I arrived in Israel yesterday, and instead of landing at Ben Gurion Airport, we were diverted to Eilat because of potential rocket attacks.

This has been life in Israel for nearly a week now.

After I got into the cab for the almost four-hour drive from Eilat to Ra’anana (a suburb of Tel Aviv, where I’m staying with family), the driver’s wife called to check in. Though the driver, Yuval, told me he was a secular Jew, he put his wife on the speakerphone and we listened as she recited Tefilat HaDerech, the prayer for safe journey, answering “Amen” together. Praying with a cab driver and his wife on the phone is the kind of extraordinary — and yet ordinary — interaction that makes Israel…Israel.

After that, it didn’t take long to get jolted into the reality of being here. As we were driving through Rishon Lezion (in central Israel), a red alert sounded, signaling incoming rockets, and I saw flashes in the sky. We waited for about five minutes beneath an overpass until the siren stopped. And when I arrived in Ra’anana, my family shared that they’d been woken up both the previous nights to the sound of sirens and ran to the shelter.

We speak frequently in New York about the number of rockets fired by Hamas from Gaza, and the number of rockets intercepted by the Iron Dome. But it’s really hard from far away to fully internalize what it’s like to live this way. In central Israel this is thankfully unusual, but in places closer to Gaza, like Sderot, it’s horribly common.

Whatever one’s view of the current situation — potential evictions in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of East Jerusalem, recent events at Al Aqsa Mosque — there can never, ever, be justification for deliberately targeting civilian populations in Israel.

I grieve, too, for innocent lives lost in Gaza, people put in harm’s way by callous Hamas leadership who purposefully situate rocket launchers in civilian neighborhoods.

On Sunday, I’ll be making a shiva call along with Isaac Herzog, chairman of the executive of the Jewish Agency, to the Yom Tov family, whose mother, Leah, was killed when their home in Rishon Lezion was directly hit by a rocket. Leah, 63, lost her husband a few years ago and lived on her own. She is mourned by her two sons, Moshe and Kfir, their children, and her mother, Shoshana. Compounding the tragedy, when Leah’s next-door neighbor and friend learned of Leah’s death, she herself suffered a massive heart attack and died.

Many of us have friends and family in Israel. Now is the time to reach out. In moments like this, it’s more important than ever for the people of Israel to feel the embrace and support of the worldwide Jewish community.

Emergency Support

Since the conflict began on Monday, UJA’s partners have been providing critical services to the people of Israel, as they do day in and day out, enabled by the significant financial support we provide annually. The Jewish Agency’s Fund for Victims of Terror has already made 51 emergency cash grants to Israelis who have lost loved ones or whose homes have been destroyed. The Jewish Agency is also increasing its trauma support, especially focusing on recent immigrants from Ethiopia living in absorption centers, and young adults from the United States and elsewhere participating in Jewish Agency MASA experiences in Israel.

The Israel Trauma Coalition (ITC), which we created in 2001, is now one of the preeminent international experts in trauma relief. ITC has activated its emergency protocol, and all resilience centers and hotlines are running around the clock. And the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) has ramped up its crisis support for the most vulnerable in Israel, including Holocaust survivors, at-risk children, and people with disabilities.

We’ve been in almost constant contact with our partners in Israel, and last night made a $250,000 emergency grant to support immediate additional needs. We will, of course, remain in touch and provide further emergency support as necessary.

In addition to funds, our voices matter. Which is why on Wednesday we, along with our partners at the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York and the Israeli consulate, held a virtual Solidarity Gathering. Over 1,600 people joined on Zoom and another 200-plus people watched on Facebook. We heard from Israel Nitzan, the acting consul general in New York, and other Jewish leaders, as well as Representatives Gregory Meeks and Ritchie Torres, who spoke passionately about Israel’s right to defend itself from rockets. It shouldn’t take courage for political leaders in New York to publicly support Israel and its right to protect its citizens. Sadly, today, it does, and we’re grateful to Representatives Meeks and Torres for their strong support.

This conflict, the worst in seven years in the region, has many additional layers of complexity. We’re deeply disturbed by the civil unrest in Israeli cities with mixed Arab and Israeli populations, fueled by extremists on both sides, Jewish and Arab. We pray for a quick return to calm.

On a personal note, I just saw my youngest daughter, who’s here on a gap year before college, for the first time in nine months. Thank God, she’s thriving despite everything. But like every parent, I want my daughter — and all our children — to live without fear, without bomb shelters, without rockets.

The words of Tefilat HaDerech resonated with particular meaning for me yesterday on that ride from Eilat to Ra’anana: “[Please God], may it be Your will to lead us toward peace, guide our footsteps toward peace…and make us reach our desired destination for life, gladness, and peace.”

As we enter Shabbat and the holiday of Shavuot, peace seems very far away in this part of the world. But for the sake of our daughters and sons, let us not lose hope that a time and place without war — our "desired destination" — is achievable.     

Shabbat shalom and chag sameach