Idan Breier Ben Moha ’22

Posted on November 24, 2023

I began on that emotional Friday at my pre-military preparatory program, the secular yeshiva Bina, which is located in south Tel Aviv. It was nothing less than an amazing Friday. We prepared for Shabbat and celebrated Simchat Torah that evening in a Reform synagogue in Tel Aviv. People say that for many Israelis, that Friday was happy and light in a special way. That’s interesting to me. And sad.

October 7, 2023.

We woke up completely discombobulated at 6:30 am from the sound of the siren.

We allowed ourselves to believe that maybe it was a false alarm. Another siren. Then, maybe it’s not a false alarm, something is happening. We could not have imagined the magnitude of what was taking place.

The atmosphere was very surreal. We got phone calls from our parents, who also awoke to mixed-up chaos. Slowly, we began to understand that something big was happening, but we were still in some kind of denial. Because how could it be…?

My parents were the first to come and they took me home. We also took two friends with us who couldn’t go to their homes; one of them an American who came to my program to do a gap year in Israel.

We arrived, unable to sleep, and tried to understand what was happening, still in massive confusion.

The first week of the war was very hard for me, as it was for many, many people, each one for a different reason. They discovered that women whom I knew had been murdered at the dance party, and I became engrossed in the terrible news and the slow understanding of the magnitude of the tragedy. I was flooded with sensations of fear, deep helplessness, and a destabilization of my beliefs regarding humanity and ethics; regarding my political and social stances; regarding what will be.

During the second week of the war, we were among the first of the preparatory programs to start functioning again. During our daily “normal” [before the war] we busied ourselves with study, learning the lay of the land, and social action, but when we returned after, we returned with a clear mission: to enlist in the military struggle through volunteering.

We divided up the volunteers: some to the headquarters for the hostages and the kidnapped; some to “Zikaron BaSalon” [originally an Israeli social initiative where people gather in people’s living rooms to listen to the testimony of Holocaust survivors, share, and discuss; it now happens for Yom HaZikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day, and for those lost in this current conflict, too]; some to a community convenience store, and, primarily, to hotels in which evacuees from the north and the south are staying, already for more than a month now.

I’ve already been volunteering for four weeks at the Orchid Hotel, where around 100 children are staying who were evacuated from their homes in Sderot, Ashkelon, and Kiryat Shmona. For a long period, these children didn’t have a regular educational framework, and one can recognize during conversations or playing with them that they’ve experienced nothing less than trauma. There are children who fled from their homes without almost anything; there are children who are there with their grandparents because their parents are in reserve duty in the army; there are children who do not have a home to return to because it was destroyed.

There are children whose friends were kidnapped into Gaza. There’s even one boy for whom the only thing that gives him a drop of comfort is a toy rifle that he walks around with all day. A few children told me about the terrorists who were in the yards of their homes. The situation is very challenging.

On the other hand, my group of volunteers are a significant part of the hotel operations, since we’re regulars there who have been coming already for four weeks in a row.

The work and the volunteering strengthen me and move me emotionally. The children are already close to my heart and I feel like a meaningful presence to them. I am grateful for the opportunity to nurture them and to give their parents some serenity. We help the children to learn, read them stories, play with them, draw with them, and are there simply to listen, to assist, and to hug.

In all honesty, reality is hard, sad, and stressful. We hear sirens regularly in Tel Aviv, a few times a day, and we’re immersed in a great deal of uncertainty about the situation. The moment we step outside of our dwellings, we are wrapped in a cloud of anxiety about the siren that might catch us [unprotected] and we’ll be injured. You plan the shortest path and have constant vigilance to be on the lookout for hiding spots in case there’s really a siren. The streets of Tel Aviv are packed with photos of the hostages, and thoughts about them and about the murdered come upon you at every hour of every day.

An emotional and very encouraging thing is the broad enlistment of civilian volunteers, in which I, too, am taking part. Civilians are enlisting to volunteer for many tasks, part of which were supposed to be carried out by other parties.

From agriculture, to babysitting, cooking, logistics, packing, providing emotional support, conducting workshops, transporting goods, and donating and collecting equipment, money, and food. A feeling of unity within the nation follows close behind so much volunteering.

Occasionally, I feel a belief in the goodness of humanity (even though, considering the circumstances, this can feel cynical or naïve), and I try to hold onto it.

A broad outlook is critical. There is great evil that we never thought we would experience, but there’s also good, and there’s humanity, and we don’t have a choice but to grab tightly תוֵֹּ to them. ע ד לאֹ אָבְדָה תִּקְוָתֵנ . We have not yet lost our hope.*

*Note: this is a line from Hatikvah, Israel’s national anthem.