Booms

Where are the Jews?

I’m not sure I had ever heard bombs before. But there we were, visiting the site of the Nova festival massacre a few miles from Gaza as the bombs were dropped. As we heard the harrowing story of survival from Shalev Biton, every few sentences while we listened with bated breath, distant but not so distant booms echoed from Gaza. After all, there were still hostages, there was still war, and people were still dying and surviving. I couldn’t help but think of Yehuda Amichai’s poem, The Diameter of the Bomb:

The diameter of the bomb was thirty centimeters
and the diameter of its effective range about seven meters,
with four dead and eleven wounded.
And around these, in a larger circle
of pain and time, two hospitals are scattered
and one graveyard. But the young woman
who was buried in the city she came from,
at a distance of more than a hundred kilometers,
enlarges the circle considerably,
and the solitary man mourning her death
at the distant shores of a country far across the sea
includes the entire world in the circle.
And I won’t even mention the crying of orphans
that reaches up to the throne of God and
beyond, making a circle with no end and no God.

It was all right there. One person’s story of survival linked to the echoes of one murderous groups’s decision to invade its neighbor's territory. The result? An ongoing parade of dead and wounded, leaving the rest of us wondering, “is there a God?”

Who knows…

But there was a particular aspect to Shalev’s story that resonated powerfully that day. After he ran five miles from Nova with a growing group of survivors, they found themselves at a farm that was manned by an Bedouin Israeli named Yunis Alkarnawi. After an initial standoff where Shalev and Yunis didn’t know if they could trust one another, Yunis ended up taking in Shalev and his crew of survivors.

But before they could get too comfortable, an approaching motorcycle tipped them off that Hamas terrorist were still hunting. Realizing they could hide under the raised caravan on the farm, the survivors crawled under the building. As they heard the motorcycle creep closer, they awaited their impending death. Overhearing Yunis engaging with the terrorists, they heard the following question:

Where are the Jews?

It’s haunting to hear those words which have echoed throughout time. Somehow in the 21st century in Israel, a state created to prevent this very question, Shalev and his friends were feet away from meeting an end that has plagued our people for centuries. In the week leading up to Passover, as I heard this story, it was hard not to think of the section from the Passover story where we read:

And it is this (the promise) that has stood by our ancestors and for us.
For not only one (enemy) has risen up against us to destroy us,
but in every generation they rise up to destroy us.

It just keeps happening. Yet we saw Shalev was standing before us on April 5th, 2025 telling us this story, so we knew he survived. How we survived was through divine grace as channeled through Yunis; he stood his ground against the terrorists, insisting that there were no Jews there.

Somehow, it worked. That day, Yunis saved Shalev and seven other people. Since then, their friendship has only grown as they’ve shared their story of human goodness with the world.

Hearing Shalev tell this part of the story also reminded me of the end of that section from the Haggadah where we read:

But the Holy One delivers us from their hands

Wondering how that delivery happens, Rabbi Eliezer Ashkenazi, a 16th century Rabbi who lived in Greece, Egypt, Cyprus, Italy, and Germany answered:

The fact that God has allowed us to survive against overwhelming odds not by destroying those who hated us but simply by allowing us to remain alive. If God had used us to punish the other nations than it would have appeared that we were simply God’s means of punishment for others. The fact that we survived regardless of the other nations was a sign of God’s love rather than God’s anger. Israel’s survival is a sign of God’s love.

To speak about love in a story like this seems contrived and yet, it’s there. It’s in the actions of what Yunis did on October 7th and how their relationship has been sustained in the years since. As jaded and cynical as we all are toward what might happen in that sliver of land that is home to so much pain, this story resonates. Our ability to live is a sign of love. Those who work on behalf of that goal are worthy of our attention.

The circles of those bombs continue to grow. To be honest, I am not confident in them ending anytime soon. It feels beyond my capacity to grapple with it. But if there is a God as Amichai wonders at the end of his poem, stories like Yunis and Shalev’s make that belief possible.

In every generation indeed they come for us. And yet, also in every generation there are those stand in their way and say, “not today.” May we all merit the strength and courage of Yunis to be able to stand as he did, for the sacred souls and lives that he saved. Perhaps the diameter of that action can grow beyond that of the diameter of the bombs.

Shabbat Shalom, Happy Weekend, and Chag Sameach
Sending wishes for a joyous and redemptive Passover!