Reflections on Masorti Leadership Solidarity Mission to Israel

By Rabbi Ellen S. Wolintz-Fields, WLCJ Executive Director

I was privileged and honored to be able to represent Women’s League for Conservative Judaism on a 56-hour Masorti Leadership Solidarity Mission to Israel, November 5 through November 8, 2023.  In the Torah, in the verse Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad, Hear O Israel, The Lord our God, the Lord is One, the last letter of the word Shema – the Ayin – and the last letter of the word Echad – the Dalet – are enlarged in the Torah. Together, Ayin Dalet, spells the word Eid, a Witness.

This was the shortest and most powerful of my 13 trips to Israel, because on this trip I was witness to the atrocities of Black Shabbat, October 7, 2023. I was able to be an eyewitness to the results of evil in our midst.  I am the Eid, the Witness,  and now I can share what others must hear, Shema. 

How did you feel in the middle of March 2020? Not sure what this whole Corona was all about? Was it the flu? Would it last? What are you talking about – wearing a mask? We will work remotely and go to school remotely for a few days? Then a month? Who knew, because it was unknown.  We are back in that period of the unknown. But a major difference is that the COVID period of the unknown was caused by something that was not created by human beings. This period of the unknown is  created by human beings. We are living in a period created by pure Evil. 

Israel became a new country after October 7, 2023. There is a paradigm shift. Nothing is what it used to be.  I was always a dreamer. I am now a realist.  Reality: many people who wanted to live in peace alongside Palestinians, instead lived beside terrorists, who murdered innocent civilians.  People who devoted their lives for peaceful dialogue, died texting that they wished they had a knife in their safe room. I stood in the former homes of residents of Kfar Azza, and saw the bullet holes in the walls of their homes; their blood on the walls; their personal items thrown everywhere.  Three groups came across the Gaza border – Hamas; Islamic Jihad and Palestinians who took this break in the border fence as an opportunity to steal and loot from their Jewish neighbors who were lying dead, with their blood still draining.

We heard firsthand about how Hamas did not only kill people, they also set booby traps on the bodies and in homes, so when the Israelis came to check on those killed, the rescuers were also killed.  We listened to a mother talk of the plight of waiting to hear news about her daughter, who was seen in a video being pulled by her hair, being held captive by Hamas. We listened to a nurse, and mother of ten, who was at an army base on Black Shabbat, October 7th.  Her husband was a rabbi on an army base in the south and was there to bring Simchat Torah to the soldiers. Instead she wound up tending to a soldier who was shot, and was tricked into thinking the other soldier who came to help was part of the IDF, but instead it was a Hamas terrorist, who shot the nurse in her back and arm. She used her head covering as a tourniquet. She shared her story with us when we visited Hadassah Hospital. We listened attentively to the woman who was on a crowded bus when a missile hit, but it was so crowded, no one could hear the sirens to warn them to go into a shelter. She had shrapnel in her leg, and was undergoing extensive physical therapy. But she was one of the lucky ones; better off than the murdered owners of the hundreds of cars we saw in a parking lot in Netivot; cars which were shot and demolished and burned.  There were car seats and baby carriages in those cars, and I wondered, where are those children now ? Are they orphans? Captive? Is someone saying Kaddish for them?

I sat on the El Al flight back home in delirium, listening to the cries of the baby in front of me; grateful that the baby was being held; thinking about the children being held captive, who are not old enough to speak to tell you their name, or who their parents are.  I witnessed this; and want to scream – Remember what Hamas terrorists did to us on Black Shabbat, October 7, 2023. 

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Ellen S. Wolintz-Fields
WLCJ Executive Director
ewolintz-fields@wlcj.org