By Andrew Adler
Community Editor
L-R: Dana Bachar Grossman and Avital Ben Dror (Photo by Mackenzie Lynch for Community)
When rockets threaten, sometimes all you can do is laugh.
Case in point: The several dozen listeners present at Congregation Adath Jeshurun for a recent Shabbat kiddush lunch, having duly consumed their smoked salmon and various culinary accoutrements, were poised to hear from that day’s Shabbat Scholars, Avital Ben Dror and Dana Bachar Grossman. The two Israeli women, who live in the Western Galilee region of Northern Israel, were in town representing the Partnership2Gether program in ongoing cooperation with the Jewish Federation of Louisville.
In the wake of the October 7 attacks by Hamas in Southern Israel, coupled with Hezbollah militia periodically lobbing missiles toward Israeli towns just a few miles south of the border with Lebanon, many of those residents were evacuated to safer areas of the country. Congregants on this Shabbat presumably anticipated hearing sober accounts of the challenges faced by those families, and by the relative few who lived far enough away from the Lebanese border to be allowed to remain.
Grossman, however, had a divergent notion in mind. An avid amateur stand-up comedian, she strode up to the microphone and launched into a tale of how remaining members of her community plied security personnel with all manner of sugary treats.
“I just want to tell you that – whatever you read in the newspaper or hear on the news – the real danger we faced on October 8 was diabetes,” she opined.
“All of the volunteers in our moshav (a collective with more private property than a traditional kibbutz) used to do patrols, and because everybody was under so much stress, everybody started to emotionally eat. So (residents) would bring them cookies and cakes and sandwiches in the middle of the night.”
Call it an example of hyper-caloric vigilance. “My husband used to go out to the gate to guard, and would come back on foot” where his wife would ask, “ ‘What have you done for three hours a day?’ ” And he’d say, “ ‘Look, we’ve been guarding and we’ve been eating.’ Nobody sleeps at night, right? So they’re looking for something to do.”
Among the approximately 1,200 people who live in Grossman’s moshav, there’s an element of what she describes as “Rambo wannabes.”
“They’re walking around the moshav all dressed up in tactical, uniforms – tactical underwear, tactical socks, tactical hats. They all have weapons. And even if they don’t have (rifles) they have pistold, and in order to make them cooler they put something on it that makes them look longer.”
Supplies of weaponry were often sporadic – Grossman told of one shipment that consisted of a machete – and a single machete at that. Nearby beaches, officially closed to the public, unofficially opened up to accommodate residents and soldiers yearning for a sense of normalcy. Indeed, the children of families who were exempt from evacuation orders did their best to keep to favored, non-wartime routines. And if a golf cart or two (or three or four) became stuck in the sand, that was a modest price to pay in return for a respite from the strain of a nation in conflict.
The residents in the Western Galilee (which include not only Jews, but Arabs living in adjacent villages) have been comparatively fortunate compared to their compatriots in the south who suffered at the hands of Hamas. Hezbollah has yet to carry out any large-scale incursions, though damage from sporadic rocket barrages – even if not physically extensive – is psychologically debilitating.
Defensive supplies – small arms, ballistic vests, etc. – are flowing more reliably into the moshav.
“Thank God,” Grossman says, echoing the sentiment of her fellow residents. The easing of licensing requirements has meant that more people have access to firearms for personal protection. Ironically, “these days our biggest danger is not actually Hezbollah – it’s friendly fire. But the fear factor, the panic factor, has changed.”
Still, collective wariness sometimes verges on the irrational. Grossman recalled how one Arabic woman – who’d worked alongside Jewish residents for some 25 years – became an object of suspicion because she was observed dressed entirely in black.
Indeed, a defining hallmark of life in the city of Akko and its surrounding villages has been the extraordinary degree of collaboration between Arab and Jewish populations.
Partnership2Gether seeks to foster similar collaborations between Western Galilee residents and Jews living in 17 American communities and Budapest, Hungary. “We want people-to-people connections as much as we can,” Ben Dror said, adding that “I also wanted to say ‘Thank You’ to the Jewish community of Louisville. “We’ve had 27 years of support, and since Oct. 7, Louisville made very generous contributions.”
Back in Israel amid post-Oct. 7 existence, sometimes reality verges into absurdity. “We had a petting zoo,” Grossman said, adding that it was no ordinary petting zoo. Instead of goats, sheep and similar cuddly creatures, here the caress-able objects consisted of military hardware. “We have tanks in our petting zoo, army jeeps and RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades),” she said. “My husband used to take my nine-year-old son with all his friends – he’d say, ‘Welcome to the petting zoo!’ And the soldiers used to come out and say, ‘What time is feeding time?’ My husband would say, ‘it’s (now) 10:30 – come back at 11.’ My son used to come every Wednesday to the petting zoo to climb on the tank. It became hysterically funny.”
There were similar alternative-universe tales – an obsessive-compulsive cleaning woman who somehow missed a chunk of dust behind a security camera; a shipment that was supposed to comprise trash bags but instead yielded body bags. (Her reaction: “ ‘Are you kidding me?’”)
Day-to-day existence can be grim, but also strangely giddy. “The things I told you today are just my perspective of one place as the mother of four boys. You need to make life light, even within the situation, right? Because if you don’t laugh at it, if you don’t make sarcasm once in a while, if you don’t use your sense of humor, I don’t think we will survive.”
The next generation appreciates this all too well, Grossman emphasizes. “You see it with the kids,” she says. “They know what serious is; they know the situation. Having said that, they do everything they can to keep their routine. They laugh; they meet their friends; they go to the beach; they play football and volleyball – I know you say ‘soccer,’ but you’re wrong – they play football.”
Little wonder, then, that this woman in the bright green dress and gold clogs was standing in front of a synagogue audience amid the promise of Shabbat-infused serenity.
“Coming here to share with you, first of all is to say ‘thank you’ for all your support. And second, to promise you that we do our best to keep our morale up, because we know Israel represents everything for all of us around the world. Therefore, it’s our duty to keep it strong – and we also want to make you feel stronger, so whatever you handle in terms of antisemitism, or fear, that we will support you as well – and keep you smiling. All we have left to do is to laugh about the things we can and wish us all besorah – as we say, ‘good news.’ And that Israel will become peaceful again – and the whole world. Amen.”