Gil Zohar

Their wait to return home

Thomas Hand and the survivors of the massacre at Kibbutz Be’eri hope to return home in 2026. (photo by Gil Zohar)

Kibbutz Hatzerim, eight kilometres west of Be’er Sheva, best known for its drip-irrigation plant, also houses the newly established quarter here for the survivors of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of more than 130 of Kibbutz Be’eri’s 1,071 residents. Emily Hand and her Dublin-born father Thomas, 64, are among the 200 refugees living there. In 2026, they hope to move back to rebuilt homes in their community alongside the Gaza Strip.

“We’re still in the stage of demolishing the houses beyond repair,” Hand said. A quarter of Be’eri’s housing is unsalvageable.

Some vegetation has been planted around the new temporary bungalows at Hatzerim, and the site is beginning to resemble a kibbutz neighbourhood. But little else is normal.

The Hands marked the anniversary of Emily’s release from imprisonment in the tunnels of Gaza on Nov. 26. A week earlier, the Irish-Israeli celebrated her 10th birthday. Thomas no longer allows his daughter to be interviewed by the media. The probing questions she faced raised horrific memories of captivity that she is still struggling to process, said her father. She has engaged in various therapies, including seeing a psychologist weekly, horse riding and puppy love with their pooch, Johnsey.

“She’s living day to day, enjoying every day,” her father said.

The Hands moved to their home at Hatzerim shortly before Rosh Hashanah and Emily started the new school year there. Before then, they had been sheltered at Kibbutz Ein Gedi’s hotel by the Dead Sea.

Like his daughter, Hand too is struggling. In the days after Oct. 7, he was initially informed his daughter had been murdered. After a month, that assessment was revised to missing. After more uncertainty, she was then declared a hostage – and finally released in a swap for Hamas gunmen and other terrorists.

The Hand household is still decorated with balloons from Emily’s recent birthday party. Among the guests were fellow hostages Noa Argamani, Ra’aya Rotem and Hila Rotem Shoshani, who surprised Emily with a cake and candles. Argamani, who was imprisoned with Hand, was rescued on June 8, after 245 days in captivity, in a joint operation by the Israel Defence Forces, Shabak (Israel’s security agency) and Israel Police.

Hand said Emily is adjusting “incredibly well.” But then he contextualized what that means: “She still sleeps with me. Usually in my bed.”

“She was captured from a MaMaD [safe room]. And that’s a trigger,” he said.

The constant roar of jets flying overhead to and from the nearby Hatzerim Air Base adds to their ill-ease. Hand’s conversation is punctuated by sighs and tears. “Don’t mind me,” he said. “It’s just part of the process.”

None of the kibbutz’s protected spaces had bulletproof doors, he noted. His own MaMaD wasn’t equipped with a lock, he added. “I just had to hope and pray.”

Other general tactical mistakes included storing the kibbutz’s guns and ammo in a central location rather than having them distributed among people’s homes. Half the members of Be’eri’s emergency response team were gunned down trying to reach the armoury, Hand said.

His first concern on Oct. 7 was for Emily, who was sleeping over at a friend’s house 300 metres away. With bullets flying, there was no chance to run there to attempt to rescue her, he recalled.

He left his shelter at 10 a.m. Armed with his pistol, two magazine clips and a bullet in the chamber, he positioned himself by his kitchen window, which offered a wide field of fire. The Hand family house was relatively untouched apart from shrapnel damage.

“While I couldn’t protect my daughter, I was able to protect three houses,” he said.

Hand remained at his post until 11:30 p.m., when IDF soldiers arrived.

“The amount of guilt that I felt at not going to save her [Emily] even at the risk of my own life…. But I knew I would be dead, and she would be an orphan. It was a very big thing afterwards. At the time, I was just in survival mode.”

With self-deprecating humour, Hand remembered he only had two cans of beer in the fridge that Saturday morning. It’s a mistake he has never repeated, he said, now always having a case of suds on hand.

Another cause of guilt is not being able to work. He had previously been employed at Be’eri’s printshop, and then as a painter at its toy and furniture factory. While the workshop has reopened, Hand is unable to commute the 90 minutes there, since he must stay close to his daughter. “I have to keep her normalized,” he said.

“They’ve given me a lot of leeway,” Hand said of the kibbutz secretariat. In the meantime, he devotes a lot of time to hostage issues.

Looking wistful, he concluded: “I will not feel safe going back to Be’eri with this government in power, and without Hamas being completely crushed.”

Gil Zohar is a writer and tour guide in Jerusalem.

Standing up to the PM

MK Dan Illouz opposes legislation that would enshrine the exemption of Haredim from military service. (photo from Knesset)

Dan Illouz, a Montreal-born Likud rookie member of the Knesset, is making a name for himself in Israel’s Parliament by speaking against his own party’s policy of opposing the draft of Haredim (ultra-Orthodox Jews) into the Israel Defence Forces.

“Exempting such a large group of people from their obligation to serve in the IDF at such a critical time is anti-Zionist,” the freshman lawmaker tweeted recently on X.

Responding to the challenge to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s leadership, the Likud has taken steps to clamp down on internal dissent by party lawmakers opposed to legislation that would enshrine the exemption of members of the ultra-Orthodox community from military service.

The IDF’s personnel shortage has become acute in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, surprise attack on Israeli cities and kibbutzim ringing the Gaza Strip, followed by Hezbollah’s rocket campaign against the Galilee and Central Israel that began the next day. Reservists, called miluimnikim in Hebrew, have been repeatedly called up for months at a time. But, Netanyahu must balance his party’s stability in government with military personnel considerations, not to mention growing casualties.

In a move widely seen as linked to then-defence minister Yoav Gallant’s opposition to the controversial military draft exemption legislation – which has been demanded by ultra-Orthodox coalition partners whose support Likud needs to stay in power – Netanyahu fired Gallant last month and appointed Israel Katz in his stead. The prime minister then pushed for party discipline against dissenters like Illouz, who holds the rank of captain in the IDF reserves.

Coalition whip Ofir Katz informed Illouz that he was being removed from the Knesset’s economic affairs committee and foreign affairs and defence committee due to his “statements regarding coalition discipline and his conduct in recent days,” a spokesperson for Katz said.

In a further slap on the wrist, Illouz was barred from submitting private bills for six weeks.

Illouz has long spoken out against efforts to pass new legislation regulating exemptions for yeshivah students following a High Court ruling in June that they must enlist in the IDF unless a new bill is passed.

Digging in recently, Illouz announced his opposition to the coalition’s Daycare Bill, which seeks to circumvent a High Court ruling preventing state-funded daycare subsidies from going to the children of ultra-Orthodox draft dodgers.

“Exempting such a large group from the duty to serve in the IDF in such a critical period is a non-Zionist act that is unworthy of us as a nation – whether it be called ‘the enlistment law’ or ‘the daycare law,’ whose purpose is to cancel the daycares sanction and restore the funding,” Illouz declared.

The Daycare Bill was removed from the Knesset agenda last month after it failed to garner sufficient coalition support.

A member of the Quebec and Israeli bar associations, and a former legislative adviser to the Knesset’s coalition chair, Illouz previously served in a legal capacity at Israel’s Foreign Ministry. He is a graduate of McGill University Law School and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s master’s program in public policy.

Drawing on his legal expertise, Illouz co-authored a law banning any Israeli interaction with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), due to some of its members’ being involved with Hamas in general and in the Oct. 7 massacre in particular.

Humanitarian aid and services to the two million people in Gaza must now be based on alternative agencies such as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the UN International Children’s Emergency Fund and the World Food Organization, said Illouz. (More than 200,000 Gazans have fled to Egypt and elsewhere since war broke out in their coastal enclave 15 months ago.)

Born in Canada to Moroccan immigrants, Illouz made aliyah in 2009 after completing his law studies. Like all newly elected MKs holding foreign citizenship, he was required to surrender his second passport before being sworn in as a member of Israel’s Parliament.

Illouz continues to serve as the chair of the Knesset delegation to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and be a member of the Knesset delegation to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, an international body that brings together parliamentarians from 180 countries.

Gil Zohar is a writer and tour guide in Jerusalem.

Photos depict Oct. 7 trauma

Batia Holini’s photo of Israeli soldiers sleeping on the floor of a grocery store near Kfar Aza on Oct. 8 is one of the works in the exhibit Album Darom. (photo by Gil Zohar)

Album Darom: Israeli Photographers in Tribute to the People of the Western Negev, which opened recently for a six-month temporary installation at the Petach Tikva Museum of Art, is the first group artistic endeavour in Israel to confront the tragedy of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre and the subsequent Gaza War, now in its 10th month. The ambitious tripartite installation Album Darom (Hebrew for Southern Album) incorporates a Facebook diary; a printed book of photographs accompanied by essays (published by Yedioth Ahronoth); and the museum exhibit.

Initiated by Prof. Dana Arieli, dean of the faculty of design at the Holon Institute of Technology, together with chief curator Irena Gordon, the project showcases 150 photographs, art installations and texts documenting the story of the western Negev region before and after Oct. 7. The exhibit includes the perspectives of 107 photographers and artists. Some of the participants in the album are world-renowned, others are amateurs. Lavi Lipshitz, the youngest featured photographer, lost his life fighting in Gaza. His mother penned the text accompanying his images.

The works in the album represent different photographic practices: artistic, personal and some staged, the intense images are upsetting. As well they should be in confronting mass murder.

Before walking around a corner to see Lali Fruhelig’s gruesome 3-D installation suggesting a corpse sprawled on the floor of a living room, a sign cautions: “The exhibition contains some potentially disturbing contents. Viewer discretion is advised.”

Arieli, a history professor and a photographer who explores remembrance culture and cultural manifestations of trauma, began the Album Darom project shortly after the Gaza war broke out.

“When something’s traumatic, you have to work or do something,” she said.

Shocked by the murder of her friend Gideon Pauker from Kibbutz Nir Oz – who was killed just before his 80th birthday – she posted 100 daily historic and contemporary images of the Western Negev.

Initially, Arieli intended Album Darom to be exhibited at Kibbutz Yad Mordechai Museum just north of the Gaza Strip frontier. After the museum was damaged by rocket fire, this wasn’t feasible. Instead, she selected Petach Tikvah as the venue. She explained that the site – the first Yad Labanim memorial to fallen Israel Defence Forces soldiers from the War of Independence – is meant to be relevant to all Israelis. The museum offers free admission on Saturday, so observant Jews may visit on Shabbat.

Speaking to a group of journalists, Arieli compared Oct. 7 to the Nov. 4, 1995, assassination of then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. “Everyone is frozen in their memory of where they were,” she said.

Arieli and Gordon emphasized the intended cathartic nature of the exhibit. The two said the museum is a “safe space” and a “place for healing.” After experiencing the horrors of Oct. 7, Gordon found solace in this project, she added. “This is part of how we are coping with it all,” she said.

Miki Kratsman is one of the photographers whose depiction of his Oct. 7 nightmare is in the exhibit. Terrorists took his aunt Ophelia hostage from her home in Kibbutz Nir Oz. She was later released from Gaza in the November hostage exchange deal.

Kratsman’s photograph, “In Aunt Ophelia’s Neighbourhood,” captures a modest kibbutz home collapsing as it is immolated in a fireball.

“These are the kinds of things that need to be in a museum,” Arieli said of the photograph. “You’re looking at the destruction of Nir Oz.”

While vividly showing the devastation of the kibbutz, the burning home photograph is an enigma, and creates dialogue, she added.

But it is the human toll rather than the destroyed real estate that is most painful. Paradoxically, perhaps, Batia Holini’s peaceful photo of exhausted IDF soldiers sleeping on the floor of a grocery store near Kfar Aza on Oct. 8 hints at the savage warfare in which they have been engaged.

photo - “Funeral of Five Members of the Kutz Family who were Murdered in Kfar Aza,” a photo by Avishag Shaar-Yashuv — “Funeral of Five Members of the Kutz Family who were Murdered in Kfar Aza,” a photo by Avishag Shaar-Yashuv. *(photo by Gil Zohar)*

Avishag Shaar-Yashuv’s photograph, “Funeral of Five Members of the Kutz Family who were Murdered in Kfar Aza,” captures the searing emotion of the funeral of a family annihilated in the Hamas attack.

“I tried to focus and also wipe the tears at the same time,” Shaar-Yashuv said.

For this reviewer, the most symbolic part of the exhibit was a taxidermy display of a doe entitled “Bambi.” The exhibit references Felix Salten’s 1923 novel Bambi: A Life in the Woods and the 1942 animated movie produced by Walt Disney. Metaphorically, the hapless baby deer represents both the Six Million victims of the Holocaust and the 1,200 people murdered on Oct. 7.

Viewing Album Darom, one could conclude that the myth of the state of Israel protecting its citizens has been shattered. Arguably, Israelis today are no more secure than their ancestors were facing the Kishinev Pogrom of 1903, the Hebron Massacre of 1929 or the Farhud in Baghdad in 1941.

Gil Zohar is a writer and tour guide in Jerusalem.

Srulik, meet Handala

The ways in which the characters of Srulik, left, and Handala epitomize the historical and cultural narrative of the Israelis and Palestinians, respectively, imbue these cartoons with an impact stronger than words. (photo by Gil Zohar)

Driving east from Jerusalem on the winding Jordanian-built road that once led down from the Mount of Olives to the Dead Sea, one passes through a series of picturesque Arab suburbs and soon comes to a dead end in front of the grotesque West Bank barrier.

Called Geder ha-Hafrada (separation fence) in Hebrew and jidar al-fasl al-’unsuri (apartheid wall) in Arabic, the insurmountable (if still incomplete) eight-metre-high concrete barrier has no doubt contributed to a reduction in terrorism and car theft. However, my objection to it is more existential: like some of those in West Berlin who spray-painted their protest for freedom on the Bundesrepublik side of die Mauer even as armed GDR guards used deadly force to prevent anyone from approaching the wall’s eastern side, I believe all walls must fall.

It is a metaphor that has repeated itself from Joshua’s encircling of Jericho, to the Berlin Wall and its remaining East Side Gallery, to Garth Hewitt’s ballad “They’ve Canceled Christmas in Bethlehem,” about the stranglehold the wall has placed on both day-to-day life and religious pilgrimage in the place where Jesus, “the Prince of Peace,” was born 2,000-plus years ago.

The world today is caught between two conflicting ideologies: some democratic countries joining in unions with open borders, joint legal systems and a common currency, of which the European Union – notwithstanding its problems – is a great success. Then, there are other countries – many repressive and undemocratic – defending their borders with minefields and walls. Like John Lennon, I prefer the first vision – of a growing global union without barriers. Imagine that.

Thus, armed with the tools of the graffiti artist – an X-ACTO knife, cardboard stencil and spray paint – I recently made my way to Abu Dis with my friend Hajj Ibrahim Abu el-Hawa, my daughter Bareket and fellow artist Eva Feld to make our mark. Reasoning that a picture is worth a thousand words, we chose a symbolic image whose meaning is unequivocal.

The image we created depicts Handala raising hands with Srulik (see picture). The two iconic cartoon characters are respectively well known by Palestinians and Israelis – yet, each is equally unknown by the other. It is a symmetry of ignorance of the other’s narrative that will have to be overcome before true peace can be achieved.

Allow me to explain the mirror meanings of the twin caricatures.

Handala – an omnipresent image on T-shirts and key chains in the aswaq (plural of suq, market) of Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip – was created by Naji al-’Ali in 1969. A 10-year-old child driven in 1948 from his Galilee village of ash-Shajara (14 kilometres from Tiberias) to the ‘Ain al-Hilweh refugee camp in Lebanon, al-’Ali went on to become the leading political cartoonist in the Arab world.

Before being assassinated in London in 1987, he produced more than 40,000 bitingly sarcastic cartoons lampooning Arab leaders and lamenting the stateless status of his people. His autobiographical image of Handala – a barefoot, faceless, refugee youth – remains a potent symbol of the struggle of the Palestinian people for justice and self-determination.

Al-’Ali wrote: “Handala is my signature. I gave birth to this child in the [Persian] Gulf. He was born 10 years old, and he will always be 10. At that age, I left my homeland and, when he returns, Handala will still be 10, and then he will start growing up. The laws of nature do not apply to him. He is unique. Things will become normal again when the homeland returns.”

Impish Srulik – a diminutive of Yisrael (Israel) – carries an equally rich symbolism in depicting nascent Israel and, in particular, its native-born Sabras. The illustrated character was first drawn in 1956 by the cartoonist Kariel Gardosh, better known by his nom de plume, Dosh. The Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor drew Srulik for decades in the pages of the daily Maariv, until his death in 2000.

Dosh generally depicted Srulik as a young man wearing a kova tembel hat, “biblical sandals” and khaki shorts. He drew him as a pioneering Zionist and lover of the land of Israel, a dedicated farmer who in time of need dons an Israel Defence Forces uniform and goes out to defend the state of Israel, equipped with an Uzi machine gun. In contrast to the antisemitic stereotype of the weak or cunning Jew, which appeared in the Nazi weekly Der Stürmer and other European and Arab newspapers and journals, Dosh’s Srulik was a proud, strong and sympathetic Jewish character.

Shalom Rosenfeld, editor of Maariv from 1974 to 1980, wrote: “Srulik became not only a mark of recognition of [Dosh’s] amazing daily cartoons, but an entity standing on its own, as a symbol of the land of Israel – beautiful, lively, innocent … and having a little chutzpah and, naturally, also of the new Jew.”

Introducing Srulik to Palestinians and Handala to Israelis is not a bad way to begin to redress each side’s ignorance of the other’s narrative. The ways in which they epitomize the historical and cultural narrative of their own people imbue these cartoons with an impact stronger than words.

When a peace treaty is ultimately implemented between Israel and Palestine (as I’m sure it must), perhaps the image of Handala and Srulik holding hands could be adopted as a neutral symbol of coexistence and nonviolence. Their creators, Naji al-’Ali and Kariel Gardosh, both knew firsthand of persecution and exile, and the iconic figures they bequeathed us share the hope of living in freedom and peace. When peace finally arrives, new and emotionally satisfying images and symbols will need to be created to bridge the chasm between Jews and Arabs in our broken Promised Land.

Gil Zohar is a writer and tour guide in Jerusalem.

Egypt faces many struggles

Twenty years in the making, Egypt’s Grand Egyptian Museum is in a soft-opening period, with a section of the 81,000-square-metre site open for limited guided tours. (photo from Grand Egyptian Museum)

In biblical times, the Patriarch Jacob led his family to Egypt, the granary of the ancient Near East, to escape famine in Canaan. By the Roman era, the Nile River Valley and Delta – enriched by the Nile’s annual flooding with alluvial mud – had become the breadbasket of Rome. King Herod built an artificial harbour at Caesarea to facilitate the crucial maritime shipment of wheat to the imperial capital. Today, the once fabulously wealthy country is an economic basket case.

President Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and his military-industrial kleptocracy blame the country’s high birth rate for the inability to feed Egypt’s burgeoning population of 110 million people. Taking a page from Keynesian economic theory, the regime – which toppled Islamist leader Mohamed Morsi in a 2013 coup d’état – has triggered a free fall of hyperinflation and devaluations while building mega-projects to stimulate the country’s broken finances.

The country’s annual rate of inflation soared to 36% in February, the Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS) said on March 31. The Egyptian pound, called the guinea, traded at 20 to the American dollar as recently as 2020. Now, one needs 52 to buy a greenback in the flourishing parallel market. In the past 24 months, a crippling shortage of foreign currency has caused prices of goods and commodities to more than triple, forcing low- and middle-income Egyptians to further tighten their belts.

The result? Strained services, a bloated bureaucracy, a huge government budget and a staggering deficit.

Compounding the economic misery, Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the resulting Israel-Hamas war in Gaza have driven away tourists from the land of Pharaonic wonders and spectacular coral reefs. Houthi rockets targeting shipping in the Red Sea have shrunk revenue from the Suez Canal, which is down 40% this year versus the same period in 2023. And Russia’s invasion of Ukraine two years ago has driven up wheat prices and made subsidized bread – a staple for most Egyptians – more costly.

Notwithstanding Egypt’s inability to repay its current foreign debt of about $165 billion, el-Sisi’s immediate financial problems were eased in recent weeks thanks to a bailout, more than $23 billion provided by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the European Union.

At the same time, the United Arab Emirates launched a rescue plan to prop up its ally through the Ras el-Hekma deal announced last month. The vast real estate project envisions a new city on the barren shores of the Mediterranean Sea near the site of the pivotal Second World War battle of El Alamein. It was concluded in exchange for $24 billion in cash liquidity and $11 billion in UAE deposits with the Central Bank of Egypt, which will be converted into Egyptian pounds and used to implement the project, reported Reuters.

Where then has Egypt invested, or perhaps squandered, its largesse?

One expensive pet project has been to expand the quasi-governmental Egyptian Railway Authority’s network of standard-gauge train tracks. The system, the oldest in the Middle East, dating back to the 1854 line between Alexandria and Kafr el-Zayyat on the Rosetta branch of the Nile, now extends across 10,500 kilometres. A further 5,500 kilometres are currently in construction, including high-speed lines from Alexandria west to Mersa Matruh, Cairo south to Aswan, and Luxor east to Safaga via Hurghada.

Equally ambitious are plans to expand the country’s clogged highways. Transportation Minister Kamel al-Wazir, who took over the accident-plagued portfolio from Hisham Arafat following the 2019 Ramses Station train disaster, in which 25 Cairenes were killed and 40 injured, plans to complete 1,000 bridges, tunnels and flyovers this year.

Key to the plan to clear Cairo’s traffic woes is to complete an ambitious, shimmering new capital 50 kilometres east of the megalopolis, whose population is estimated to be more than 22 million people. The so-far-unnamed New Administrative Capital, under construction for nearly a decade, is located just east of the Second Greater Cairo Ring Road. It includes more than 30 skyscrapers, the most striking of which is the 77-floor Iconic Tower – the tallest building in Africa. Equally noteworthy are the 93,000-seat soccer stadium, the Fattah el-Aleem Mosque, accommodating 107,000 worshippers, and the Nativity of Christ Cathedral, which has room for 8,000 Copts.

To date, 14 ministries and government entities have relocated to the New Administrative Capital, but the city remains a largely lifeless white elephant with few residents.

Apart from these vast infrastructure projects, Egypt has been burnishing its cultural heritage. In 2022, the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquity launched the Holy Family Trail, stringing together some 25 stops along the celebrated route that Jesus, Mary and Joseph took to escape King Herod’s wrath. Last year, the government restored the medieval Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fostat (Old Cairo), the home of the Cairo Geniza. The long-delayed Grand Egyptian Museum in Giza near the Pyramids is scheduled to officially open this summer – though no date has been announced.

photo - The top part of the Merneptah Stele, inscribed by the New Kingdom pharaoh, dated around 1208 BCE. Line 28 reads: “Israel is laid waste – its seed is no more” — The top part of the Merneptah Stele, inscribed by the New Kingdom pharaoh, dated around 1208 BCE. Line 28 reads: “Israel is laid waste – its seed is no more.” *(photo from Grand Egyptian Museum)*

Twenty years in the making, the GEM is currently in a soft-opening period, with a section of the 81,000-square-metre site open for limited guided tours.

Touted as the largest archeological museum complex in the world, the GEM will house more than 100,000 artifacts. It will showcase the treasures discovered in the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922. Other highlights will include a restoration centre, an interactive gallery for children and the Khufu Boat Museum.

King Tut’s funerary possessions had been on display at downtown Cairo’s Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square, a hopelessly inadequate leftover from Britain’s colonial rule. There, a decade ago, I wandered in sensory overload gawping at the Aladdin’s Cave of Wonders. As if guided by divine providence, or perhaps Ra or Isis, I stumbled upon the Merneptah Stele – a three-metre-high piece of black granite inscribed by the New Kingdom pharaoh, dated around 1208 BCE, which was discovered in Thebes in 1896 by archeologist Flinders Petrie. Line 28 reads: “Israel is laid waste – its seed is no more.”

For me, it symbolizes the cold peace Israel and Egypt have enjoyed since 1979. Though few Israelis would wish to repudiate that historic agreement, many share the sentiment of Eitan Haber, the confidant of former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, who said: “The Egyptians don’t like us and – why deny it? – we don’t like them.”

Gil Zohar is a writer and tour guide in Jerusalem.

What happens after the war?

Area of Gaza controlled by the Israeli Defence Forces on Jan. 11, 2024.

While the war in the Gaza Strip continues between Hamas guerillas and the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) in the labyrinth of tunnels burrowed beneath Khan Yunis and in the alleys of the devastated city (population 205,000), another battle is being fought across Israel over the postwar fate of the coastal enclave.

Ultra-nationalist members of Knesset Bezalel Smotrich, leader of the National Religious Party, and Itamar Ben Gvir, head of Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power), recently called for Gaza’s 2.2 million residents to be voluntarily resettled elsewhere. Congo was cited as a destination for the exodus. U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller called the statements by Smotrich and Ben Gvir “inflammatory and irresponsible.”

Egypt is adamantly opposed to allowing the two million displaced Gazans to shelter in the Sinai Peninsula, lest Israel prevent the refugees from returning. Similarly, the Jewish state is no more likely to allow them to pass through its territory to fly out of Ben-Gurion Airport than it is to resettle those refugees who fled their nearby villages in the Arab-Israeli War of 1948.

photo - One controversial postwar scenario is for Israel to rebuild some of the post-1967 Gaza Strip settlements from which it unilaterally withdrew in August 2005 — One controversial postwar scenario is for Israel to rebuild some of the post-1967 Gaza Strip settlements from which it unilaterally withdrew in August 2005. (photo by Gil Zohar)

Further limiting the options, Israel’s high-tech Erez Crossing at the north end of the Gaza Strip – similar in scale to a massive airport terminal – was destroyed during Hamas’s Oct. 7 rampage in which some 1,200 Israelis and other nationals living in cities and kibbutzim near the Gaza frontier were massacred and 240 kidnapped.

Concurrently, the black market is burgeoning for fixers with links to Egyptian intelligence; they are making a fortune in “fees” extorted from Gazans desperate to exit through the Rafah Crossing at Gaza’s south end. The bribe for being placed at the head of the legal exit list for passage across the Rafah border into Egypt and on to Cairo International Airport has now soared to $10,000.

In the face of the vast human suffering, staggering damage to infrastructure and environmental catastrophe caused by the conflict, which marked its 100th day on Jan. 14, another controversial postwar scenario is for Israel to rebuild some of the post-1967 Gaza Strip settlements from which it unilaterally withdrew in August 2005. The forcible evacuation of 8,600 Jewish residents from Gush Katif (the Harvest Bloc) – a cluster of 17 villages in the southern Gaza Strip – set the stage for Hamas’s 2007 coup d’état when it seized power from Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, based in Ramallah in the West Bank.

On Dec. 22, 2023, a group of settlers held an organizational meeting at the agricultural village of Kfar Maimon near the Gaza Strip demarcation fence to launch their plan to create a beachfront community on the barren dunes at Gaza’s southern edge. The day was symbolic since Asarah b’Tevet (the 10th of the Hebrew month of Tevet) is a fast day in the Hebrew calendar, marking the date 26 centuries ago when Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon began his six-month siege of Jerusalem, which resulted in the destruction of Solomon’s Temple and the downfall of the Kingdom of Judah.

Though Gaza was allocated to the Tribe of Judah in the Hebrew Bible, the ancient Israelites never vanquished their Philistine nemesis who dwelt there and in the cities of Ashkelon, Ashdod, Gat and Ekron. Jewish and Samaritan communities intermittently flourished in the territory of Gaza over many centuries. Shaken by the riots of 1929, however, the Gazan Jewish community ended in 1948. In Gaza City’s historic Zaytoun quarter, the Ottoman-style Hammam al-Sammara (the Samaritan bathhouse) bears witness to the ancient Samaritan community that was exiled in 1917 by the Turkish army during the battles of the First World War.

The group of would-be settlers – who staged a car rally just outside Gaza on Jan. 11 – are encouraged by the report that Israel’s Knesset will be hosting a conference Jan. 28 on rebuilding settlements in Gaza after the war, and will offer precise maps and plans. The news site mako.co.il says that Knesset members and other public figures are expected to speak, and thousands of Israelis have already applied to join the settlement nuclei in Gaza.

The organizers of the event stated, “We are working both on the political level and on the practical side towards the moment when they can get on the ground. There is a great demand in the public that the victory of the war includes within it Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip.”

Meanwhile, senior ministers among Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s right-wing allies have criticized the IDF over its plans to probe Oct. 7 intelligence failures. And Israel’s future may be hurtling backward to the widespread protests over judicial reform that divided the country in the months that preceded Hamas’s devastating surprise attack. Such is public anger that calls for a spring election are becoming vociferous.

Were Netanyahu and Abbas to both step down, and Saudi Arabia and Israel to establish ties, a postwar scenario of regional integration – including high-speed trains whisking cargo from Haifa to Riyadh and Abu Dhabi – could emerge. The trauma of the Gaza War could give birth to Mideast peace.

More than 50,000 Israelis responded to the Ashkenazi and Sephardi chief rabbis’ call for a day of prayer at the Western Wall in Jerusalem to mark the new moon of Shevat.

In Judaism, the full moon of Shevat is celebrated as the New Year of the Trees. Besides the pink-white almond blossoms, which mark the beginning of spring, the blood-red anemones also carpet the fields of the western Negev by the Gaza Strip. Like the poppies in Flanders Fields, this year those wildflowers will symbolize the tragedy of war.

Gil Zohar is a writer and tour guide in Jerusalem. A longer version of this article can be found at religionunplugged.com/gil-zohar.

Identifying the victims

On Oct. 31, among the ruins of Kibbutz Be’eri, Israel Defence Forces personnel brief a delegation of Conservative rabbis and lay leaders from the United States, Canada and Britain, which was on a three-day solidarity mission organized by the Fuchsberg Jerusalem Centre. (photo by Boaz Pearlstein)

WARNING: Extremely graphic reporting.

Since Hamas’s Oct. 7 cross-border assault on multiple army bases, kibbutzim, cities and a music festival in the Gaza Strip periphery, staff at the Israel Defence Forces’ Shura base have been working around the clock to identify the remains of the 1,100 civilians and 315 IDF soldiers, reservists and police officers massacred by jihadi terrorists. With so many bodies, the victims were initially kept in refrigerated milk trucks in the morgue’s parking lot. Plain wooden coffins are stacked in the corridors, waiting for a positive identification so the remains may be released to their families for burial at a military or civilian cemetery. Only then can Judaism’s seven-day period of mourning begin.

A month on, the sickly smell of death lingers. Pathologists at this normally quiet IDF logistics centre and home base of the military rabbinate corps – located on the outskirts of Ramla, a mixed Jewish-Arab city not far from Ben-Gurion Airport – continue their painstaking, harrowing but holy forensic mission.

Dismembered limbs and badly decomposed bodies continue to be delivered. The human remains are sniffed out under the rubble of destroyed buildings by IDF canine units, staff told a 33-person Oct. 31 delegation of Conservative rabbis and lay leaders from the United States, Canada and Britain.

Initially, it is often impossible to determine if the remains are those of victims or perpetrators, Col. Rabbi Haim Weisberg, head of the IDF’s rabbinic division, told the religious leaders. Many are mutilated with limbs and heads dismembered, making the ghoulish jigsaw puzzle even more complex.

“We are in an abnormal situation and that is why it is taking so much time to identify the bodies. In most cases, we have had to identify people via deep tissue DNA or dental records because there is nothing left,” he explained.

The complex identification process has been compounded because so many of the victims were not Israeli residents.

Pathologists can take several hours to assess a body, photograph it and document the fatal wounds. Out of respect for the dead and their families, the IDF is not releasing those photos.

Weisberg spoke not only about whole bodies but also about charred and incomplete remains, including what in one case turned out to be a corpse so severely burned that only a CT scan revealed it was a mother and baby bound together in a final embrace.

The grisly job is complicated by uncertainty over the tally of victims. According to constantly updated data from the IDF, more than 1,400 Israelis and foreigners were murdered. Some 238 people are believed to be held hostage by Hamas inside the Gaza Strip and the fate of dozens of others is unknown. Some may be held inside Gaza by other terrorist groups, like Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or even by individuals. Others may still be among the dead, yet to be identified by the staff at Shura.

When drafted, all IDF recruits provide samples of their DNA and fingerprints, and have their teeth X-rayed. The army does not rely exclusively on identification made through a soldier’s twin dog tags kept in their combat boots and worn on a chain around the neck.

According to halachah (Jewish law), fallen soldiers are buried in a coffin in their blood-soaked uniform. They are not ritually washed in the tahara ceremony – the Jewish tradition of purification of the dead – nor are they wrapped in shrouds. The intention is that God should be angered by witnessing the fallen defenders among his Chosen People. Personal effects like a cellphone, watch or wallet are washed of blood and then returned to the family of the deceased. Artifacts that cannot be cleansed of blood are buried with the deceased.

By contrast, civilian dead are ritually washed and wrapped in shrouds. Generally, in Israel, they are interred directly in the ground without a coffin.

While dental records can allow straightforward identification of dead soldiers, that information is often unavailable for civilians. Many dental offices in the city of Sderot near Gaza were destroyed, and with them their files.

Ritual washing is tasked to male and female reservists who have volunteered for the mitzvah (commandment) of chesed shel emet (true kindness).

Women soldiers perform tahara for the hundreds of girls and women who were murdered. The team is working in shifts around the clock. Among them is Shari, an architect living in Jerusalem whose surname may not be released under IDF security regulations. She volunteered for the unit when it was established more than a decade ago to ensure that the modesty of female recruits killed in action was protected.

“We saw evidence of rape … and this was also among grandmothers down to small children,” she stated.

Shari said she and the other volunteers received specialized training from the IDF, which prepared them practically and mentally to care for the bodies of the dead. Until Oct. 7, she had not been called for active duty.

“I’ve seen things with my own eyes that no one should ever see,” she said, describing how she took care of the dead women. Many were still dressed in their pajamas. Their bodies had been booby-trapped with grenades, and the remains bore evidence of extreme brutality.

Shari’s duties begin with opening the body bags to remove the dead person’s clothes, jewelry and any other personal possessions in order to return them to the families.

“The only colour among the blood and dirt was their nails, beautiful manicures, painted the brightest colours,” Shari said, adding, “Their nails made me weep.”

“We gathered this group of 33 Jewish communal leaders from across North America to witness the horrors our brothers and sisters have suffered,” said Dr. Stephen Daniel Arnoff, chief executive officer of the Fuchsberg Jerusalem Centre – a home for Conservative and Masorti Judaism in Israel, which organized the three-day solidarity mission. Located in Jerusalem, the centre offers opportunities to study, pray and explore within an egalitarian and inclusive setting, creating multiple pathways for finding personal and communal meaning.

The solidarity group included the first civilians to tour the devastated remains of Kibbutz Be’eri, where terrorists went house to house slaughtering the inhabitants. Wearing flak vests and helmets, the clergy and communal leaders recited the El Male Rachamim and Kaddish prayers for the dead as soldiers continued their search for human remains.

“We literally saw the blood of our people crying out to us from the ground,” said Arnoff.

“It is our moral obligation to make sure that the world knows what happened there.”

Gil Zohar is a writer and tour guide in Jerusalem.

The situation is surreal

Downtown Jerusalem is deserted apart from Israel Border Police deployed in Zion Square. (photo by Gil Zohar)

It is Oct. 9. My wife Randi calls me while I am riding Jerusalem’s all-but-empty light rail, returning from a bat mitzvah celebration of a forlorn family of tourists from Arizona who are stuck in Israel. We simultaneously hear the air-raid siren blaring as we talk. Fighter jets are screaming overhead. With an edge of panic in her voice, Randi asks me what she should do. I calmly instruct here to follow the Home Front Command orders for civilians, which we have repeatedly reviewed. I’ve downloaded the app on my cellphone.

Our beautiful stone home in downtown Jerusalem, built in 1886, lacks a reinforced steel and concrete bomb shelter, known by the Hebrew acronym MaMaD (Makom Mugan l’Diyur), a protected residential place.

I remind Randi go to the neighbour’s basement apartment quickly but without running, and to wait there. Grabbing Bella our dog, she leaves the apartment door and windows open so that a blast from an explosion will not result in the windows being shattered and glass debris obliterating our house.

Below-grade structures make for poor bomb shelters since poison gas is heavier than air, I think. But there is no alternative. Nine Bedouin children were killed by Hamas rocket fire in the Western Negev. Their village lacked a MaMaD.

We hear the twin boom of Israel’s air defence system, the Iron Dome, intercepting a rocket barrage fired from the Gaza Strip. The strike lights up the sky. The threat is over until the next alert. The media reports that seven civilians living in towns in the periphery of Jerusalem were wounded in the barrage.

At the time of this writing, nearly 1,000 Israeli civilians have been killed, including 260 massacred at the Nova festival near Kibbutz Re’im – an all-night party in the desert. More than 130 civilians and soldiers have been taken hostage and dragged back to Gaza. Apart from 35 Israel Defence Force soldiers who fell in the line of duty, the names of the deceased have not been released.

It remains unclear if Hezbollah will open a full-scale second front from Lebanon. Israel has threatened to destroy Damascus, the capital of Syria, which backs the Shi’ite terror group, should the war broaden to the north.

Families of the kidnapped, missing and 2,200 wounded civilians are begging for news. Israel remains shrouded by military censorship. Nor is the news from the 2.3 million people in Gaza any clearer. Al-Jazeera lists long-out-of-date statistics. Based on data reported by the Palestinian Health Ministry, the Palestine Red Crescent Society and Israeli Medical Services, 560 Gazans have been killed. That number is likely to rise substantially.

More than 48 hours from when Hamas attacked and war broke out at 6:30 a.m. on Saturday, the IDF spokesperson announces that the army has neutralized the terrorists who overcame 22 cities and villages near Gaza. Israelis are being evacuated from the border area in anticipation of a ground invasion. Some are being housed in empty hotels near the Dead Sea.

I’ve offered our adjoining apartment. All our Airbnb guests have canceled. Apart from El Al, airlines have stopped flying to Ben-Gurion Airport.

The number of the dead, missing and wounded is surreal. The IDF has called up 300,000 reservists in the last 48 hours for what it has termed “Operation Swords of Iron.” Among them is my nephew Guy Carmeli, a Canadian-Israeli dual citizen and veteran tank gunner who lives in Herzliya with his wife Yael and 2-year-old son Oz. Randi doesn’t know of his callup. Maybe she’ll read it here. My wife doesn’t do well with stress.

A press release from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denies Egypt is trying to broker a ceasefire. The statement reads: “No message has arrived from Egypt and the prime minister has neither spoken, nor met, with the head of Egyptian intelligence since the formation of the government, neither directly nor indirectly. This is totally fake news.”

The implication? Israelis must gird themselves itself for a “long and difficult war ahead,” according to Netanyahu.

The electronic tom-tom drums uniting immigrant Israelis have been busy. As I write this, nine Americans have been confirmed dead, and 10 Brits are assumed to have been killed.

Adi Vital-Kaploun, the adult daughter of Ottawa native Jacqui Vital and her husband Yaron who live in Jerusalem, was kidnapped from her home by the Gaza Strip. Adi’s two infant children, aged 1 and 3, were also taken hostage but were abandoned at the border by their captors who felt the children would slow down the gunmen’s retreat. [On Oct. 11, after the Independent went to press, it was announced that Vital-Kaploun had been murdered by Hamas terrorists.]

There are other Canadians missing, including former Winnipegger Vivian Silver. And there are Canadians who were killed by the terrorists: Alexandre Look, who grew up in Montreal, and Vancouverite Ben Mizrachi; both young men were among those killed at the music festival near Kibbutz Re’im.

Canadian-Israeli Shye Weinstein, who was at the festival, too, documented how he and his friends fled. He described their nail-biting escape to Tel Aviv: “We only slowed down for checkpoints and bodies.”

Nuseir Yassin, who writes the blog @nasdaily, described his conflict as an Arab citizen of Israel: “Personal Thoughts: (not for everyone, feel free to skip) For the longest time, I struggled with my identity. A Palestinian kid born inside Israel. Like … wtf. Many of my friends refuse to this day to say the word ‘Israel’ and call themselves ‘Palestinian’ only. But since I was 12, that did not make sense to me. So I decided to mix the two and become a ‘Palestinian-Israeli.’ I thought this term reflected who I was. Palestinian first. Israeli second. But after recent events, I started to think. And think. And think. And then my thoughts turned to anger. I realized that if Israel were to be ‘invaded’ like that again, we would not be safe. To a terrorist invading Israel, all citizens are targets. 900 Israelis died so far.

“More than 40 of them are Arabs. Killed by other Arabs. And even 2 Thai people died too. And I do not want to live under a Palestinian government. Which means I only have one home, even if I’m not Jewish: Israel. That’s where all my family lives. That’s where I grew up. That’s the country I want to see continue to exist so I can exist. Palestine should exist too as an independent state. And I hope to see the country thrive and become less extreme and more prosperous. I love Palestine and have invested in Palestine. But it’s not my home. So from today forward, I view myself as an ‘Israeli-Palestinian.’ Israeli first. Palestinian second.”

Gil Zohar is a writer and tour guide in Jerusalem.

Urban warfare training

An Israel Defence Forces patrol. The mural on the right was painted by Batsheva Schneider when she was doing her military service. (photo by Gil Zohar)

Fans of Fauda may recognize the Tze’elim Urban Warfare Training Centre (UWTC) in the western Negev Desert near Kibbutz Tze’elim. The base – where Israel Defence Forces infantry and commanders train in the type of house-to-house and subterranean combat expected in the Gaza Strip, but also in the West Bank, southern Lebanon and other Middle East locations – was used as a set for the hit TV series. But, while faudameans “chaos” in Arabic, the disarray in this sprawling 24-hectare base has been finely calibrated to accustom troops to real-life conditions of fighting in Arab cities and villages.

photo - Soldiers in the midst of operations training. — Soldiers in the midst of operations training. *(photo by Gil Zohar)*

Located inside the larger Tze’elim Training Base, the UWTC simulates the maze of a multi-storey Middle Eastern urban environment. Established in 2005, it was built at a cost of $45 million.

The warren of 600 structures includes garbage-strewn streets, storefronts, schools, houses, shacks, an eight-storey apartment block and mosques. The muezzin’s call blares from the minarets, which are illuminated with green Islamic lights. Garages advertise cars for sale. Jeeps patrol the dusty streets. Holes blown in walls allow soldiers to avoid entering a building via the doorway, which may have been booby-trapped.

Most striking are the murals and graffiti scattered across the site, some painted by Batsheva Schneider when she was doing her military service. The images include Islamic Jihad fighters firing RPGs, Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, Qassam rockets from Gaza, and guerrillas with their faces covered by a keffiyah scarf marked “shahid” (martyr). One Arabic sign just says “death.”

photo - Murals and graffiti are scattered across Tze’elim — Murals and graffiti are scattered across Tze’elim. *(photo by Gil Zohar)*

Entering a mock-up of a claustrophobic Gaza terrorist tunnel, this writer felt the palpable panic among my fellow journalists behind me as they urged me forward in the pitch-black darkness.

photo - Images include Qassam rockets from Gaza — Images include Qassam rockets from Gaza. *(photo by Gil Zohar)*

Other buildings are decorated to replicate a salon in a private home. The verisimilitude extends down to framed family photographs, flowers in a vase, recent newspapers from Gaza and art with Quranic verses. Simulators showing mortar strikes and explosions suggest to soldiers what they might witness outside the living room window.

In addition to the IDF, Israel’s “Mini Gaza” has been used for urban warfare training by U.S. Army soldiers and United Nations peacekeepers. The project was developed to meet the need for better urban warfare training by the IDF, as a response to the challenges of the Second Intifada of 2000-2005. It is regularly updated as new terror strategies evolve.

Training exercises here are meant to help soldiers and their officers distinguish between combatants and civilians, and prepare them for situations where terrorists exploit civilians as human shields.

This writer was part of a delegation of international journalists on a tour organized by the Israel Government Press Office. The invitation came before the recent military operation in Jenin.

Gil Zohar is a writer and tour guide in Jerusalem.

Beit HaRav Kook at 100 years

Rabbi Itzhak Marmorstein – a former spiritual leader of Vancouver’s Congregation Or Shalom – stands beside the ark in Beit HaRav Kook, where he is the gabbai (sexton). (photo by Gil Zohar)

Scores of congregants packed Beit HaRav in downtown Jerusalem June 2-3 to celebrate the centenary of the historic synagogue, yeshiva and home of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (1865-1935), a seminal Zionist religious leader during the British Mandate who founded the Chief Rabbinate of Israel.

Born in Griva – then part of the Czarist Empire but today Daugavpils, Latvia – Kook arrived in Jaffa, Ottoman Palestine, on Iyar 28, 5665 (1904), where he became the city’s leading Jewish spiritual figure. The family’s private celebration became a national holiday during the 1967 Six Day War when Israel conquered the Old City of Jerusalem on the same date.

Exiled in Switzerland and then in Britain during the First World War, Kook – also known by the Hebrew acronym HaRaAYaH – played a key role in London in securing the 1917 Balfour Declaration by which Britain announced its support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine.

Returning to the country then under British military occupation following the war, Kook served as the Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Jerusalem. Both the city’s Jewish religious leaders and Whitehall were anxious to replace the Ottoman office of hakham bashi, chief rabbi of the former Turkish empire. Thus, in 1921, Kook was appointed to the newly created position of Ashkenazi chief rabbi of the Land of Israel.

But where was a scholar of such stature to live, especially since the representatives of other religions in the holy city all had an appropriate residence?

The issue was brought up in a July 24, 1921, meeting at Government House on the Mount of Olives – today the Augusta Victoria Hospital – between Britain’s newly arrived high commissioner, Sir Herbert Samuel (1870-1963), and New York businessman Harry Fischel (1865-1948). Asked by Samuel to raise money for the project among his American peers, the philanthropist and his wife Shayna volunteered to fund the building themselves.

They identified Beit David, a one-storey kollel almshouse erected in 1873 by philanthropist David Reis. Owned by the Ashkenazi community’s Central Committee of Knesset Israel, the site was eminently suitable. The courtyard – opposite Rothschild Hospital (today Hadassah College) and near the residence of pioneering ophthalmologist Dr. Alfred Ticho and his wife, artist Anna – was located on Hadassah Street, which was renamed after Rabbi Kook following his death.

photo - The yeshiva hall and beit midrash of Beit HaRav Kook — The yeshiva hall and beit midrash of Beit HaRav Kook. *(photo by Gil Zohar)*

A cornerstone for the second-floor addition was laid on Aug. 15 before the Fischels departed. Work began immediately. Fischel, an architect and real estate developer in Manhattan, ensured the structure included all the latest modern conveniences. The double-height ceilings were decorated with colourful stencil patterns. Built surrounding a central courtyard, one wing included a reception area, kitchen, bathroom and three bedrooms for the Kook family. The other side included the Central Universal Yeshiva, a synagogue and the scholar’s bureau – now restored to its appearance a century ago. At Kook’s insistence, the synagogue incorporated a moveable roof to permit a sizeable sukkah.

The Kooks moved in at Hanukkah 1922, though the synagogue and yeshiva were still under construction. That spring, the Fischels again crossed the Atlantic. Docking in Alexandria, they caught the train from Egypt across the Sinai Desert to Palestine. Arriving at Lydda (Lod) on May 9, they were greeted by a delegation of rabbis. The couple insisted on being immediately escorted to Beit HaRav.

The dedication began at 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, Sivan 12, 5683 (May 27, 1923). The program – which included 33 events and speakers with a tea break – augured well for cooperation between the country’s growing Jewish community and the new imperial regime.

The many dignitaries in attendance included leading rabbis and Zionist figures. The event was a quasi-national holiday. Jerusalem was decorated with bunting in the Zionist, British and American colours. Flags flew everywhere across the city.

The orchestra of the nearby Institute for the Blind played the Star-Spangled Banner, God Save the King and Hatikvah, while the Etz Chaim Talmud Torah’s choir performed for the guests.

Among the dozens of speakers was Fischel, who addressed the assembly in Hebrew and then English: “Words fail me at this moment to express my gratitude to the Almighty for granting me this privilege of building this Beth HaRav and synagogue…. While my heart always beats for Palestine, yet my home is in America. I have, therefore, had to travel nearly 6,000 miles to participate in this holy celebration….

“The building committee has just presented me with the key of this house certifying thereby that the building is now completed. In view of the fact that this residence and synagogue are to be used for the benefit of the people of Palestine, and that Your Excellency [Samuel], is the chief executive of the land, I therefore deem it fitting and proper to present you with the key, and designate you as custodian of this combined edifice. May I ask you, please, to accept this golden key and keep it as a souvenir and memento of this occasion? I want to take this means also of publicly thanking you for the honour you have bestowed upon us. May God grant you, your administration and the people of Palestine continued security and peace.”

Turning to Kook, sitting next to him on the dais, resplendent in his Sabbath and festival fur spodek (tall, black hat), Samuel declared:

“I congratulate the Chief Rabbinate, Mr. and Mrs. Fischel and the Jewish community at large on this auspicious day. Among the many problems with which the civil administration had to deal on its establishment was the adoption of measures to place the Jewish community both on its secular and on its ecclesiastical side, upon a permanent and regular basis. The question of the organization of the secular side was not yet fully settled. But the government has been able to establish, on an electoral basis, the Chief Rabbinate and, for the first time after an interval of many centuries, a Jewish ecclesiastical authority has been founded on a permanent footing, based upon the decisions of the community itself.”

The ornately carved chair that Samuel presented to Kook on behalf of King George V remains in its place of honour on the synagogue’s eastern wall next to the aron kodesh (Torah ark).

photo - The Beit HaRav dedication ceremony a century ago. Rabbi Isaac Kook, fourth from the right in the photo, is wearing the fur spodek. To his left is Harry Fischel. Herbert Samuel and Sefardi Chief Rabbi Yaakov Meir — The Beit HaRav dedication ceremony a century ago. Rabbi Isaac Kook, fourth from the right in the photo, is wearing the fur spodek. To his left is Harry Fischel. Herbert Samuel and Sefardi Chief Rabbi Yaakov Meir. (photo from Rabbi Aaron I. Reichel, esq., administrator of the Harry and Jane Fischel Foundation)

Asked about the importance of Beit HaRav, the institution’s gabbai (sexton) Rabbi Itzhak Marmorstein – also known by his nom de plume rabbanique Evan-Shayish – cited Kook’s dedication address a century ago:

“We are engaged here in declaring an elevated ideal that must proceed higher and higher. This ideal must develop and grow its activity through the gathering together of our scattered powers so that together we can proceed in the rebuilding of the ruins of Jerusalem together. This involves strengthening the physical building of the land and the nation in the material realm as the basis for the higher, holy and spiritual building of the Torah and holiness. This will illuminate the living light for the entire national renewal in all its branches.”

Kook’s funeral in 1935 was attended by an estimated 20,000 mourners. Beit HaRav continued to function as the flagship for the dati leumi (national religious) community, but a larger yeshiva was erected in Kiryat Moshe in 1964, and the old building fell into disuse.

Since 2008, Marmorstein – a Canadian-Israeli who formerly served at Congregation Or Shalom in Vancouver – has been engaged in reviving the original building. The building today operates as a neighbourhood synagogue with Sabbath services, as well as a museum.

The centre offers a class every Thursday at 9 p.m. taught by noted kabbalist Rabbi Yohai Yemini on Kook’s commentary on Rabbi Isaac Luria’s teachings. Those insights, recorded and edited in Safed between 1570 and 1572 by his disciple Haim Vital, form the basis for Lurianic kabbalah (mysticism), a system of thought Kook helped spread under which the arrival the Messiah and the ingathering of the Jews to Israel is imminent.

Gil Zohar is a writer and tour guide in Jerusalem.