Daniel Gordis from Israel from the Inside

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"Morning has broken" — but we dare not forget the night
The whole country feels that a fresh breeze just blew into a room that had long had no air... but September 27 must never erase October7
Sep 29
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My mom used to tell me that she always remembered where she was when she heard that FDR had died. She was only ten, she would remind us, but she remembered. And she always would.

Depending on our age, most of us remember where we were, and maybe whom we were with, when we heard that war had broken out in 1973, or that the World Trade Center had been hit by two planes, or that the Challenger had exploded. I can still picture the bedspread on my parents’ bed where I was sitting as we were watching the black and white TV in their bedroom, hearing about the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

This weekend will probably rank with those. I didn’t hear until Shabbat afternoon. We’re off the grid on Shabbat, so it wasn’t until I was hanging around in the courtyard, waiting for Mincha to start on Shabbat afternoon, that I heard. We were hearing booms in the distance, and it wasn’t clear what they were. “Here we go again,” someone muttered, and someone else said (correctly in this instance) that it was nothing.

“But I wouldn’t be surprised if Nasrallah has some surprises awaiting us on Rosh Hashanah,” I said to a friend. He stared at me like I was nuts. “What?”, I asked. “He’s dead,” my friend said.

A lot of memories are bound up in that courtyard for me. It’s where we read Lamentations on Tisha B’Av in the summer of 2023, after the Knesset had started implementing the judicial reform, when adults I’d known for years literally burst into tears and sobbed. It was where we were sitting a few months later we heard lots of booms, booms that turned out to be very much the opposite of nothing. It was where, yesterday, I heard about Nasrallah. And it’s the courtyard at which most of our community last saw Hersh, at the evening’s Simchat Torah dancing, before he left to have dinner with his family and to go to a music festival.

I wouldn’t say that Mincha was jubilant, because Shabbat Minchah doesn’t quite lend itself to that, but there was a fresh breeze in the air. People were smiling—not silly, triumphalist or gloating smiles, but a kind of “maybe we’re becoming ourselves again” smiles.

As soon as Shabbat was over, less than an hour later, we obviously turned on our phones and the TV. The memes, because this is Israel, were already very much out there. This one was everywhere on WhatsApp.

The Hebrew עזב את הקבוצה, azav et ha-kevutzah, means “has left the group.”

Cute.
It went way beyond the cute, though. Even though Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari—the IDF spokesman who’s become the face of this war for Israelis—had announced Nasrallah’s death hours earlier, the post-Shabbat evening news replayed the announcement.

And as all the panelists (see them in the photo below) noted, he was smiling. Barely, not widely. But he was smiling. Not gloating. Just smiling, the way a person who’s given his entire life to this country (he was commander of the special ops unit Flotilla 13—our Navy Seals—among many other roles) smiles when the army he’d long been part of was finally starting to do what it had been known for. “Never, ever seen that guy smile before,” more than one panelist noted.

דניאל הגרי סופסוף מחייך: כך נראתה ההכרזה על חיסול נסראללה
The table around which the above-mentioned panelists were seated (below) had an image on it. Does it usually? I couldn’t remember, despite the hundreds of hours I’ve spent staring at people around that table since October 7. But there he was, Hassan Nasrallah, with the symbol of a target next to his head.

No, not quite celebration, but a deep, deep sense of satisfaction and relief.


And then, something I’d never seen. In the shot below (these are all old-fashioned photos of a real TV with an iPhone), what are all those bizarre red paper cups doing on the table? Amit Segal, the newscaster on the left, was pouring a second round of Arak (see the bottle in the red circle), this time to include Dan Halutz (in the blue shirt on the right), who had once been the IDF Chief of Staff and the Commander of the Air Force, and had just joined the group to give his assessment of what all this meant.
Here’s a Zoom-in so you can witness Amit Segal’s bartending abilities with greater clarity.
I wasn’t so sure how I felt about that lechayim on the news, but we’re in uncharted waters.

It’s much bigger than just Nasrallah, of course. A lot of people I was with today mentioned Jared Kushner’s tweet on the subject.


Kushner made the obviously correct point. Hezbollah “was” the mullahs’ insurance policy that we wouldn’t attack Iran, because if we did, Hezbollah would send thousands of missiles flying our way. But what if there’s eventually no Hezbollah? What, then, happens with Iran?

It’s possible that a new “morning has broken” in the Middle East. This is still far, far from over, but there’s a bounce in people’s steps—we’ve waited for something significantly good like this for a long, long time.

But …. what about October 7th?

Israelis are increasingly aware that we are fighting a war we need to win to survive, and that the outcome is still far from clear. That is evoking much self-reflection, rethinking and creativity in Israeli life. If you would like a window into what Israelis are thinking and saying, we invite you to subscribe today.

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September 27 may one day be seen as a turning point in this war—we won’t know for a while. But what we already do know is that October 7 was a turning point in Jewish history. Jewish history will never, ever be the same. Not in Israel, not in the Diaspora. Something changed dramatically. What it is, exactly, we’re still trying to understand and it might still be changing.

But October 7 will always be a more important date than September 27.

And we need to remember that, because (among many other reasons) September 27 is over, and October 7 is not. There are still 101 hostages being held in conditions too horrific to imagine, and we’re coming up on a year. How many are alive? We don’t know. But we do know that they are there because we failed them on October 7, and that we have continued to fail (perhaps despite our best efforts, depending on whom you ask) to get them back.

October 7 is still ongoing because the broken, shattered families are still broken and shattered. Because the children who were traumatized that day will forever be traumatized, and they and their emotional scars will be part of the fabric of the society that is Israel for longer than anyone reading this will be alive. October 7 is still ongoing because the terror that Israeli parents feel sending their daughters and their sons to war has always been there, but is now part of social discourse in a way that I don’t remember it ever having been. October 7 is still going on because the people who got us into it are still running the country, because the widows and the orphans and the amputees are always going to be part of the soul of the new Israel.

Our challenge this week and beyond, despite the successes of this weekend, is so try to reclaim some of the shock and horror and emptiness that we felt a year ago— because the Israel that was lost and the souls that were taken are still gone, and because working hard to remember searing pain is part of what makes our people who we are.

I’m told (as I mentioned last week) that at least 80 books have been published in Hebrew in Israel about October 7. One is this thick coffee table book, with essays and many photographs taken by the well known Israeli photographer, Ziv Koren (book is here on his website). The book is called SHIVA Be-October. SHIVA for “seven” and SHIVA for, well, “shiva.”

It’s a beautifully made and heavy book, but you don’t know how heavy until you open the front cover and get to the black and white photograph on the inside. Or pages later when you get to a color version.


It’s not a pile of cars. In most of those cars, people were shot, or burned. Murdered or kidnapped. In every single one of those cars, people were terrified and wept as they’d never wept before.

The cars are by now all piled up but the loss is hardly so neat. What happened on that day will color this country—and should color this country—as long as any of us will know.

Rosh Hashanah is called Yom Hazikaron in classical sources, “The Day of Remembrance.” Despite recent successes, we need to force ourselves to remember.

Which brings me back to a different book, the book of poetry I mentioned last week, that you can still order to have on time for Rosh Hashanah.


This book, too, is called SHIVA. Not SHIVA Be-October, but SHIVA: Poems of October 7. They appear in Hebrew and in English, and on a website there’s a mini class by the very gifted Rachel Korazim about each poem. (The poems are posted here with permission.)

I’ve chosen a few of the simpler, shorter ones for here (none are very long) to give you an idea of what a few choice words can do to (re)shape our memory, our mood—and yes, our conversations around the holiday table.

I don’t want to talk about Hassan Nasrallah at our Rosh Hashanah table. He’s dead, and by next Rosh Hashanah, we’ll have other challenges. I don’t want to talk about politics, either, because next they’ll either be the same (which would be very bad) or different (which might or not might be good or bad). I want to talk about this country, its soul, its heart. I want to think about Jewish hearts, and Jewish souls. Jewish yearnings, Jewish prayers. Jewish memory.

And we’re going to do that by speaking about a few of the poems in this book (I’m still deliberating which). It’s the simplest thing in the world to do …


The stories we hear about what young kids still remember about that day, about their fathers and mother disappearing off to war for months, about running to the shelter time and time and time again … are still harrowing, almost a year later. This image of the little girl who’ll need to check again tomorrow if she’s really alive captures not just what little girls and boys are feeling—they speak for a country that wants to make sure it’s still alive.


We also have a kid who could get called back up. We also would do anything we could to “lock the door” to keep Sunday (they day they normally go back to base) away. But we can’t. To be a parent in this country is to be largely powerless, to live with dread, to pray that this ends OK—for all of them, for every single one of them. The mom in this poem is, like the little girl above, speaking not for herself, but for all of us.


“It was my home.” So many places here “were our home.” So many people here used to be part of our homes. A lot remains, but so much is gone.

Things will get better, I hope and pray, but Jews have never welcomed the dawning of a brighter day by forgetting the darkness of the ongoing past. With a few simple poems, we can be part of continuing that.

With wishes for shared memories, and for a better year ahead.

Daniel Gordis from Israel from the Inside with Daniel Gordis
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Mon, Sep 23 at 1:03 Pm

Those limestone slabs tell a story, one that now matters more than ever
As the days here are about to get tough, a visit to an ancient tunnel offers a reminder of why we're here at all.
Sep 23

On Sunday and Wednesday afternoons, I pick up one of our grandchildren from nursery school in Givatayim, outside of Tel Aviv. It’s about a five minute walk from his house to go get him. Yesterday, as I was walking up the path to the street where his school is, I was behind a dad and his young daughter, who must have been around 4 years old.

The dad was asking her what they’d done in her school that day. She told him that they’d spoken about bomb shelters. And then she recited who in her class had a safe room in their house, who had a shelter in their building, and who had to go hide in a stairwell. Kid by kid, she could name them and tell her dad what kind of shelter they did or didn’t have. They must have spent a lot of time talking about that.
“Do you know what we have?”, he asked her. “Abba,” she said, “of course. We have a safe room.” “And do you know when we have go to there?", he asked. “If we hear sirens,” she said.

She wasn’t (outwardly, at least) in the least bit upset, but still, the conversation broke my heart. That was not quite the chitchat I had with my kids when they were four years old and I picked them up from school in Los Angeles. They didn’t know what a safe room was. They didn’t know what an air raid siren was. And it never occurred to them that there were people out there who were going to try to kill them—because there weren’t.

Welcome to the place the Jews call home.

Nir Dvori, the military correspondent for Channel 12, put it succinctly on the news this morning. We have moved, he said, from לחימה to מלחמה, from “lechimah” to “milchamah,” from “fighting” to “war.”

The war in the north, it appears, has begun. Eleven months too late in the eyes of many, and with far too little power thus far according to some, Israel may be about to do what it needs to do to get the residents of the north back to their homes. Israel may be about to what it needs to do to survive.

It is not likely to be pretty. The home front command has already issued restrictions on Israeli citizens in many areas, and more broadly, we are being told to hunker down, take a deep breath and show some “composure”—ie, steeled nerves. I.e., there is to be no freaking out when the missiles start flying in our direction.

Right.

N12’s headline this morning was clear:

N12 screenshot, September 23 2024, Google Translated
Israel had messages for the general public (about the Home Front’s request for “composure”), but also for Lebanese citizens and the international community. To the Lebanese, Israel is offering proof that it knows that many of their homes contain dangerous weapons, and Daniel Hagari, the IDF Spokesman, said clearly in English (while other army officers explained in Arabic) that we plan to destroy those homes.


… continues below ….

With war heating up in the north, it’s impossible to know what’s in store for us, and thus, for these posts. At present, though, here’s our plan:

MONDAY (today, 09/23): There are tunnels and there are tunnels …. I was recently privileged to see some new tunnels opened up in the City of David, which affords us a reminder of who we’re fighting, and what we’re fighting for.

TUESDAY (09/24): The Rosh Hashanah liturgy, immediately after the blowing of the Shofar, says of RH that “today is the birthday of the world.” That notion is reflected, I’m sure unintentionally, in an exhibit of new October-7-related art at Tel Aviv’s Imperial Hotel, which includes a piece called “Press here to restart the world.” We’ll look at the exhibit and what it says about Israelis’ souls today.

WEDNESDAY (09/25): Strangely, there are very few books in Hebrew about liberalism. At a time in which liberalism is on the defensive all of the West, that’s not good. We meed with Dr. Tomer Persico, a highly regarded Israeli intellectual and writer, and hear about his new book on liberalism, and why he thinks it matters to Israelis society.

THURSDAY (09/26): The ongoing memorial “sticker project”: We’ve mentioned the phenomenon of Israelis memorializing those they lost on October 7 and in the war that followed through stickers, with photos of their loved ones, a favorite quote of theirs, etc. Those projects are getting more exposure on social media, and we take a look at that.


All subject to what the war does and does not do to change things, here are our plans:

Week of September 29: We’ll post the first part of the week, before Rosh Hashanah; podcast for paid subscribers will be posted on Tuesday.

Week of October 6: Yom Kippur isn’t until the end of the week, so we will post most days, including a good deal of material devoted to the anniversary of October 7.

Week of October 13: We’ll post the first part of the week, before Sukkot. podcast for paid subscribers will be posted on Tuesday.

Week of October 20: A very light week because of Sukkot, but of course we will address the anniversary of Simchat Torah. Podcast for paid subscribers will be posted before Simchat Torah.

Israelis are increasingly aware that we are fighting a war we need to win to survive, and that the outcome is still far from clear. That is evoking much self-reflection, rethinking and creativity in Israeli life. If you would like a window into what Israelis are thinking and saying, we invite you to subscribe today.

Upgrade to paid

So yes, it seems that it’s begun. It’s not unlikely that that girl and her dad, and our grandkids and we, are going to find ourselves in safe rooms or shelters or stairwells at some point in the next few weeks. No one knows.

But if I find myself hunkered down in our safe room, I’m going to try to think about some limestone slabs I had occasion to walk on a couple of weeks ago.

Along with a small group, my wife and I were invited to a private tour of some of the recent excavations being carried out at the City of David, a first chance to visit things about which we’d read, but hadn’t yet seen in person.

One of the things that we saw was a tunnel, but a tunnel of a very different sort from the kinds we’ve been reading about in the news for a year.


Photo T&T Productions, September 12 2024
Here’s what we know about this recently excavated tunnel, which had been entirely filled in for two thousand years.

Above the well-known water tunnels in the City of David lies what is known as the Pilgrimage Road. It was given the name because archeologists believe this is the path Jews took when they did aliyah l’regel, which literally means “going up by foot,” when they’d go to Jerusalem and bring sacrifices during the three pilgrimage festivals: Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot. In other words, 2,000 years ago, many thousands of Jews walked on the very limestone slabs (some ten thousand tons of them) we were now walking on, as they made their way to the Temple.

This road, about 2000 feet long and some 15 meters under ground, connected the Temple Mount, where the Temple once stood, to the Pool of Siloam (at the bottom of east Jerusalem’s Silwan valley, see red arc at the bottom).


Walking along the tunnel now, you can look off to the side and down some shafts and see yet another, much smaller, tunnel. This is a water tunnel, which passes below the road we were on, and was the last hiding place used by the Jews during the days of the Second Temple period before the Roman destruction.

We know about the tunnel, and the Israelites’ decision to block it, from the Bible, in II Chronicles 32.
When Hezekiah saw that Sennacherib had come, intent on making war against Jerusalem, he consulted with his officers and warriors about stopping the flow of the springs outside the city, and they supported him. A large force was assembled to stop up all the springs and the wadi that flowed through the land, for otherwise, they thought, the king of Assyria would come and find water in abundance.

Thousands of years ago, King Hezekiah decided to block up a tunnel, and today we can see it. Millennia ago, many thousands of Jews walked along limestone slabs we on their way to the Temple, and today, we can walk on them, again.

And millennia ago, after Hezekiah blocked the stream so water would not reach Israel’s enemies, he had a message for his people.

Be strong and of good courage; do not be frightened or dismayed by the king of Assyria or by the horde that is with him, for we have more with us than he has with him.
I was reminded of that latter verse when this hit my screen earlier today:

“Be strong and of good courage; do not be frightened or dismayed by the king of Assyria” is simply how they said, back then, “brace for days ahead.”

It was to our north then, and they’re to our north, now. It was Assyria then, it’s Hezbollah now. It was our home then (centuries before Mohammad was born), and it’s our home now. It was not easy then, it’s quite likely that it is not going to be easy now.

But they had no doubt that they were home; and what they built, we can still see. We, too, have no doubt that we are home; what we’ve built, I pray, centuries from now people will still be able to see.

Whatever happens here in the weeks to come, whatever we end up having to do in the difficult days that may lie ahead, we will end up having to do because no people with any sense of who they are gives up on their home.

Defending this home is what we owe those Jews who lived here long ago—and it’s what we owe to those who will follow us.
It’s about time.
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 https://danielgordis.substack.com/p/israeli-tv-carried-two-competingsubstack&r=1zm6gm&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email&initial
To light the torch, or to extinguish? Israeli TV carried two competing, simultaneous Independence Day ceremonies. Why?
We begin, though, the three of the front pages from this weekend's newspapers, which provide a window into the array of issues that are on Israelis' minds as the war continues.
MAY 19
With the recovery over the weekend of the bodies of four of our hostages, including one who has not known to have been killed, the kidnapped captives are back in the center of Israel’s news. That is obviously what the hostages’ families and many others want, and what they sought to accomplish with the alternate Yom Ha-Atzma’ut ceremony that they ran, a ceremony that national TV ran alongside the traditiona, official one.
https://danielgordis.substack.com/p/israeli-tv-carried-two-competing?video
Photo: Haley Weinischke
We’ll soon get to the video at the very top of this post, which is a clip from the traditional national Yom Ha-Atzma’ut ceremony in which a variety of people are selected to light a torch. Each year there is a theme for the ceremony, and then there are a number of sub-themes, each of which gets its own torch and people are awarded the honor of lighting it.

More on that, below.

First, though, glimpses of three of the front pages of the this weekend’s papers. Usually, there’s a fairly significant similarity in what the papers choose to highlight. This week in particular, while there was obviously overlap, I was struck by the differences, and the multitude of issues that the three managed to cover.

The amalgam of the stories says a great deal about where the soul of Israel is these days. What follows are three front pages, with quick notes on what each of the colored headlines is about.


We begin with Ha’Aretz, Israel’s left-leaning, hi-brow paper.
The YELLOW headline on the top right reads: The war continues to exact a high cost [DG - the reference is to killed soldiers, not money] and the disagreements about its purposes are now out in the open.

The RED caption for the photo reads: The funeral of Captain Ro’i Beit-Yaakov yesterday, on Mount Herzl. Since the beginning of the ground war, 10% of the casualties have been the result of friendly fire. [DG - Ro’i Beit-Yaakov was one of five soldiers killed when an Israeli tank misidentified them and fired on their position.]

The GREEN circle in the photo: I assume a younger sister, but I am not certain, requires no explanation.


The front page above is from Makor Rishon, Israel’s right of center paper that caters largely (but certainly not exclusively) to what might be called the Modern Orthodox community.
The RED headline on the top reads: Ratcheted up a notch: the fire from Lebanon intensifies and is spreading to the lower Galilee.

The caption for the photo in GREEN reads: The Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, in a situational assessment after touring the Lebanese border, along with Commander of the Northern Command, Major General Uri Gordin, and the Commander of Division 201, Brigadier General Zion Ratzon and other senior officers.

In the YELLOW circle is Chief of Staff Herzi HaLevi [DG - Halevi publicly assumed personal responsibility for the catastrophe on October 7 during the Memorial Day ceremony; his resignation is expected, though some are asking him to hold out to ensure that it is not Netanyahu who selects his replacement.]


And then we get to Yediot Ahronot, Israel’s most widely read paper:
The PURPLE headline reads: EXCLUSIVE: a report compiled by the defense establishment: the cost of a military government in Gaza, 20 billion NIS per year.

The LIGHT BLUE border shows the faces of the five soldiers killed in the friendly fire incident that horrified the nation this week.

In the YELLOW box: “Broken Wings” [DG - the name of a famous Israeli movie, worth finding on line to watch if you haven’t seen it]: Staff private first class Ilan z”l made aliyah alone in order to join the army; Captain Ro’i z”l is the 21st graduate of the pre-army Yeshiva in Eli to be killed in the war; Staff private first class Daniel z”l donated bone marrow to a woman he did not know; Junior Sergeant Bezalel z”l was ambitious and determined to succeed; Junior Sergeant Gil’ad z”l was the fifth soldier from the village of Karnei Shomron to be killed since the beginning of the ground invasion The stories of the five combat soldiers from Battalion 202 who were killed in the grave incident in Jabalia.

In the GREEN frame, the text reads: Chen Lapid, the sister of Gil’ad Aryeh Boim, z”l: “it is important to use to tell the tank soldiers, we embrace you and we feel no anger towards you. Continue your important work, and when you have an opportunity, come visit us.”

In the RED frame at the bottom: A new poll: a majority of the public is opposed opposed to an agreement with the Haredim that would grant an exemption from being drafted in exchange for ending funding for the Yeshivot.

There were also a few blockbuster Op Eds this weekend that are important to share, and we will do that in the next few days. One is by Ari Shavit, who has now changed his position and is calling for Netanyahu to be forced from office. He explains why he never called for that until now, and why he believes it’s time.

Another Op Ed, in two brief paragraphs, provides a doomsday scenario that could follow if Netanyahu so much as utters the words “Palestinian state.” One doesn’t have to agree, but to understand what Israelis are feeling, one needs to know that they are fearing. That scenario, which we’ll soon share, captures the fear perfectly. We’ll post it shortly.


The flow of events this past week led to some changes in our schedule, so a few posts that we’d planned for this week will appear next week. At the moment, subject to even further unexpected changes, here’s what we have planned for this coming week.

MONDAY (05/20):  We will begin with the Ari Shavit Op-Ed mentioned above. Then, Our discussion with Rabbi Avidan Freedman on the Netzach Yehudah battalion that Joe Biden has threatened to embargo. Why was this unit created, who serves in it, is it really as problematic at the President suggests, and if so, why? We will post an excerpt for everyone, and the full podcast with a transcript for paid subscribers.

TUESDAY (05/21):  Gil Regev was a pilot in the 201st Squadron, the first squadron of American-made Phantom fighter jets in the IDF during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He’s since achieved a degree of notoriety for his closing soliloquy in a documentary series produced not long ago by Kan TV about the squadron, and even more recently, reflected on where Israel is, and on where his grandson will live here. We’re sharing portions of his interview, an interview that garnered a lot of attention in Israel this week. We’ll also post one of the Op Eds mentioned above.

WEDNESDAY (05/22): Our guest on our weekly Wednesday podcast is an IDF veteran (Maj. res.) and served as Chief of Staff for Israel’s Minister of Public Security. He recently wrote about what Benjamin Netanyahu needs to say to the Israeli people, and if anything, recent events make his argument even more pressing. We’ll hear what he thinks the PM needs to say, and why. We will post an excerpt for everyone, and the full podcast with a transcript for paid subscribers.

THURSDAY (05/23): Ron Arad, the Air Force navigator shot down in October 1986 and never recovered, is back in the news for reasons we’ll explain. So, too, are the soldiers lost in the famous Sultan Yakub battle, for similar reasons. We’ll explain how all that is related to this war and this moment and what it says about what Israelis are feeling and thinking.

FRIDAY (05/24): We’re not covering almost anything at all about the American campus protests, because we focus on what’s happening Inside Israel. But a column this week by a leading Israeli public intellectual, explaining why he thinks the American academy may be unfixable, sheds light on how Israelis are feeling about the American campuses as they watch from afar. We’ll share portions of that column.

Israelis are facing an unfolding crisis, but also an important opportunity to rebuild. If you would like to share our conversation about what Israelis are feeling and what is happening here that the English press can’t capture, we invite you to subscribe today.