The shelters provided little refuge from anything more than bombs. They are small ovens in the hot desert sun. Old, hot, dirty and smelly, they would be intolerable if not for our knowledge that they were our refuge from the carnage outside.
As people emerged from the shelters, hysterical children searched for their parents and the adults seemed to be in a trance. They refused to outwardly express fear or panic, yet something in their eyes betrayed their hardened exteriors. They were frightened for their homes, for their children, for their very way of life.
But most of all they were weary. Weary of running in and out of bomb shelters, weary of wondering when it will end, weary of a conflict whose scope is far beyond them yet seems to impact their lives in a manner unimaginable to those of us living in the United States.
As soon as I could, I met with community leaders and we identified the needs of 400 families (nearly 1,200 people) in crisis. We then set about acquiring and distributing the most basic goods and services (hygienic supplies, clean sheets, blankets, diapers, mattresses, bread, water, milk, baby formula, etc.). We bought and then we delivered – Monday night, Tuesday night, and all through Wednesday.
To see parents rejoice over a clean diaper for their infant or the elderly look in amazement at bottled water put my whole trip in perspective. We mobilized two chapters of Bnei Akiva, members of which took a two-and-a-half-hour bus ride from Jerusalem to help us hand out goods. We hired a band to play music in the bomb shelter. We did all we could to relive the monotony and bring hope to the hopeless.
As we handed out baskets of food and other basic necessities, a man approached me. He looked tired, worn out, somewhat indistinguishable from the rest. As I handed him some goods he looked up at me very pensively, and in a whispered tone, almost apologetically said, “I’m an Arab.” “You’re my brother,” I responded and we embraced.
I called my wife from Yirkat Shmonah and she could, over the phone, hear the bombs falling. It was impossible to tell whether they were incoming or outgoing and I cannot describe how terrifying it feels not to know whether your next step is away from incoming shrapnel or toward it. Once again, the families who stayed are the poorest and the weakest. Together with Rabbi Chaim Fogel and several wonderful boys from Kiryat Shmonah Yeshiva we handed out food baskets, clothes, toys.
In the late afternoon we visited an army base that was clearly makeshift: long rows of armor and tanks lined the street. Soldiers, exhausted, lay motionless, sound asleep on dirt roads or on top of their tanks baking in the sun. Most amazing to me were the women who, like their male counterparts, were covered in dirt and exhausted, yet it could be clearly seen beneath the dirt on their faces that they had put on makeup in an attempt to recapture some semblance of normality in an otherwise unpredictable and unforgiving environment.
Our guide was immediately recognized and we were permitted into a tent where soldiers were invited to meet with me. I sat with about 30 of them on the floor of the tent and told them how proud I was of them. They were young – some short, some tall, most of them skinny. Some still had the pimples of their youth. Dressed in green with helmets and backpacks that seemed to dwarf many of them, they sat around and talked not as kids but as men and women representing freedom and the Jewish state.
I thought about my eldest son, who is preparing to go study in Israel and then proceed to college, and about these boys, who could have been his classmates, now on the border of Lebanon, in makeshift bases, covered in dirt and looking for inspiration. I opened up Maimonides’s Laws of Kings, Chapter 5, and told them how Maimonides describes his love for Israel and how the sages, in the days of old, would kiss the ground and roll around in the dirt of Israel to express their love for the holy land.