From the moment they landed in Tel Aviv on October 23, the two dozen Chabad rabbis on a humanitarian mission — bringing thousands of dollars and thousands of toys to Israel — knew they were in a war zone.
“What made it real immediately was to hear sirens,” said Rabbi Yanky Kahn of Chabad of the Valley said. “For Americans, we think it’s a joke. ‘Oh, rockets are flying.’ We don’t realize the danger since we see it electronically on our phones.” But their message was the same at every stop: “We came here to tell you we love you. You are not alone. We care for you, and we are trying to help relieve your pain.”
When they arrived at a hospital, he saw people with no arms. No legs. “Life has changed for them, for the wives, the children, the extended family. This is real war,” he said. “People get stabbed, shot. Rockets go into homes.”
On their first day, the rabbis met with families of the hostages. Many were hanging out at a law firm. “They were full-time busy, collecting money, accepting hugs, and just saying ‘pray for our kids.’” From there the traveling rabbis went to the Western Wall with the chief rabbi of Israel and the chief rabbi of the Kotel.
Twenty-five miles east of Tel Aviv, the rabbis entered Peduel, a West Bank settlement. “We saw kids building a wall, by themselves, for protection. Like 1946. Little children, taking rock by rock, just trying to protect themselves in case someone ever does break through the gate.”
When the rabbis went to breakfast the next morning, they saw numerous women holding babies, and Rabbi Kahn began handing out money. When he walked off to different groups of adults and children, he started handing out iPads for the kids. “Some people spoke, some couldn’t speak,” he said. They repeatedly saw houses with large rocket-caused holes.
“Rockets, rockets, rockets falling,” Kahn said, “and you understand how people are struggling. Ashkelon is not a wealthy city. Many residents were going to stay by cousins and others.” When a woman approached the rabbis, they handed her $100. “She didn’t really want the money,” Kahn said. “She wanted food.” There is no way to measure the starvation since Oct. 7, Kahn said, “but I can tell you that we gave out a lot of money, a lot of hugs, and a lot of stuff. We tried to change the dynamics.”
Next stop was the Command Center of Ashkelon where the visitors were given a demonstration of how the military seeks to protect the populace when a rocket falls. The rabbis donated $30,000 to buy protection — in the form of helmets and vests — for Ashkelon residents. “We gave out a lot of money,” said Rabbi Kahn. “Each place we went, we gave money.”
Sderot, a Western Negev city of 30,000 in the shadow of Gaza, was the next stop. Traveling in three vehicles, the rabbis traveled the same roads where the terrorists drove freely. Did they ever fear for their safety? “I felt safe,” Kahn said. “I wasn’t really scared because I was in Israel.” They stopped at the only store that was open, Chabad of Sderot. The Israeli rabbis hosted a food bank, and they distributed free food.
Rabbi Kahn met an IDF soldier who on her day off, comes to volunteer, packing and delivering food to people. Another volunteer had just lost her sister in a shooting. “These people are going through difficult times, but they still are volunteering,” Kahn said.
But unsurprisingly, in the midst of tragedy, schoolchildren are the most obvious losers. Most, but not all, schools are shuttered.
For the luckier youngsters, “it is how however many children will fit into a bomb shelter,” Kahn said. “A hundred want to enter, but there is only room for 20. In other cases, there only is room for eight. There are schools where they will take one group of students for half a day, and a different group for the other half of the day.”
In Beersheba, at a hospital filled with terror victims, the rabbis were shocked and saddened again to encounter what Kahn called “just regular people” suffering massive physical losses. Victims who had lost their legs in bombings were a repeated sight.
The rabbis met a man who was driving to Mincha when Hamas struck. When he stepped out of his car to flee to shelter. “His wife was there. His kids were there. His brother was there. Now this whole extended family – their lives were changed forever because of the rockets.”
“There is more to do. Here in America, we cannot say ‘I gave $100 to charity, and I have done my part’ or ‘I bought 100 flashlights on Amazon, and I am done.’” – Rabbi Yanky Kahn
He acknowledged that war in-person “looked a lot more real than I knew before I left.” The Chabad of the Valley rabbi said the trip to the war zone “was only the beginning. There is more to do. Here in America, we cannot say ‘I gave $100 to charity, and I have done my part’ or ‘I bought 100 flashlights on Amazon, and I am done.’” This is war, he said “for every Jew around the world. It can happen in Russia. It can happen in Studio City. It is happening. We have to do a lot of prayers, and a lot of acts of goodness and kindness.”
When Rabbi Kahn walked to the Western Wall on Shabbos, he passed a scene that once would have shocked him – a hotel had become an emergency home for displaced families. Finally, he related a scene encountered on the way back to Los Angeles.
“We met two women from Encino where there is a kosher restaurant called Sassi. One woman was by the [music] festival with her father, a party of eight. Her father got shot.” A Druze man came by and said ‘they’re coming to shoot you, they’re coming to shoot you.’ All of them ran into a bunker. and when Hamas came, the Druze man said in Arabic to the terrorists, ‘Leave them alone. They are my family.’ He was attacked, but no one knows what ever happened to him.” About 30 people were in the bunker. “When the terrorists came, “they were shooting at everyone and throwing grenades. The woman survived by putting her father’s dead body on top of her. She took the jewelry off the dead bodies so the Arabs would not see and steal it. She told her husband to lie quietly. “She took blood from people who had been on top of her and other dead bodies and sprayed it on her. “She laid there for seven hours. Every half hour, the terrorists would come by and shoot, making sure everyone was dead. After seven hours, she heard a father calling out for his daughter. Then she knew it was safe to go out. Of the party of eight, only four survived. The woman had been shot in the leg, and when she went to a hospital, they told her they had no time to take care of her injury because it was not life threatening. She went to a different hospital. “That woman,” Kahn said, “was the daughter of the owner of Sassi.”
Finally, the rabbi said a central lesson from the trip was “Israel’s pain is our pain.”
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