Your people are our people and we are your people: Article for Shavuot / Gili Dvash Yeshurun
We are entering into the Shavuot holiday after many long weeks counting the Omer (the seven weeks between Pesach and Shavuot). This year, it seems that the counting of the Omer naturally connects with the endless counting that has continued since October 7th – the counting of days since more than 250 hostages were taken from their homes and their families. I sincerely hope that by the time you read this they will be free, that we won’t still be counting how many days the hostages have been held in captivity.
For many of us, the recent national holidays (Memorial Days and Independence Day) contained dozens of counts from years past. We find ourselves in a place where we are required to re-examine our relationships, between the People of Israel and the Land of Israel, and between different groups within society. We find ourselves asking questions about our relationship, as communities, with the State of Israel and its institutions. In each of the recent holidays, we examined these relationships through a different prism. The history, folklore, culture, and religion of the Jewish people – each are filled with values, stories, and context as the holidays connect us to the Jewish society within which we live. In the current context, looking at holidays and events, and at cultural time markers, reveals to us that everything seems different.
Reading the book of Ruth, we see strong motifs regarding personal relationships, families, and communities. We see that commitment between one person and another can be nurtured. We read about the commitment of community members to new people who come into their community and who need to navigate a path within the community.
I read the story of the Book of Ruth from the perspective of community. When I stand on the corner of Herzl Street and Kibbutz Galyuot Street in Tel Aviv, I see the displaced children of Kibbutz Re’im (from the Gaza envelope) who live in a nearby apartment building, returning from school on a road that has already become familiar to them (while being accompanied by an adult, don’t worry). I imagine their first days in the hotel while they were in the depths of the immediate shock, sorrow, trauma, and pain, and think of how just a few months later this space has become so familiar to them. At the same time, I also think about those who were there to support them – the safe and embracing women’s circle that they needed as wives and mothers – who came together as a community to collect and wash the laundry of these families, or to send cooked food when they had no kitchen.
In the story of the Book of Ruth, Naomi knows that Ruth, a Moabite, does not belong and that she will not understand the rules of her new community at first. However, she trusts in her resilience – she knows that Ruth is good at dealing with crises after all, she lost her husband, Naomi’s son, and decided to stay and support her mother-in-law rather than returning home to her family in Moab. Ruth will manage, as long as Naomi gives her a good starting point.
Today we see thousands of individuals evacuated from their homes in the south and in the north – some together as a community and others disperserved as individuals and small groups. By their side, beyond the institutions of the State of Israel, is an entire tribe who mobilized on their behalf. We all know that we could have been in their shoes, that we could easily have been them. In the process of showing up for them, we told them “Your people are our people.”
These evacuated and displaced communities face a dilemma – are they going to return home? Many questions naturally arise: What is a home? What is a community? Is it possible to preserve our community even if it is not in the same geographic space as before? Naomi’s daughters-in-law each chose very differently in relation to the same crisis they both went through. Naomi is not critical or judgemental of them. It is important that we also look at the situation with the same understanding. It is impossible to really understand a situation that you have never been in.
I am approaching this holiday with courage and apprehension. So many communities, and certainly many of the evacuees, are accustomed to celebrating Shavuot in an agricultural way, not with a traditional Tikun Leil Shavuot evening or an invigorating evening of study, conversation, and workshops throughout the night. For so many, the holiday of Shavuot is celebrated with tractors, farmers, joy, and agriculture. As Shavuot approaches, we wonder what will it look like this year? For the residents of the south, and for the thousands of residents of northern Israel who are still evacuated from their homes and are living in transitory spaces which do not allow for community reconstruction and growth. How will the People of Israel be there for those communities and for those residents?
I think about whether it is worth mentioning the first successes we have achieved since October 7th – to mention the first lesson that was taught within the temporary schools that were opened during this period. What about the first day that the community celebrated together since they were evacuated or since they have returned home? And perhaps it is the right thing to do, through the Tikkun Shavuot where we learn all through the night, to celebrate our people – local creators, those spearheading personal or communal initiatives, or even those who bring a text that is significant to them or to the community. Through these Shavuot events, we open a communal stage to celebrate and to console.
Community is a source of resilience, and resilience is built from meaning, belonging, trust, commitment, and reciprocity. Many communities are familiar with the way they work – some will have to remember their traditions and some will have to relearn them. It might be the right thing to both strengthen existing traditions and to create new ones around the holiday in order to allow space for all of the emotions that are present. In the Book of Ruth, we see the attitude of Naomi and Ruth to the values held by the people living in the land. Naomi knows, as she sends her daughter-in-law to other people’s fields, that no one will harm her. Naomi also knows that, although these people have language and traditions unfamiliar to Ruth, she has the inner resilience needed to rise to the challenge. Like Naomi, I think we are in a place where we understand that we have to be on the side of the individuals, the families, and the communities, and to take responsibility to support them in their current situation while they are not in their usual place, and to know that we have the expectation, as a people, to ease their difficulties in the transitions, changes, and their current perceptions of the complexity of life. It’s up to each of us to support our neighbors who find themselves completely displaced because they are our people, and we are all part of Am Yisrael.
Gili Dvash Yeshurun is the Director of Strategic Community Relations
