Judah

The Negev is mighty and familiar. My bones remember it. The stars in that desert are the same stars our ancestors wished upon when we were dwelling in the land millennia ago. I have a naive memory of being left alone in a place that sounds exotic on the tongue – Mizpe Ramon. It was in the heat of the night. The scorpions were dancing on the sand. I wasn’t afraid. I was lying on a rock and tracing Orion’s Belt with my finger, staring at the clearest painting of outer space that I’d ever seen. I was traveling around Israel with a group, but I couldn’t feel anyone else beside me. I sank into a serenity alone in the wilderness. I was 21. It was the first time I realized that we must forge our path alone. That we must go in to emerge.

The thing they cannot abide about us is our Jewish strength. Within Jewish strength is profound peace. That’s why there are so many jokes about the Jewish aversion to athletics. It’s nonsense, actually. Many Jews are athletes. But it’s more commonplace to mock Jews as dweebs with calculators and Einstein hair. They’re smart, but they can’t fight. How did we win all the wars they started then? How did Judah the Maccabee defeat the Greeks? We wielded spears. We drew swords. We threw down.

We kept the peace because we were tough. We are tough.

The new West – the West that hates itself – wants us to be weak, without a country, without an army, without agency, without options. It doesn’t want us to remind them what courage is. It wants the Jews to be second class citizens, in the same way as North Africa and the Arab countries of the Middle East did. Zionists are strong Jews. Independent Jews. Jews who survive in the Negev. In our land. Isn’t it magnificent.

As the news broke about Bondi, I was in the quietest place on earth, driving past the craters and dunes and vast sands of the Negev, going deeper and deeper into the dust and the dark. I wanted to take this voyage for many years. I wanted to go back to that feeling I had almost two decades prior. I wanted to find that same assurance. I wanted to be that small again, witnessed only by every star in the night sky. Nobody else. Just me and the universe. “G-d” and I. You there?

But what happened as I was on my journey? We were slaughtered once more, somewhere in the diaspora. The blood of a young child Matilda spilled, while she was bouncing around blowing giant bubbles at a Chanukah celebration on the beach.

My anger filled my chest again. Did it free Palestine? The bloodlines that we share tug us together with an invisible string around the world. The Jewish people; a people with a book; a people with a land. That land spoke louder than my anger. I arrived at the summit of my destination. I got out of the car. I dumped my bags. I stood on the edge of the platform of the place I was in. And out from this kingdom was all of it. An ancient desert that holds the stories of our lineage. Confronted with the sands of time, I bit my lip, tears filled my eyes, and I couldn’t help but be amazed. Amazed by Israel. Dismayed by the West. Perhaps the two have never been farther apart.

How can anyone hate this place? How can anyone deny us it? It’s ours.

The headlines are that the Jews feel a lack of security in the diaspora. Scotland’s 6,000 remaining Jews according to The Times, are teaching their children how to respond in an attack with a weapon. Two out of three British Jews no longer feel safe in the UK. It’s a tragedy. Who’s tragedy? Ours, or yours? It’s both, no? For not everything I know is mine. Not every memory I cherish is Jewish. Life unfolded for me via the curiosity of fellow travelers. The books I keep are not mine alone. Many were given to me. We shared our discoveries with one another. You gave me Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Richard Dawkins. I gave you the Shabbat prayer. I believe in the diaspora, but does the diaspora believe in us? Can it handle the strength of the Jews?

I have made wishes in private murmurs. Myself and those stars again, 18 years apart. The cage of my heart cannot stop loving what disappeared, what was shared, what was seen and known, and is now strange. What happens to all of it here in the Negev when we return home? What does it mean to stay, and what does it mean to go?

These are the questions Jews have grappled with since the dawn of civilization. I met a very tall and strong man in Israel called Danny who had a nervous breakdown some years ago. He took his dog and his horse, and he went to live under the sky for three months, until he felt ready to face his life again. I would like you to learn about Danny. Danny built a farm - Danny’s Farm. It’s not in the Negev. It’s near Tel Aviv. He has over 50 horses. There are dogs. Big hounds and little scrappy do’s. There are cats. Some friendly, some cynical. There are bats. There are goats. Fish, too. Israelis with severe PTSD, soldiers, survivors, everyone, can go to Danny’s Farm for hours every day. They can make music. They can do yoga. They can tend land. The only thing they cannot do is wear shoes. Everyone must be barefoot, like Danny was for three months.

Some of the leading experts on trauma work at Danny’s Farm. They have changed people’s lives. Correction - they have saved people’s lives. People ask me all the time what initiative needs to be created among diaspora Jews for Israelis post October 7. It’s this place. To find out more about it, or donate, visit this link.

Before I left Israel last week, I got up for the sunrise. I said modeh ani, the brief prayer we say upon waking. I watched color and light fill the land, spreading as far as my eyes could see.

Modeh ani. Thank you for having mercifully restored my soul within me.

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