Now is exactly the right time to visit Israel
Everywhere we witnessed what it means to be Israel in today’s times of war.
It was planned as my son’s bar mitzvah celebration in the Old City of Jerusalem, followed by a few weeks touring the Holy Land – my children’s first trip to Israel.
When the world tilted on its axis after October 7, 2023, we rejigged the bar mitzvah closer to home, but took the plunge and booked our flights.
As the months went on and the volatility of the war fluctuated daily, I guiltily agonised over our decision. On the flight, as I recited Tefilat Haderech, I added an extra prayer asking Hashem to protect us from terror attacks and ballistic missiles.
We are now flying home after one of the most fundamentally important trips of a lifetime. For everyone who was telling me that this is not the right time to visit Israel, it is exactly the right time to visit Israel. It is the time for every Jew, and even more importantly non-Jews, to understand the resilience and determination of a nation that will never stop celebrating life, no matter what its enemies throw at it or what propaganda the rest of the world tries to sell.
My children received a life education they could never have encountered anywhere else, and experienced a real-time encounter of Jewish history.
We visited the sites of October 7 destruction, with displays of authentically raw and confronting memorials. I was expecting to feel traumatised, but what I was not expecting, was that amidst the scale of the horror, we encountered a zest for life, right within the heart of where indiscriminate killing took place.
At the Nova festival site, we met a scribe writing a Sefer Torah in honour of a victim and my son received a bracha and a letter in his name too. Incredibly, in the exact spot where Jews were murdered, a new Torah, the quintessential symbol of Judaism, was created – an epitome of the ultimate weapon against evil Jewish hatred.
At the Shuva junction next to Gaza, we met Dror, who on October 8, 2023, put up a simple trestle table with food, and today he feeds 3000 soldiers daily and provides a haven for them. At the graveyard of cars, once we overcame our disbelief at the vastness of bullet-ridden and burnt cars, we heard from his father about Ben, a young man who selflessly returned three times to Nova to rescue strangers, before being murdered. Throughout the day my emotions were erratically juxtaposed, for I did not expect to encounter so many heroic stories of people who fought so hard for their lives and the lives of others.
Everywhere we witnessed what it means to be Israel in today’s times of war. From protests at Hostage Square to the sirens we awoke to in the dark of the night, quickly followed by the thud of the iron dome interceptor.
Restaurants greet customers with yellow hostage signs, and as you arrive and leave Ben Gurion airport, you are reminded just how many innocent souls remain stolen in the confines of Gaza. Our young guide in Jerusalem recently returned from fighting in Lebanon. When I asked what the army has taught him, he responded simply, “to be responsible for life”.
And this is why everyone needs to visit Israel right now. While globally we are experiencing a tsunami of antisemitism and anti-Zionism, in Israel every day they are fighting for a right to exist, and every day they are truly living life. They are a nation that refuses to simply survive – they demand to thrive!
As we headed down south, we drove past never-ending date plantations in the arid desert and encountered Israel’s farming innovations. Our guide on the “dialogue in the dark” tour at the Children’s museum explained how Israel provides services that taught him to shop, cook, travel and live on his own despite being totally blind.
We packed food parcels at Pantry Packers and learned that on October 8, 2023, Kollel Chabad provided financial support to every single person in the Gaza envelope. After being woken by a siren at 3am, a few hours later I was running along a packed Tel Aviv beachfront, with Israelis of all ages carrying on daily life no matter what the Houthis throw at them.
Throughout Chanukah, we stumbled across nightly street parties, from dancing black-hatted Chabadniks all over Meah Shearim, to musicians gathering with their neighbours in the streets of Nachlaot.
At Machane Yehuda on Friday morning, our family joined throngs of people shuffling and buying challah with an electric Shabbat energy I have never encountered.
And on our last evening in Jerusalem, which happened to coincide with Rosh Chodesh, we stood on the roof of a yeshivah overlooking the setting sun, whilst the sound of hundreds of Jews at the Kotel reciting Hallel reverberated across the hills.
Every city we visited, every corner we turned, we were met with life celebration, from the religious to the secular, the native Israelis to the olim – there is a light of achdut in Israel that is unparalleled.
As I write this on the plane, I am leaving a part of my neshama behind. My children came to enrich their Jewish identity and understand their heritage. They are leaving as prouder Jews than ever before, with the confidence to tell everyone they encounter that Israel is, and always will be, their forever Jewish home.
Teri Lichtenstein is a member of the Melbourne Jewish community.
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