This Thursday, February 1st on Zoom at 8:00pm PT, we have a unique opportunity to feel the wholeness of our heart and to be together with our Israeli and American family. Israeli friends and Or Ami partners will share their stories of the last 115 days. Together, we will comfort one another and discover new words and new strength to enable us to move forward. 

A few weeks ago, Elhanan Nir, a young Israeli Rabbi, wrote this poem in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper:

Now We Need a New Torah,
Now like air to breathe
We need a new Torah.
Now in this stifled breath and the hacked neck
We need a new Mishnah, a new Gemara,
A new Kabbalah, new mystical ascents
And in all the brokenness and salt and ruin, now
A new Hasidism and a new Zionism
A new Rav Kook and a new Brenner,
A new poetry, new Rabbinic Response
And new art and new literature and new cinema
And new-ancient words
And new-ancient souls from the treasure of souls.
And new love out of the terrible weeping.
For we have all been flooded by the rivers of the music festival in Re’im and Kibbutz Be’eri
And we have in us no mountain and there are no more Tablets
And we have no Moses and we have no strength
And into our hands everything now has been given.

These words were written from a place of deep brokenness and great despair.

A place so dark and incomprehensible that there are no words to describe. In the most profound way of poetry he touches our heart, crying out loud for the need to find newness in this world. New words, new understandings, new sense of being, of life, of purpose. 

So many of us have been feeling similar emotions during the last 115 days, since October 7th. We try to understand what happened. We make attempts to make sense of this horrific war between Israel and Hamas. We try so hard to minimize the damages on this side of the ocean by blocking the very fast growing antisemitism, anti-zionism, and anti-Israelism, while most of the time it feels like we are just a finger blocking a damn or a bandage covering a deep bloody wound. 

Although a new year has begun and it is the end of January, so many of us are still on October 7th. We are mourning, we are grieving and we are feeling the colossal trauma, following the horrific massacre that happened to our people. 

We are one people. We have one beating heart. When our heart is hurt in the state of Israel, we feel it here, in North America. Know too that as we are hurting here in North America, our Israeli family members feel it too. 

Let us meet, be together and hug each other virtually, this Thursday on Zoom. Later this year, we will be able to do that in-person as we host Israeli guests at Or Ami and then when Or Ami partners travel to Israel. Information about these important upcoming community programs and travel opportunities coming soon.