Israel Trip Update #4: Visiting Ashkelon

I am just concluding the first day of my trip here – a solidarity mission to Israel with Reform and Conservative rabbis from North America – and the experience has also been both emotionally overwhelming and powerfully inspirational. I’m still processing much of it, and I’ll save my Big Thoughts for a Zoom report and discussion next Monday night at 7:00 PM. Please save the date, and watch your email for details. Here, as I still try to make sense of it, I’ll just share a few highlights.

My plane arrived late last night. Walking through the airport took me past a long hallway lined for a hundred meters or so with pictures of the hostages…old people, young adults, children… one picture every few feet it was deeply moving.

Little did I know what I would encounter today.

This morning, I traveled back to the airport to meet the rest of my group and our guide. Our first stop was at Brothers for Life (Achim L’chayim), an organization that supports wounded Israeli soldiers, ensuring that they receive needed medical care, attending to their mental health needs, and giving them a nice place to simply hang out with one another. We met some of the soldiers and learned about this organization’s important work.

From there, we went to Tel Aviv, where the plaza outside the Bronfman Cultural Center was filled with 239 empty beds – some of them cribs – one for each hostage.

Empty beds.

From there, proceeded to a nondescript office building, went up to the sixth floor, and entered a facility the likes of which I never would have imagined even existed. This was the headquarters of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum. It looked like a cramped “Mission Control Center,” busy with cubicles, folding tables, and computer screens, littered with pizza boxes and empty coffee cups. This is where the families of the hostages and their representatives do their work. They connect hostage families with government officials and resources, they conduct press conferences, they convene groups of foreign dignitaries, and, whenever possible, they negotiate on behalf of the hostages. There, our group met with several former Israeli ambassadors who are working on behalf of the hostages, and we also heard from several of the family members themselves, who told us their heartrending stories.

Then it was on to Kikar HaChatufim – Hostages Square. Until a few weeks ago, this was simply the plaza outside the Tel Aviv Museum, but now it is filled with moving displays of all kinds – a Shabbat table with a place set for each hostage, beautiful sculptures and other artistic creations, and people too numerable to count walking around holding pictures of their kidnapped loved ones. Our group participated in a prayer service as we joined in expressing our fervent hope that the hostages return home soon.

Over a late dinner, we heard from a man whose sister and brother-in-law had been taken captive, and we also had a conversation with Alon Tal, an American-born member of the Knesset who shared some of his perspectives regarding these recent events.

All day long, everyone we met told us how very much they appreciate our being here, and how important it is to them that we tell the world about what is happening on the ground here. I plan to do everything I can to do just that.

Tomorrow includes more briefings and visits – please stay tuned for updates.

Shalom,
Rabbi Mark Glickman