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On January 15th through 18th, 2024, a group of 15 participants traveled to Israel for a solidarity mission with the Jewish Agency for Israel/Jewish Federations of North America, and Partnership2Gether (P2G).

 

Gulf Coast P2G steering committee member, Janet Hammer, represented Florida’s Gulf Coast. The below entries detail her experiences while traveling.

 

If you are interested in participating in future Partnership2Gether missions and programming, please contact MKaufman@JewishGulfCoast.org.

  • Cesspool of psychological filth & the redemptive hope of education 3/28/24

    I start my post today by comparing my achingly beautiful surroundings in our awesome Florida jungle with the ache of ugliness I perceive in this world  
     
    It is drippingly humid. The birds are so happy and the sounds are muffled by the pervasive dampness. You can smell the plants and soil as a spring morning melts into a blazing summer day.
     
    This the next season already here?
     
    Sam left for Israel yesterday morning and landed while it was deep night here. He had a job to do when h...
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  • Hatching Escape Plans? - 3/26/24

     

    Do you know anyone with escape plans?
    Lately I am hearing an ever increasing number of friends or sometimes more marginally connected acquaintances say they are hatching escape plans for the civil disruption ahead of us. What can they imagine ? What scenario can they concoct that will create a personal safe zone? Escape to Canada? Escape to Ireland? Escape to the hills and back country of Georgia ?
     
    These are examples from just in conversations in the past 24 hours.
     
    Really?
    ...
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  • I Ask Why! - 3/25/24

     

    171 Days 
    Sunday….. Sam and I joined up with the Clearwater Florida  Walk for Their Lives group.  Every Sunday we meet locally in a public gathering calling for the release of all hostages held by hamas. We are one of 180 groups that gather and send our messages of hope and love to the hostages and their families. We walk as a public gathering and in peace. Yes it is now 171 days and hamas continues to hold the hostages including Ariel and Kfir Bibas who were kidnapped from their ...
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  • A Biblical Moment in the History of Israel - 3/10/24

    This is The Second War of Independence.
     
    I have told you that right now Israel is fighting for survival, for the right to exist, for the future.
     
    Remember 1948? That was the year of the first War of Independence. What ensued after October 7 is considered by many Israelis to be a kind of second iteration, a watershed event of biblical proportions fid the Jewish state and the Jewish people.
     
    Israel had just become a sovereign state in 1948 and was no longer part of the British ruled...
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  • Love and creativity were killed - 3/8/24

    Today Sam and I are driving north to Chattanooga. It is 5:30 am and the roads are beginning to feel frenetic with commuters heading to work. Trucks steadily occupy the right lane. Things feel orderly and predictable in the early morning darkness. There still is no hint of the nearby sunrise. In the next hour the landscape will come into view but for now the fields around us are shrouded in a foggy mist. 
     
    We are reading memorial stories of the people from our region who have died. The st...
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  • The Freedom of Truth - 3/7/24

    Free our girls.  Free our women. Free our boys. Free our men. Free our babies! Free them from the filthy bonds that tie them in the darkest tunnels of Gaza. 

     
     
    Free us and the rest of the world. Free us all. Free us from the reptilian lies our enemies promulgate against us. Free us from the half truths that bind our friends unwittingly to the death-dealing “victims” and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of “victims” whose victimhood is a fabrication born in violence and...
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  • The Neville Chamberlin Prize in Appeasement - 3/6/24

    DOES ANYONE EVEN WANT TO READ THIS ?!?!?!!
     
    This is what I screamed this morning at my home audience ….Sam. 
     
    I am totally frustrated. 
     
     
    I’m frustrated that the media frames the news as it is time to move onto the next cycle and call this war a “Wrap.”
     
    Really? How inconvenient that insuring Israel’s safety and security is not an easy thing to achieve. Inconvenient doesn’t mean it’s time to stop now. 
     
    For decades Gazans under their leadership have ...
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  • TRUTH or: The days you hate yourself - 3/5/24

    The days you hate yourself. Yes. There are those days.
     
    You are guilty. You are marked.
     
    Sam worked with a Jewish woman who escaped Warsaw in 1939 just before it fell to the Nazis. These were her words. She said that in the 1930s you couldn’t escape these thoughts however insane they felt.
     
    You are guilty. You are marked.
     
    The days you can only think the darkest thoughts. Because you are marked. You are in so much pain. You are so much in disagreement with so many of the peo...
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  • The kids are tired - 3/4/24

    The children are tired
     
    The parents are tired
     
    Is everyone tired?
     
    Sam’s weekly zoom meetings teaching English to young teens in our sister region of Israel (Hadera-eiron) is a lot of fun. 
     
    Part of the fun is the unpredictableness of it all. Where will the conversation go on any given day?Part of the fun is the students’ marginal grasp of conversational English. You never know how they’re perceiving a question and how they’ll answer. 
     
    Then there are the days hi...
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  • You be the judge or: When Darkness Declares You As Its Enemy - 3/3/24

    Dear readers,
     
    After days and seeming weeks of paralysis in early October Sam and I grew more certain of our role in this horrific extended moment of Hamas terror and its consequences. 
     
    We came to realize what is perhaps obvious. There’s nothing we can do about the world situation but there’s something we can do here on the ground: Communicate. 
     
    Communication sounds easy but as anyone knows who has struggled with interpersonal, familial, and all kinds of situations communi...
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  • The only thing I trust is my need to question - 3/2/24

    Three elderly hostages are dead. The first I heard of this sad news item cited the palestinian News Ministry. It flashed across my phone as I was talking to one of my kids.
     
    Chaim Gershon Peri, 79, Yoram Itak Metzger, 80, and Amiram Israel Cooper, 85 are three of supposedly 7 hostages reported dead. I say “supposedly” because we don’t know anything at all about the way they died. Though they might have held on for a few months there’s no evidence that they hadn’t died long befor...
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  • The Evil Psychological Tattoo - 3/1/24

    Today I am attending a memorial service for a dear friend’s mom. Her mom died well into her nineties after what we call a good “long life.”
     
    Death is a poignant moment and grief knows no boundaries. Whether it is after a life well lived or a life cut off too soon the ensuing grief we possess is part of what defines our human experience.
     
    Death has been all around us since October 7  
     
    Yesterday I wrote about waves amplifying.
     
    The attack of October 7 has been amplified...
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  • We Are All Hostages - 2/29/24

    In ancient Israel life revolved around seasonal harvest. Pilgrimage walks from all corners of the Land of Israel brought people together to observe religious rites. In the process their individual prayers/devotions became empowered. 
     
    In ancient Israel and in traditional Judaism there were and are many provisions for the release of captives. Through this our communities have always been empowered.
     
    Our enemies know about our concern for captives and they have played upon this very ce...
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  • It’s Not Happening Here. Is It??? - 2/28/24

    There was a time, not too long ago, when the very notion of having to hide your Jewishness in America would have seemed unfathomable. Kind of. I mean, we have a good 150 yers of hiding our Jewishness here in the United States, changing our names, shedding our rituals, folding our kippahs neatly into our pockets. But (I think) we (many of us?) have felt like proud Jews. Even if it  was on the inside  
     
    Yet, nearly half of American Jews (46%) say they changed their behavior at least once...
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  • Angry Birds and a World of Possibilities - 2/27/24

    As I look at myself writing I become more conscious of the mission I’m on. What started as a collection of observations about my recent trip to Israel has morphed into a place where I record my thoughts, impressions, and feelings about the events that have unfurled since October 7. Things seem to have moved very fast, almost explosively. With the focus on Israel and the many challenges I suddenly find myself facing as a Jew in the United States, this is a chance to document a momentous time...
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