Why I Went to Israel in Wartime—And Why We All Need to Find Ways to Show Up

I’m in the TSA line at LAX for my flight to Israel when I see the guy in the black tank top. Tall, early twenties, built like a tank, with bulging biceps three times the size of mine. He tells me his name is Kfir. He’s from Rosh HaAyin, east of Tel Aviv.

Kfir recently completed his active duty in the IDF and he’s been traveling around the U.S. Now he’s been called back to serve with his unit.

A couple of decades earlier, that would have been me (minus the biceps). Now I have my own reasons for traveling.

Ever since Simchat Torah, when my family text group started pinging nonstop from loved ones and friends in Israel, my heart has ached like never before. Reading and hearing of the massacre — babies murdered, Holocaust survivors abducted, families gunned down — I felt rage, anger, and despair. And very far away.

Many of the pings on my phone were from a WhatsApp group called “Tzevet Shalosh,” — Team Three, my lifelong brothers from the army. I made Aliyah in the early 2000s and served two years in a paratrooper unit. We fought side by side, visited friends wounded in battle, held each other as we mourned other friends.

Hearing of the pogrom in Israel’s south, I knew immediately that I had to go. Sure, my life is different now. I live in Los Angeles, where I’m one of the rabbis of a large synagogue. I have a wife and children. But my brothers, my family, my people were suffering. I had to go. I had to be at their sides.

It might sound irrational, rushing to a war zone. But I thought of my parents, who traveled to Russia in 1975 to bring hope to Refuseniks, Jews who were struggling to escape to freedom. I thought of Reb Mimi Feigelson, my rabbinical school mentor, who showed up at my door to comfort me just after a close friend died of cancer.

And I thought of my cousin Evi on a kibbutz in the north of Israel, who had no choice but to leave his own wife and kids to head to the border to protect our homeland.

I knew I had to go.

I also knew there were needs. With the IDF calling up hundreds of thousands of reservists on short notice, my colleagues at Sinai Temple had heard pleas for essential supplies: knee pads, flashlights, backpacks. Practically overnight, a remarkable team of volunteers had collected countless donations. Our schools’ students had handwritten hundreds of messages of gratitude and encouragement to IDF soldiers.

I arrive at LAX Sunday morning — just over a week after the attack—with more luggage than I’ve ever checked: Four overstuffed duffel bags and five large boxes of supplies. (Another helper has secured permission from El Al to check them.)

Still, I wonder if I’m doing the right thing, causing worry and anxiety for my wife Amy and our children. Until I met Kfir in the TSA line, and knew I made the right decision.

“Don’t worry, brother,” he says to me in Hebrew. “This war will end quickly.”

As I settle into my seat on the plane, I’m surprised that most of the travelers aren’t returning soldiers like Kfir, but families — parents, grandparents, children. Israelis returning after vacation trips for the Sukkot holiday.

My eyes land on two babies nearby, both around six months old, precious, adorable. I feel a tear stream down my face as I watch them, smiling, happy, safe in their parents’ arms — where they should be.

A few rows back I see Kfir, about to hoist his backpack to the overhead bin. I quickly grab a handful of papers from my own pack and approach him. “Put these in your bag,” I say.

“Ma zeh?” He asks. What is it?

“Letters of support for you and your team,” I say. “From the kids in our community.”

He smiles. “Todah, achi,” Kfir says. Thanks, brother, “I’ll take a bunch.” And he gives me a hug.

Fourteen hours later we arrive at Ben Gurion. It’s 2:30 p.m.  At baggage claim, I’m wondering how I’ll manage all my cargo. A guy with a Russian accent named Igor offers to help — for a small fee.

Unfortunately, a customs officer stops me. Israel’s famous bureaucracy doesn’t pause for war, apparently. Over a couple of hours, I manage with the help of Meir, the cousin of a congregant, who has generously arrived to pick me up with his wife, Eliann.

Somehow we’re able to cram everything into Meir’s compact sedan and hit the road. Waze directs us to the Tel Aviv office where my army friends are collecting and sorting supplies. Just as we’re approaching, we hear the sudden wail of an air-raid siren—a signal of incoming rocket fire.

Meir quickly pulls to the curb and helps me to get out. Everyone around us is running for shelter. We pass a restaurant, then run into a hotel next door. A worker calmly directs us downstairs to a bomb shelter, where we join about three dozen others—hotel guests, other passersby, Israeli-Arab hotel workers.

We wait for a few tense minutes until we hear a loud boom — a rocket being intercepted by Iron Dome. Another few minutes, we hear the all-clear and emerge.

As luck would have it, our destination is just next-door in a two-story office building that normally houses a high-tech firm. I text one of my army friends, and suddenly they appear to greet us: Sahar, Avrami, Manubela. My army brothers. We hug. There are no words.

Just then, Gidon, one of my closest army teammates, pulls up with his own carload of donated supplies.

Together, we haul the boxes and duffels inside, where we’re greeted by others from our unit and dozens of others — all volunteers, most on leave from work while they wait to be called up as reservists.

We’re not on the front lines, but we are all doing what we can. Others in Israel are sending meals or Shabbat challahs to soldiers. Or opening their homes to survivors of the massacre. My cousins Avishag and Tomer, grocers in the Tel Aviv, are sending fruit and vegetables to soldiers.  My brother-in-law is doing a late-night shift as a watchman for his community. I make it my business to connect, to lift their spirits, to let them know that millions of Jews around the world support them.

Less than three days later, I’m back on El Al, on an L.A.-bound flight full of children, many traveling without their parents who have sent them to be with relatives, far from war and terror.

I leave each person I see with the same greeting: Tishmeru al atzmechem. Take care of yourselves. Each friend and relative, the airport security screener, even the flight attendant as I’m exiting at LAX. Take care of yourselves.

But what I learned from my trip — from Kfir and from Meir and from Gidon — is that we all need to take care of each other.  We each need to find a need and fill it. We don’t all need to fly to Israel, but each of us needs to find a way to show up. Our brothers and sisters have never needed us more.

Rabbi Avi Taff is associate rabbi at Sinai Temple.