On August 7th 2005, my life completely changed. I didn't know it then, but looking back now I realize that that was the day in which began a two-week journey altering the essence of the way I experience myself and the world. On Sunday August 7th, I, my wife and our four children drove down to Neve Dekalim, a former Jewish settlement in the Gaza strip, .
About a week after the government sealed off Gush Katif, I received a phone call from my boss, Eliyahu. I am an Educational Psychologist working in the regional council of Kiryat Arba. My boss was a resident for 15 years in Neve Dekalim, until August 17th. I picked up the phone and Eliyahu was asking me if I'd like him to acquire a permit for me to enter into Gush Katif as a psychologist in order to work with families undergoing stress from the current situation. After many deliberations, my wife and I decided we would go. I figured that I could at least try to help out. I had not an inkling of the profound experience that was about to befall me.
When we arrived, the place was abuzz with excitement. Thousands of people, mostly teenagers on summer vacation, made their way into the area. We were able to make arrangements to sleep on the floor of a classroom in the school in Neve Dekalim. After getting organized, I made contact with Eliyahu. He informed me there was a meeting at his house later in the afternoon with some other psychologists. I was happy that things would immediately get underway and excited to hear what I would be doing.
The meeting went on for a couple of hours. By the end of the meeting I felt completely lost. None of us had a specific task. There were no set meetings, no intake phone calls. In essence, I had absolutely no clue as to what I was supposed to do. Afterwards I wandered around the streets of Neve Dekalim in despair. I had come to help and was left with no direction what to do.
The next few days continued on with, pretty much more of the same. I tried to find ways to begin working yet nothing seemed to pan out.
While I was trying to find ways to help, my daughter came down with chicken pox. We needed to go back home to take care of her. Yet as the days passed, I felt a powerful pull to go back. So, after sorting through an incredible tangle of emotions and arrangement, I found myself in the parking lot, alone, in Neve Dekalim. It was the 9th of Av, the day of utmost mourning for the Jewish People.
It was immediately apparent that things were different than they were before. The whole atmosphere was different. The air was heavy with anticipation, for what, nobody was certain.
By the end of the day, I was connected to the Social Services Dept. of Gush Katif. They had my cellphone number and said they would call me if anything came up. As the day was nearing a close, I made my way to the main synagogue in Neve Dekalim for the afternoon prayer service. The place was filled with a thousand people screaming 'Avenu Malkenu', Our father, our King. My eyes welled with tears. Within minutes I was swept away with the sadness of two thousand years of exile. "Hashem, redeem us now. PLEASE", I felt myself screaming inside my head. I couldn't understand why this senseless abandonment and uprooting was on the threshold of actuality. We continued to pray until the fast came to an end.
That night an announcement was made. A fairly well-known Israeli musician was to play a concert in the main square of Neve Dekalim. By 10 o'clock that night the square was packed with people. The music began and everybody began to dance as if salvation had come. It was then I began to sense something that gave me an inner solace. Watching people on the brink of disaster with such complete faith made me realize that when faith runs so deep in the heart and soul of a people, no eventuality can uproot it.
There were so many other sights that touched me to the core. Bringing in a new Torah scroll to the synagogue just hours before the expulsion began, hundreds of teenagers sitting on the street crying while singing songs of Jerusalem, four hundred soldiers crying in the main synagogue while the Torah scrolls were removed for the last time. These are just a few of those moments.
But what rang through most clearly amongst all the chaos was that even in situations of seemingly utter and complete despair, there is always, always hope and there is always faith. I witnessed people being lifted out of their home by soldiers while crying and singing songs of redemption. They knew…I knew that God was listening. It is true, Gush Katif was at an end, but all of us there felt just how much this was only a beginning. In the end, everything is going to be alright. When we can cry from the deepest place and sing out to Hashem, He will show us the way.
We are all standing on the brink of a similar situation. The year is about to die and be no more. Yet at the same time we began anew. It is now that we are given the choice either to stagnate in the remains of what we once were or to seize the opportunity that presents itself before us. An opportunity of hope and faith. An opportunity that screams: I will push on and become what I have been created to be. I will cry out to God and tell him, "No more, Please! No more destruction, no more sins, no more lies. I want only to glimpse redemption, to see Your light in my life, a light that shows me how to be fully me." May we merit the complete faith that knows, even as we seem to turn back, that we are on the way.
Happy New Year