Posted on November 3, 2023
When the war started, I was with my extended family in my grandmother’s house in Eilat. (Eilat is relatively isolated from the other cities in Israel and is thought to be safe.) The early days were very challenging; we lived together in a small house with many young children and most of the conversations in the house were held in whispers. There was a strong need to discuss the situation but also a concern about exposing the young children to the horrors of war. After a few days my sister and I felt the atmosphere in the house weighing on us and we decided to find a place to volunteer in Eilat. We discovered that the residents who were evacuated from the kibbutzim near Gaza had arrived at hotels in Eilat and we decided to volunteer there in order to be doing something and to avoid getting stuck in our thoughts.
After almost a week, we decided to return home. My home is in Moshav Avigdor, which isabout 40 kilometers (~25 miles) from Gaza. There, you have 40 seconds from when youhear the siren to get to a safe room. My school hasn’t yet resumed operations and ourinstructions are that it’s forbidden to leave the area of your house.
Life in the moshav [cooperative Israeli settlement] is very communal and we busy ourselves with volunteer activity – making meals, doing laundry, and hosting soldiers serving in the entire area. In addition, the area where I live is a rural, agricultural area. Following the mass induction of farmers into combat positions, many dairy barns, chicken coops, and fields needed urgent manpower. To solve this problem, youth on the moshav organized themselves to volunteer on farms and to help with the ongoing operations of the place. I’m currently assigned to the cow shed – responsible for feeding the calves, milking, and any other need that suddenly arises.
The last thing [I want to mention] is a video clip that we got from a group of soldiers who received a Shabbat meal from the residents of my moshav. In the clip, you can hear the soldiers reciting kiddush, even while in the background you can hear the loud sounds of shooting. The clip is very powerful and it succeeds in bolstering my hope and faith, the opposite of the horrific video clips that were scattered everywhere recently on social media.
I am thankful that I can share my personal experiences from recent weeks with you. I hope that all of the hostages and soldiers will return in peace and that the war will end soon.
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