day comes when we really need each other and the programs that brought us together, that taught us how to care for one another, that pushed us out of our own individuality, well, they become the programs that quite literally save us, emotionally and physically.
Rabbi Sacks makes the distinction between hope and optimism: optimism, he says, is the belief that the world is changing for the better. It is a passive virtue. Hope, Sacks says, is an active and courageous virtue because it is the belief in ourselves, the belief that, together, we can make the world better.
It is our time to courageously believe in our capacity to rebuild our future here in our homeland.
It is our time to seed together the ideas, plans, infrastructures and programs for the re-creation of life in the Jewish State.
And as such, it is no wonder that our national anthem, our call to action is, Hatikva: Hope.
Sarah
For sale: Newly-wed sofa. Never used.
October 27, 2023
A newly-wed couple ordered a lovely sofa for their home. True to Israeli style it had been delivered later than anticipated. Too late.
By the time it had arrived at the couples’ new apartment the husband had been murdered by Hamas terrorists.
All of the usual things, regular life, a new sofa, all of this has been cruelly and unequivocally appropriated to October 7th. The language we now use that we thought we’d never use: Pogroms, Holocaust, massacre. Sayings we were used to saying, we now can’t. I mean how can you ever say again: ‘we are going to need to pick up the pieces’ after what happened in the Gaza envelope?
Our dreams have been invaded. Regular meetings that had a sense of order about them turn their head. A lawyer in a ‘regular’ work meeting tells you, in response to your question about his green wristband that he is on reserve duty and identifies bodies. That he has too much work to do there but came out for a couple of hours…almost three weeks after…
All of this is to say that what we are facing in Israel is nothing less than an onslaught on our sense of being alive.
The temptation to collapse into melancholy, rage, despair, and fear is imminent and ubiquitous.
We’ve been at the edge of the precipice. And we are taking a giant step back. Collectively.
I cannot underestimate how much force and effort and courage is going into this step. It is gargantuan.
What I am trying to describe is an internal and external battle by all of us now in Israel to be able to smile again, breathe again, sleep again.
And we have begun. We are talking about the atrocities. We are getting married. We delight in newborn babies. We are going out just a little to spend time with our partners.
We are giving endlessly. We are preparing to protect our country.
I’m a believing person but haven’t felt so close to the idea of faith as I do today.
It is faith in the people of Israel and the Jewish People.
We have grit. And honesty. And intense love. So much love we can tear ourselves apart at times. But today it is our most potent source of strength. A love for each other.
A belief in this country.
Israel is, to coin a phrase, the place where our covenant of destiny and our covenant of fate meet: It is the place which both gives us sublime purpose, and which indiscriminately connects us in the face of our enemies.
With this awareness, we are fighting the fight of our lives.
My friend overseas told me that she looks at us and it reminds her of the fight she had in her when she battled cancer.
Our purpose has never been clearer. To live as free people in our homeland. To be alive. Again.
This isn’t like another war.
This is the battle for the re-creation of Israel. It is our 1948.
And I know that we are ready. We have the resourcefulness and courage and tenacity to face evil and be good and healthy and broken but whole again.
I know there will be a day not far from now that a young couple will curl up for their first kiss on that sofa, that kids will jump on that sofa, they will be told to ‘get off that sofa now’, parents will fall asleep and dribble indelicately on that sofa, grandparents will hold hands on that sofa. That sofa will be used. By us all.
A Message from my Colleague, Eddy Azran, UJA Federation of Greater Toronto’s Representative in Sderot*,
written this week (week of Oct. 16th), about his experience in the barbaric terrorist attacks of October 7th
(*Note: Sderot has been a partner community of UJA Federation of Greater Toronto’s for 18 years.)
At the Scene of Carnage: Reflections from Sderot
On the morning of Shabbat and Simchat Torah, my family and I woke up to an extensive barrage of rockets. The sound was different. This was no ordinary bombing. It went on for an extremely long period without any breaks in the ammunition being fired. We all became concerned.
I immediately wrote to the groups in the area that are responsible for ensuring the safety of our families if threatened by an intrusion of terrorists or any other security breach. I wrote in my Kibbutz’s WhatsApp group, "Probably a drill in preparation for an infiltration” but, I was still calm and confident that if there were in fact terrorists, that they would be dealt with immediately.
I was so confident that even after I began receiving messages about the attack in Sderot, I didn’t believe it. As quick as it began, so did the beginning of an influx of messages from colleagues and friends in the kibbutzim around us and on the border, describing terrorist shootings and vicious attacks in our neighboring cities and villages. People were begging for help.
I called my friends in the immediate area and in the kibbutz and we began organizing. Those who were able joined in trying to protect our families. We had people on the roofs of homes on the lookout.
A friend from the army who lives in Nir Moshe, which is a village near to ours, informed me that the terrorists were attacking Moshav Yachini. My friend said, "Brother, we have no chance, we have to hang up, take care of us, we have are as good as dead."
I left my family and went into the fields in the direction of Yachini. I asked a member of our kibbutz to be on the lookout from the roof, fearing that terrorists would be coming from the direction of Yachini which is only a few kilometres away. An army border vehicle drove by me and I told them what was happening. Without hesitation they drove there to help residents. Later I found out that both the officers died fighting to protect the kibbutz.
The magnitude of the massacre is indescribable. We were shocked by the degree of cruelty and disgusted, but we are focused now only on being victorious. We have no other option. We know that we may still suffer from more loss and destruction, but we are united.
Already in the first hours of the brutal attack, people began to organize and evacuate Sderot and the surrounding area. We decided to divide into shifts. I took the night watch 1:00 am - 7:00 am. We received constant updates on the battles. The number of casualties is heartbreaking. I was going on without sleep and food for more than 24 hours by then. At the time, I didn’t realize that the next time I will get to sleep (for a short while) was three day later.
On the morning of Sunday, October 8 (the second day of fighting), I left everything and went to Sderot – my hometown, where most of my family lives and where I work for UJA Federation of Greater Toronto. On my way there, I saw with my own eyes the horrors of the savage attack. The dead bodies and damaged vehicles remained in the streets.
Soldiers stopped my car and told me that I could not drive any further. I pleaded, telling them that I needed to check on my parents who I had not been able to reach because of the collapsing of the cell phone service and power outage. I knew that they were only trying to protect me, but I knew I needed to move on. They wouldn’t allow me to proceed. By chance someone I knew passed by and together we convinced the soldiers to let us through. That is Israel for you.
When I arrived at my parents, they told me they did not want to evacuate. All I could do was to show them how to charge their phones in the car (as the power was still out) and ensure that they had food and water. I returned to my kibbutz. By the time I arrived home, entire families had already organized and were evacuating. Our kibbutz was emptied within hours.
Two days later, we decided it was the best time to get the family out of the area. My parents did not agree to evacuate and decided to stay but my sister and her children as well as my wife's parents and brothers along with their families evacuated Sderot with us.
Since then, I have been thinking about how we can bring value and help on all levels to the evacuees, the victims and the emergency teams that are still functioning in the field. Currently, there are still combat zones and people who have not yet been evacuated. I am assisting them with putting in place situation teams that can assess needs and respond quickly, and working to get much needed live-saving equipment for the people who evacuated. Efforts which the Toronto Jewish community, working with JFC-UIA, has been supporting generously.
We need to be prepared for hard and long work. We know how strong the Jewish people are, both in Israel and in the Diaspora and believe that our mobilization and cooperation will only strengthen our nation.
At the end of this bitter road we will all experience the pain and be left scared. But we will recover and take care of each and every one who lived through the trauma of the last 22 years and survived the disaster of October 7, 2023.
On Shabbat, we read in Parashat Genesis: “And God created man in His image; in the image of God created him.”
Immediately afterwards, Cain kills Abel and, with his own hands, destroys that image. The interpretation says that "Abel seemed to his brother like an animal". Are we doomed that, for eternity, we will always live with some in this region who view Jews as human animals?
On October 7th, we met the sons of Cain who butchered us. And this is what we are standing against: those who would destroy the Jewish people in the only Jewish state in the world, and those who would destroy the image of God in man.
Let the whole world know.
Wishing us all Shalom, and thanks to all the people who prayed for my wellbeing, we will meet again soon.
Eddy Azran
UJA Representative, Sderot
Being Seen: A Visit to the New North of Israel
August 30, 2024
This week, with Jewish Federations of Canada-UIA (JFC-UIA) colleagues and a lay leader from Vancouver, I travelled to Israel’s north in an effort to give support to our partners, local leaders and professionals, to hear firsthand about the lived experiences of the residents and to gain a better understanding of the challenges of deep destabilization that the region is undergoing.
JFC-UIA's Coast-to-Coast communities and the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver, partner with the most northern communities of Israel in Etzbah Ha-Galil, being the Eastern Galilee. All Canadian federations are concerned for the north and keen to show support.
We had to defer our trip, originally scheduled for Sunday, due to Israel’s preemptive strike in southern Lebanon and a travel advisory for the area from Home Front Command. We had the luxury of rescheduling. Those with whom we met never enjoy that privilege.
“In the north nothing has changed” is a soundbite we Israelis hear frequently since October 7th. By that we mean that the barrage of relentless fire has not ceased, the government has yet to step in with a plan and the evacuated populations are still uprooted with no end in sight.
What we discovered is that alongside the truth of this claim, a lot keeps moving in the north. The 60,000-100,000 evacuated residents have moved locations multiple times, from hotels, to temporary homes, from temporary homes to other ones that more naturally fit their needs. When we met with education leaders in the region, they described classroom sizes and students altering on an almost biweekly basis, some children leaving and others joining. We saw classrooms and safety rooms being built days before the start of the school year to accommodate students whose families want to say in the area but cannot yet return to their own homes. At the school we visited in Ayelet Ha’Shahar, a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle, more commonly known as a drone) had fallen across the street only the day before.
What was also striking (excuse the pun) was the intense, agonizing, and all-consuming fear of air strikes and terrorist incursions from Lebanon. Mothers (their husbands on reserve duty on the front lines), community leaders and teachers alike shared the awful day to day dilemmas of whether to drive two kids in one car or to leave one at home should anything happen on the journey, or how one gets 25 young children at school in no time at all into bomb shelters. Sirens don’t make it in time to warn of an attack - UAV’s and missiles fall from the sky with remarkable frequency and with no warning or with a synchronous siren. In fact, one of the teens told us that the only way they know they are in danger is if they hear that an adjacent town or kibbutz has had a siren go off.
Benny Ben Muvhar, the Head of the Regional Council of Mevo’ot Ha’Hermon showed us the devastation to his visionary Rehabilitation Centre. One piece of the Iron Dome defence mechanism had hit the building protecting it from a UAV. One would imagine that the building would be slightly damaged but in fact the piece of defence machinery, as it hit the rehabilitation facility, shook the whole building to its core. Although two weeks have passed since the attack, the appraiser has yet to assess the building since they themselves are afraid to come to the region. So, this remarkable building designed to help people, from the region and beyond, cope with and heal from their disabilities and injuries, has been itself impaired, violated and perhaps permanently damaged. It’s hard to take in.
The roads are desolate, the stores closed, we found one coffee shop open at 3pm. And if anyone needs a reminder, this is peak summer and this is prime location for Israeli and foreign holiday makers to enjoy a little countryside and hiking before the end of the summer vacation.
In writing this account I recalled the saying to “find your true north”. I looked up the saying and it means: “When you find your true north, you discover your authentic self. It's a combination of your purpose and your beliefs. You decide what you value most in life and put that at the forefront.”
In Sde Eliyahu, Ayelet HaShahar and Mevo’ot Hahermon (look them up on a map if you want to know how close they are to the terror machine of Hezbollah), we met mothers, children, teachers, heads of schools and community politicians who are aligned. They believe in their home, and in their right to inhabit it. It’s not easy. These residents from the 10 month old 5km boundary of northern Israel put their own lives at the forefront. These communities do not receive a governmental relocation stipend as they are outside of the 5km buffer zone. Nonetheless, they all seemed deeply connected with their purpose and values despite the day-to-day turbulence of their personal and communal worlds.
They repeated in tragic refrain how glad they were that we had come. That they felt seen and cared for. That it was a rare thing.
When I asked the Head of School what she was excited for regarding September 1st and the beginning of the school year she told me, eyes welling up, “I’m just so glad all the children will be together, and I can’t wait to see their smiles.”
Punctuation
By Sarah Mali, Director General, Jewish Federations of Canada-UIA
October 20, 2023
We are punctuated.
By rockets. Sirens. Funerals. Shivas.
Stopping to feed our own neglected children. Putting the washing on.
Not talking.
Then back to the urgency of our efforts for Israel. Totally and obsessively. The only place where words and images flow.
Punctuated by news flashes.
By friends outside asking us questions with no answers.
By the news of someone else, dead, injured, taken.
By calls from our girls, away serving their country.
Punctuated by a numbing guilt. That we are ok.
By our thoughts and sentences. Stopping and starting.
By the pain; piercing, clear and unapologetic.
By the audible cries of the children that are alive and taken.
By visions of the elderly, shaking without their medication.
Punctuated by the knowledge that our naivety brought us here and cannot redeem us.
We are punctured.
Through the heart.
We are lifted
By the joy of weddings in uniforms,
By a hug from a stranger in the street,
By a song sung for free by someone famous.
By an elderly couple holding hands on a bench.
Lifted by your love, our People, distant yet close, sleepless and unwavering.
This is Our Moment
Thoughts for Shabbat: Friday, October 13, 2023
By Sarah Mali, Director General, Israel, Jewish Federations of Canada-UIA
It is totally bewildering to me that we are reentering Shabbat.
There has been no structure to the week. You wake and have this split second where you think life is normal and then your whole stomach churns and your heart aches, again. No day, no night, incessant calls, no meetings, from doing to more doing punctuated by travel to funerals and then back to the mayhem - the tohu, vavohu – the chaos – that we will read in this weeks' Torah portion. If you have spoken to an Israeli this week you may have found it odd, sentences stopped in the middle, lines of thought dissipating intermittently, children, sirens, thunder, succahs falling down in the wind in the background.
Though our speech may be choppy we have total clarity.
We have been enlightened in the cruelest of ways. And we will overcome darkness.
Medieval, grotesque darkness.
History is important: The spiritual leader of the Palestinian community in the 30s was Haj Amin Al-Husseini who was pictured meeting Hitler and who notoriously said "Kill the Jews wherever you find them. This pleases God, history, and religion. This saves your honor. God is with you." He is the acknowledged spiritual symbol of Hamas.
There is no room for moral equivalency when facing terror.
This is pure evil.
You may need to suspend a romantic part of your belief system to say this.
That we are all human, that this is a human disaster on both sides. It won't be simple.
You need to do it.
Because what Israel and the Jewish People need to do now is defeat evil.
You may also, heaven forbid, need to face that in your communities too.
We said never again in the past, we cannot afford to use it as a mantra when we are purged.
We need to use it as a defiant, bold, and unwavering call for action.
It is quite possible, even were we to live long lives, that we will not see Israel fully repaired in our lifetimes. But we will do everything to ensure that Israel and Israelis are rebuilt from the inside out and the outside in. That we are strong and full of life like we know how to be for the long run.
Listen for a minute to the final chapter of the book of Lamentations, the biblical chapters that tell of the destruction of Jerusalem:
We have become orphans, fatherless, our mothers are as widows.
They ravaged the women in Zion, the maidens in the cities of Judah,
Leaders were hanged by their hand; the elders were shown no respect.
Young men drag the millstone, and youths have stumbled under the wood....
Gone is the joy of our hearts; our dancing has turned into mourning.
This book begins with:
How solitary is Jerusalem – how alone are we
This week I have been inundated by calls, emails, and messages from the Jewish communities across Canada. It is a humbling experience to feel such generosity from Canadian Jewry who are standing up for the Jewish homeland in unprecedented ways. (You have also asked how I am, which has warmed my heart.)
Together, at rallies, parlour meetings and in more discrete ways you declare:
Israel will never be solitary again!
Since before its founding Canadian Jewry, led by our federations, has been consistently committed to and interconnected with Israel.
This is our moment, as Canadian Jewry and the Jewish People, to be the people our history has taught us and our future demands of us to be.
Am Yisrael Chai
no slogan, unapologetic, upright, unequivocal, and enduring,
Sarah
A Message from my Colleague David Corre, JFC-UIA's Vice President, Finance & Properties, Israel
Monday, October 8, 2023
I just wanted to thank you for all your messages of support and apologize for not being in contact until now.
I have been in Israel for 31 years; I served and was a reservist for nearly 20 years. The last 48 hours have been the hardest two days that I can remember. As you can see, Sarah is leading the charge, together with our wonderful Federation reps, with regards to the needs, both physical and emotional. I just wanted to share with you my personal perspective as a father and father-in-law of those serving in harm's way at this time.
As of 10 days ago, my son was on the leave that you get before formal discharge from the army. We were proud of his service and relieved that he had served with distinction and would now be returning to his studies in Yeshiva. Of course that all changed at 6.30 on Shabbat morning. He, like thousands of others, was called back in on Shabbat, came home to get together his stuff and went straight back to his base. There he discovered that his Company Commander had been killed earlier in the day and he started to understand the scale of what was going on. They spent the night preparing their equipment and as of yesterday lunchtime his phone has been off and they are readying for the next stage. As a parent, the feeling of helplessness is quite overwhelming.
My daughter and son-in-law had spent Shabbat in Kibbutz Saad which is a stone’s throw (literally) from the Gaza border. Once they managed to get out of there yesterday morning we discovered the scale of atrocities that went on in those border areas – I won’t give you many details but my son-in-law could not sit back in the safe room whilst people in the neighbouring community of Kfar Azza were being massacred (there is literally no better term for it) and he went to join other civilians that were trying to hold back the wave of terrorists. It is a miracle that he is alive and well and the things that he saw were truly horrific – although he has no time to rest – he has joined his reservist unit and will be on the front lines. He and many like him are true heroes.
I hope this mail is not too self-indulgent. There is the professional side of the work that our Board does to strengthen Israeli society and the people of Israel, but at root the people on this email are here because of their unwavering love and support of Israel and its people. Your work and support is of great comfort to us all here at this time. We pray that Hashem will give us the strength to defeat this evil and help to bring a stronger future for our people.
I understand that that today is Canadian Thanksgiving – I give thanks to each and every one of you for your support and look forwards to seeing you under better circumstances.
Best,
David
Sunday, October 8, 2023 at 4 p.m. Israel Time
Dear Friends,
The nightmare of nightmares is upon us.
We are horrified and in shock by the events that have overtaken us since yesterday morning in the south of Israel. Sderot and the region are still not safe. Sderot is a partner community of UJA Federation of Greater Toronto. Since I started writing these reflections, the numbers of those murdered has risen from 500, to now over 600 – and counting. This number has increased because the IDF has now gained control of the place where the desert rave took place. The hospitals are overflowing with the wounded, close to two thousand injured. This is not a retrospective by any means.
The mood is subdued. Across the country, nearly everyone is staying home. The roads are very quiet. The streets absent their usual liveliness. Schools closed. Stores shuttered.
As we learn more about the monstrosities that have unfolded in the last 24 hours, the names of those massacred and held captive in Gaza are beginning to be released. Burials will begin later today.
Israel is a small country. Everyone knows someone. Who knows someone. Who knows someone. You may also know or have heard of people too. And if, that isn’t enough, there are now the men and women who are going to be sent to a long and bloody war.
Yesterday during a brief walk in our Jerusalem area, we saw fathers saying farewell to their children, hugging their wives. The whole country is conscripted.
At Jewish Federations of Canada – United Israel Appeal (JFC-UIA) we are keeping in close contact with our Israel representatives across the country. UJA Federation of Greater Toronto's Representative in Sderot, Eddy Azran, has been on the front line and I wish I could say that metaphorically. Beyond his professional role helping people every day in Sderot, Eddy has been helping the civil guard skirt the surroundings for terrorists that are still on the loose. He was up all night. His daughter, who serves in the IDF, was supposed to be on duty in Zikim Kibbutz, one of the kibbutzim terrorists raided from the sea. Instead, she was at home with her family for Simchat Torah and Shabbat. Eddy told me this morning "it is a miracle she is alive."
It is all simply unthinkable. The face of terror in your own home. In the kibbutz dining room. In a home for seniors. On an open desert plain filled with young carefree music lovers gathered for a rave. It is too much to bear. Bodies line the streets of Sderot, the kibbutzim and nearby villages. Citizens in the area still cannot leave their homes, so families are separated. Grandparents alone in their safe rooms, parents and children in theirs.
Arie Levy, Director General of Montreal Federation CJA’s office in Israel, has been called to reserve duty from his home in Montreal Federation’s partnership region, Be’er Sheva/Bnei Shimon. He left early yesterday morning and has been awake since then with his unit in the north.
Up north, our representative of Canadian federations’ Coast to Coast partnership, Meytal Novidomsky-Mazeika told me last night of her and her community’s escalating fears and anxieties of a potential attack. This morning these concerns became a terrible reality as real attacks began on the border of Lebanon in Har Dov. When we were speaking, Meytal was preparing the safe room for herself, her husband, and her children. As with all children across the country, Meytal's children are off school and she told me that she is making sure that the only media they are exposed to is watching children's tv shows, for obvious and awful reasons. It has now been recommended by the municipal mayors that citizens of the Coast-to-Coast partnership region, Etzba HaGalil, evacuate their homes. Our team is in contact with the relevant professionals to obtain information about where they will go and what they will need.
I can say with pride that Israeli society is doing what it does best in these times. My son and his friends spent last night setting up Magen David Adom emergency rooms for the community; streams of volunteers lined up for blood donations. There are WhatsApp groups dedicated to support, ranging from food and hygiene donations to home hospitality. Every request that is sent to these group chats is immediately answered. People are filling their dismay and despair with acts of kindness.
At Jewish Federations of Canada-UIA, we are conscious of the invaluable expertise of our professionals, both in terms of ensuring financial aid gets to the people who need it most, in a timely and precise manner, and that we are informed of those needs by the representatives on the ground. We will be listening to them very closely in the current months as the unfathomable develops into a path of response.
In the meantime, we are in close contact with our partners and close colleagues at the Jewish Agency of Israel, in particular the Victim of Terror Fund, on which I sit as a member of their steering committee; the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), Jewish Federations of North America, and Keren Hayesod. We are also in regular contact with the Canadian Ambassador and Embassy in Israel, to keep them informed of Canada-specific updates.
While I am an optimist by nature, today it feels that Israel is broken. We have experienced indiscriminate brutality in our history. But today it is in our homeland. We take comfort in your prayers. And your tears.
At JFC-UIA we are both heartened and emboldened by the intelligent and strategic philanthropy led by UJA Federation of Greater Toronto and the JFC-UIA communities towards Sderot and the region, since as early as 2006, and by the work done by Montreal Federation CJA in Be’er Sheva B’nei Shimon, and our Coast to Coast federations in Etzba HaGalil, in the north, for decades.
I know that the strength and solidarity of Canadian Jewry will bolster the Israeli people for the long haul, as it has done to-date.
It is this faith that we have in the Israeli people and the Jewish people that will take us through the next hours, days, and long years ahead.
May God protect us all.
Sarah
Sarah Mali | שרה מאלי
Director General מנכלית |