Tzivia’s Third Blog
Hi everyone,
It’s me again, your correspondent from Tzfas, Israel. I know it is not long since I last wrote, but I have a heavy schedule coming up and so much has happened already that I thought I had better get started. The question is where from? With all that has taken place, I guess it makes the most sense to carry on chronologically from where I left off last time.
It began with a “Dorm Shabbos” when we don’t leave Tzfas and actually stay the whole Shabbos in the dormitory. And why wouldn’t we? The meals are in the hall, a 20 second walk within the school campus, and we have our own Minyan with a group of Rabbis, many of whom teach in the school, who come in to make a Minyan for us and the Seminary girls (so it was the same Minyan that Chaya had two years ago). As there has been for every Shabbos over the last fourteen months, we had a siren and all had to run to the shelter. I think the saddest thing is that we are no longer even surprised by it! (Spoiler alert, we have since had two ‘quiet’ Shabbosos.)
I don’t know why, but for some reason the sunsets on Shabbos have an extra special quality to them, as the sky goes from a water colour pinky purple, to a fiery red and orange. There really is no way that a camera can capture the true beauty and depth of colour: it can only be fully appreciated by being there yourself – yes that is an open invitation to you all!!
On Motzei Shabbos we watched a video of the Lubavitcher Rebbe for our dose of weekly inspiration and then it was off for an early night as Sunday is a full day of school. I think Israel is the only country in the world that has normal school on a Sunday (although we do get Friday off, so it is not too bad). We start bright and early at 8.15 and continue with lessons until 4.00. I joined for the hardest school year, but I am not complaining as I knew what I was getting myself into and for the most part I am enjoying the hard work. There are mini breaks such as the aerobics on Sunday after school, which I found particularly nice as I have been studying for a history exam which primarily covers the material they all learnt last year when I was not in this school!
On Monday we had a really fun time after school with a private lesson on the history of the Mussar Movement (Rabbi Yisrael Salanter late 1700s) and Baron Moses Montefiore’s help with the Old Yishuv’s settlement in the Land of Israel (1860s). In the evening the dorm counselors organised a movie night, which even though it was the second installment of a movie they had shown two years previously, it really was a stand alone show. It was totally hilarious, totally fictional, and of course totally Jewish. Oh and totally in Ivrit as well. And yes, I understood it all (pat on the back!). At 11 pm we had nearly finished when my aunt Esti (mummy’s sister who lives in Paris) called me. It was such a surprise. Her 13 year old son is in school in Tzfas and they had come to visit him, so of course she came round to see me as well.
The best part was that I was able to use her phone and video call mummy and daddy!
You may remember that my roommates come from around the world, and one of them (actually a cousin to Rochel Jaffe) had stayed at her home in Brussels because it was her brother’s Bar Mitzvah. Well she got back at 2 in the morning (bringing me a package from home) but I slept through her arrival. In return she slept through that morning’s rocket alarm. At around 11.15 am whilst I was in my classroom which is an outdoor porta-cabin, the sirens blared. It had been pouring just beforehand, and the thing that scares me more than the siren, is the rampage of all the girls running helter-skelter at full speed to the safe room.
We usually have to stay inside for 10 minutes after the last siren, but for some reason a teacher was standing at the door and wouldn’t let us leave. And then straight after we did leave the shelter, there was an announcement from the Home Front Command that this was a drone and they had not yet managed to shoot it down; so we all had to go back into the shelter. The drones are a particular menace and have caused a lot of damage in North Israel. Baruch Hashem around a minute or so later we received the all clear.
Side Note: A HUGE thank you to all the brave men and women of the IDF who man the Iron Dome Batteries and the rest of Israel’s air defence system. I have been told that there is a particularly proud set of grandparents in Bowdon Shul, proud in the knowledge that their grandson who is stationed by the Iron Dome just by Tzfas is guarding their Rabbi’s daughter!! So from me, the rest of 11th grade Naaleh, and indeed all of Tzfas as well as the parents and grandparents around the world: Todah Rabbah Sergeant N! Thank you for keeping us alive in spite of Hezbollah’s incessant attempts to kill us all.
Years ago daddy suggested that I sleep with the text book under my pillow the night before an exam; I think he said something like learning through osmosis. I don’t know if it is real, but that night I dreamt about Jewish History and the next day I got one of the highest grades in the class. This was an exam on all the material that they had learnt for the last two years before I joined the school. It went from the steppes of 17th century Russia to the deserts of 20th century Arabia, from the foundation of Hassidus to the establishment of the early Yishuv in pre State Israel. Most of this I had not learnt before and had to cram in a GCSE amount of material in five days. Credit to my teachers over the years, and the Lewis family love of Jewish history, because somehow I got 85%
The test itself was in Ivrit, but I was allowed to answer in English, which did make it slightly easier. There was a question that I had absolutely no idea about and literally just made it all up, so if anyone has heard of Hakham Bashi I would appreciate hearing about him. (Edit by Rabbi Dovid – it is a generic term for the Chief Rabbi of the Ottoman Empire.)
Wedding time!
It was another trip around the world; the groom, who was my roommate’s brother, was from Hungary and the bride, who had been the dorm counsellor last year, was from Ukraine. Due to the war hardly any guests came from abroad, and as both sets of parents are actually Geirim, there was practically no family either. The school put on a bus, and by the time we got to Kfar Chabad (right near Ben Gurion Airport – a 2.5 hour drive), there were less than 80 women in the hall. We danced the night away, and in spite of the long drive back we still had to be in class for 8.15 the next morning. There was another exam, but this one was on English, and Baruch Hashem I did not have to worry or cram for it!!
On Thursday we finished early as that week was an “off Shabbos”, and I went to old friends, Yafit and Jamie, from Newcastle who now live in Ra’anana. Traffic was terrible and it took nearly 5 hours to get there; I was exhausted (it was my third long bus journey in two days) so I had a really lazy Friday – Hey, I am a teenager. We are allowed to do that. Ra’anana is basically an English speaking colony on the Israeli coast, founded in 1922, it is home to 100,000 and aside from Yafit my host, I don’t think I met a single other native Israeli. I did meet Gideon Paul who used to live in Bowdon and whose wife Justine did my hair when we went to Israel for my uncle Nissen’s wedding back in 2017. They are loving life in Israel since they made Aliyah and it was really nice to have that connection from Bowdon.
There are times when life really seems to reach up and give you a punch in the face. It was whilst we were on the bus on the way back to Tzfas after a lovely Shabbos when we heard the terrible news that Rabbi Tzvi Kogan HY”D, one of the seven Chabad Shluchim to the UAE had been kidnapped, with the devastating news of his senseless murder coming the next morning. 16 years ago, his cousins Rabbi Gabi and Rivky Holtzberg were murdered in their Chabad House in Mumbai. I was only one year old at the time, but I grew up in the aftermath of that tragedy. Seeing the same brutality being repeated again, watching as another of the worldwide family of Shluchim, a family which myself and all my classmates belong to, being murdered just for the crime of spreading the love of Judaism to anyone and everyone, really affected us all. The mood in school was definitely somber as we all tried to absorb the news, and as we all checked in with our parents and families around the world. The next day Rabbi Tzvi’s Levayah took place in Kfar Chabad – a place where we had all been just a few days prior to celebrate a wedding. How the circle of life turns, but as Daddy told me: if there is one group of people who do not know how to stay down it is the worldwide family of Chabad Shluchim.
Sunday was siren day: the first was at 8.13 am, even before we had managed to start class, the second came at 12.10 pm, just before we were due to have a break, and then we had our third siren of the day at 3.45. You may remember that my classroom is outside in a portacabin, so we have the furthest to run when the siren goes – everyone has to be inside within 30 seconds. Let’s say we get our exercise whether we want to or not. We were sort of hoping for a fourth siren as that would mean no school the next day, but truth be told we were all glad not to hear that sound again. During lunch we did hear a load of interceptor explosions, but luckily nothing within Tzfas.
And at the time of writing (Sunday 8 Dec) those three were actually the last sirens Tzfas has heard since the war began. We regularly hear the warplanes as they fly overhead, and also many distant explosions from Lebanon, but nothing that has triggered sirens in Tzfas. We have also had our first, and hopefully first of many, totally relaxed Shabbosos with not a single siren. Baruch Hashem.
On Monday morning the tests continued and this time it was an unscheduled one in Ivrit. I don’t know my mark yet, but I can see how far my Ivrit has progressed. This was followed by a class party, but for some reason I just wasn’t in the mood. After school we had the sewing club, and strangely I was the only one there, which actually allowed me to concentrate and get the hang of sewing straight lines properly.
I am struggling to understand this next one: at supper on Monday they announced that due to the imminent ceasefire with Hezbollah there will be no school tomorrow! Not because they were celebrating, but because there was an increased risk of extra rockets being sent so that Hezbollah could terrorise as much as possible before they had to stop!! No, I don’t get it either. For me though there was a greater problem; the next morning I was due to take my Chron’s injection. I do this every fortnight, but my fear is that the siren will go just as I am sticking the needle in. In the end there was no siren, but I did have daddy on the phone whilst I was taking the injection.
I was actually meant to go to my teacher’s house that evening, to have a ‘get to know you’ chat, but the Home Front Command initiated a Lockdown for the evening. It was 2020 all over again!! But our dorm counselor arranged a program for us in our lounge, which actually overlooks the Meron hills where the Iron Dome is located. We played a game called “what would you” and one of the girls from Nottingham was asked the question: ‘if you were a travel guide, where would you not take people to visit?’ She immediately said, Manchester because it is gross! Now this turned into some sort of joke as all the UK girls not from Manchester seem to not like it. But I didn’t get offended as Bowdon is not really Manchester, I write Cheshire when putting in my address, and it is in fact an absolutely beautiful part of the world. The game was interrupted when someone looked out of the window and screamed ‘look missiles’. We all ran to the window and saw the Iron Dome (operated by you know who and the rest of his amazing team in the IDF) shooting down at least 50 Hezbollah rockets – each one sent deliberately to civilian areas. It was quite cool to see and whilst they probably didn’t hear us cheering them on, I do hope that the brave soldiers could at least feel the love and thanks coming from all of us in that room.
Tuesday we were back to online school, which means I had access to a computer and could communicate with mummy and daddy. Not sure why, maybe it was because of the lockdown, but supper that night was pretty much non-existent, so a bunch of us ordered sushi, which was delicious. The next day was back to online school, which is annoying but it does have one advantage: we start at 10.00 instead of 8.15am. We didn’t hear a single siren, missile or plane all day; it was eerily quiet. At 2.00pm they ended the curfew, but as we had not had much of a chance in the last few days, we actually spent the time tidying the dorm, until aerobics at 6pm.
I am supposed to get wheat free food from the school kitchens, but too often there is just nothing available for me to eat. It does get annoying, but they are getting a bit better at it and at times I am allowed to go to their store cupboard and take tins of tuna etc. That evening our dorm mother made a fun program for us, but the highlight was when she brought me some special yoghurts (you know the cool Israeli ones) as everyone else was having cereals with wheat in them.
On Friday we had off, and although it was an ‘in Shabbos’, a number of the girls were going to classmate’s houses or other family, so the remaining 5 of us were invited to our dorm counsellor’s home. Her mother is the aerobics teacher and she is a really good cook. There were around twenty of us at the dinner, and it was such a nice experience. The good feeling continued with Tzfas’s first siren free Shabbos for 14 months, and then I was voted by my classmates as the best girl of the week!!
With the ‘we cease – they fire’ officially in place, we were now allowed to have windows open in the classroom. Plus as it was Rosh Chodesh we were allowed to wear our normal clothes and not the school uniform. The school places great emphasis on extracurricular fun activities, we even have kickboxing (don’t ask me why), but for Rosh Chodesh we had a special drum circle and dance party, and then we connected to the annual conference of Chabad Rabbis in New York and got to watch part of the amazing banquet (which I believe Daddy has told you about). We all tried to spot our fathers in the 6500 strong crowd, and although there was a lot of screaming, I am not sure any of us actually saw them. One very emotional part was when they zoom called to Rabbi Kogan’s Shivah, but then we also saw the started Sefer Torah being written in his memory and the determination on the faces of his fellow Shluchim from the UAE dancing with it.
Life is very much about ups and downs, and on Monday we heard the horrible news that our Shul’s adopted son, Omer Neutra had in fact been murdered on that awful day over a year ago and his body has been held captive ever since. Together with everyone else in Bowdon, our thoughts and prayers are with his family and we hope that his body along with those of Oz Daniel and Uriel Baruch are speedily returned to Israel so that they can be given a proper Jewish Levayah and their families can have some degree of comfort.
One last thing about our education: similar to the UK, we are allowed to choose one subject as part of the Bagrut (baccalaureate / A Levels). Even though I have never learnt it before (there was no option to do so back in Manchester), I chose biology as it will hopefully help me in a lifelong dream I have had to become a pediatric gastroenterology nurse. It is in Ivrit, but a lot of the words are exactly the same as in English and I have to say that I am really loving it.
This has turned out to be a longer blog than I intended, but as I said at the start, so much happens here. Let me end with a brief note about this past Shabbos when I went to Netanya. I stayed with ‘Aunty Jo’, whom quite a few of you know, and who was my nursery teacher oh so many years ago. Her house looks out over the Mediterranean sea and the views are really nice, and even though I won both games of Rummikub she still said I can go back again. In a beautiful example of what a small world it is, aunty Jo showed me a book of Tehillim her boss has given her, dedicated to his son Nadav Elchanan who courageously gave his life in Gaza earlier this year. I recognised the name and I realised that this was the soldier whom my cousin had just named her son after.
For Shabbos lunch I went to Daddy’s second cousins, and it was sort of a deja-vue for them, as nearly 30 years ago he would often be a guest at their parent’s home, also in Netanya. But the most amazing thing was when I went for a walk on Shabbos afternoon. I walked into the extremely Chassidish neighbourhood of Kiryat Tzanz. This was established by Rabbi Y Y Halberstam, the Klausenberger Rebbe who survived the Holocaust but not before the Nazis murdered his wife and their 11 children. After the war he remarried, had another seven children and re-established his Chassidic dynasty in Israel. As part of his dedication to the community and the rebirth of the Nation the Nazis had tried to destroy, he founded the not for profit Laniado Hospital which has amongst others, a very busy maternity ward. The community is extremely Orthodox and some of the women wear what I can only describe as a Burkha, but each to their own and they were all very polite and cheerful as I walked along the streets.
By the way, this week we have our big trip – so there is really going to be loads to write about. But for now I have to run.
Stay Safe. Look after yourselves. Keep smiling and Lehitraot.
Tzivia