8 | JANUARY 18 • 2024 
J
N

essay

Making good on a 50-year 
promise to Israel
M

y now-husband 
Tim and I were 
in college 50 
years ago when the Yom 
Kippur war broke out. We 
didn’t know 
one another 
then, but we 
both called 
home asking 
our parents if 
we could go 
to Israel and 
support the 
war effort. Unfortunately, 
we couldn’t. However, five 
decades later, the minute 
Jewish National Fund-
USA offered us a chance to 
volunteer, we signed up for 
the first mission.
We had already been 
planning to go to Israel 
on Oct. 16 with the 
organization’s Arava Task 
Force, an initiative I’ve 
been involved with since 
its inception in 2010. I 
also participated in the 
dedication of the only 
fortified indoor playground 
in Sderot, which also serves 
as a bomb shelter (how about 
that for an oxymoron?) in 
2008, the same playground 
that suffered a direct hit on 
Oct. 7.
So, a little more than two 
weeks ago, Tim and I found 
ourselves heading out to 
a farming community in 
Israel’s south located close to 
the border with Egypt and 
Gaza to help tend to their 
fields. The farm is on the 
3% of the land that former 

Palestinian leader Yasser 
Arafat refused to take in 
2000 as part of the Camp 
David Peace Accords, thus 
scuttling one of the many 
peace deals offered because 
he said nothing would ever 
grow there. Well, after we 
cleared tons of weeds, there 
are plenty of green onions 
sprouting there now.
The next day, we had 
the privilege of farming in 
Sderot, a town on the border 
with Gaza. During the five 
short days of the volunteer 
mission, we packed and 
delivered gifts to patients 
and soldiers at Seroka 
Hospital, spent a day on an 
army base packing snacks 
for the soldiers in Gaza, 
met with lone soldiers and 
evacuees from the border 
town of Shlomit, talked to 
victims of the Oct. 7 border 
invasion and prayed at the 
Western Wall in Jerusalem.
The experiences were life-

changing and too many to 
share in this brief reflection. 
But I want to note my 
feelings and the feelings 
expressed by the Israelis 
because every Diaspora Jew, 
whether you have been to 
Israel or not, deserves to do 
what we did. And the Israelis 
deserve your presence, too.
Visiting the south on 
this volunteer mission 
meant I could check on 
the communities that I had 
watched Jewish National 
Fund-USA build, that I could 
hear directly from the city 
leaders, see the people whom 
I had met so many years 
before and hug them, just to 
hug them.
Osi, the incredible chef 
from Ofakim who is still too 
shell-shocked to talk about 
it; Yael, a new friend and 
mother of five who is trying 
to take it a day at a time; the 
rabbi from Shlomit, where I 
pulled the sweetest carrots in 

the world from the ground 
more than a decade ago, 
again on land that Arafat 
refused. To see them, to hear 
their faith and to believe 
they were going to be OK is 
what this trip was about.
In the past, I would leave 
Israel buoyed by the joy, the 
love of life, the confidence 
and the pride in what Israel 
was. This time, however, 
that joy had been replaced 
with anxiety and trepidation. 
Yet what we heard over and 
over from the farmers, from 
the widow of Uriel Bibi — a 
hero who had left Shlomit 
to report for duty but was 
murdered on the way — 
from the mayor of Ramat 
HaNegev regional council, 
is that on Oct. 7, Israelis lost 
their trust in humanity. 
Now, through acts of 
solidarity and as volunteers 
by the busloads come 
together to save each other, 
they are trusting again, 

PURELY COMMENTARY

continued on page 11

Lauren 
Mescon
JNS

