In her apartment in Beersheba, Rachel Ohana is listening to the living room television with one ear as she makes her famous Moroccan meatballs in the kitchen. 

She has an amazing 30 pounds of meat to grind for her holiday meals. Her son Shimon, a newly minted Border Police officer, is bringing home two new immigrant friends serving with him. The newcomers, from Russia and Ethiopia, have never experienced the Israeli Sukkot holiday, and Shimon, her only son after five daughters, has bragged about his mom’s cooking. 

On the TV, she hears a bulletin. A soldier has been seriously wounded in Jerusalem. “I pity his poor mother,” she says aloud to herself. 

Only later will she learn that she is his poor mother. 

What would be called the Second Intifada begins with a shooting in the Gilo neighborhood of Jerusalem. The Border Police, Mishmar Hagvul, are dispatched. Among them is Shimon Ohana, just 18, only a few months into training. 

The shooting begins as the schoolchildren are walking home from school. Shimon arrives just in time to push a mother out of the line of fire. In saving her, Shimon takes three bullets in the chest and stomach. 

There are videos of the Magen David Adom medics trying to revive him. They don’t succeed. They contact Prof. Avi Rivkind, head of the Shock Trauma Center at Hadassah Ein Kerem and recipient of this year’s Israel Prize. He is already waiting for the wounded man. “Bring him dead or alive,” Rivkind insists. 

 
In the trauma room, covered in a body bag, Shimon is hoisted onto the table. He has bullet holes in his heart and stomach. He is marked DOA – dead on arrival. 

On this Independence Day, even as Avi Rivkind receives the recognition for his life’s work, he remembers as clearly as yesterday the moment he ordered his astounded staff to bring the curly-haired soldier back to life. 

Everyone in the trauma room is shocked. Israel’s first traumatologist, who teaches medical students about trauma, Rivkind knows better than to try to bring back a penetrating trauma patient with no pulse. 

He calls it not a sixth sense but a moment of heavenly inspiration. He knows the answer to the question that isn’t in the textbooks. Vast units of blood are poured into Shimon’s heart. The cardiothoracic surgeon sews one bullet hole, and then finds another and repairs that. He massages the heart until he feels the first beat. It begins to pump. 

In our country, where no one is shy about expressing opinions, a colleague sneers, “So now what have you done, Rivkind? He’s a vegetable. You should have let him go.” 

In Beersheba, Rachel Ohana is still cooking when she hears a car pull up outside her apartment block, the doors opening, then slamming shut. From the kitchen window, she sees her husband, Meir, a policeman, surrounded by higher-ranking police officers. 

Something in their body language frightens her. All she can think of is that internal affairs has found some flaw in her husband’s performance. But the policemen have brought far worse news. Shimon is in grave condition in Jerusalem. She remembers her words “I pity his poor mother.” 

Rachel unties her apron and tosses the meat into the freezer. The drive from Beersheba to Jerusalem feels endless. 

In Jerusalem, colleagues have insisted that Rivkind share Shimon’s poor odds of recovery with his parents. They step in and tell her that according to statistics, Shimon has a 0.1% chance of recovery. Oddly, the tall trauma surgeon named Avi Rivkind shakes his head. “Don’t worry,” he says. “He will wake up, and I will dance at Shimon’s wedding.” One day goes by, and then the next. Nonetheless, Prof. Rivkind continues to tell Rachel and Meir that they shouldn’t worry. 

Against every medical expectation 

Seventeen motionless days pass. And then suddenly, on day 18, Shimon’s eyes flutter, and he wakes up. Rachel is giddy with joy. 

The celebratory moment isn’t complete. Shimon refuses to eat. Rachel knows that her pampered youngest is a fussy eater. 

“What’s his favorite food?” Rivkind asks. 

She’s a little embarrassed. Rachel says, “My meatballs.” 

Rivkind orders her to go home to Beersheba and make meatballs. On the way home from Jerusalem, she phones her neighbor to take the ground meat out of the freezer. 

All night, she shapes meatballs into egg-sized balls and cooks them in her signature sauce. She returns to Jerusalem in the early morning with an aluminum pot redolent with the aroma of coriander, garlic, cumin, and mint. 

Rachel knows her meatballs are not on the diet of the average recovering invalid. Now she gives Rivkind orders. “These are Moroccan meatballs, not dainty Swedish meatballs. Stand by my side while I feed him.” The surgeon agrees. Shimon gobbles down the first meatball, and then another. She pauses, nervous about going further. Shimon looks unhappy. “He’s still hungry!” bellows Rivkind. “Give him more!” 

And so she does, until at last, Shimon smiles, satisfied. 

On November 23, bolstered by medical care and a daily diet of Moroccan meatballs, Shimon and his parents walk out of the hospital. 

He still needs physical, cognitive, and occupational therapy. 

He falls in love with Aviyah, one of the aides. 

Soon after, in a wedding hall in Beersheba, Avi Rivkind walks Shimon Ohana down the aisle and dances with the groom. I was there to see it. Rivkind is later the sandak, holding their baby, carefully watching the mohel perform the circumcision, when Shimon and Aviyah’s son Uri Meir is born. 

Rivkind isn’t one of those doctors who wear a kippah, but he is a descendant of Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotsk. “We believe that at the cusp of life and death, no patient wants us to ‘let him go,’” says Rivkind. “That’s the dictum that has informed my life’s work.” 

The life’s work that won him the 2026 Israel Prize. 

Rivkind is the only child of Holocaust survivor parents. Both his parents were saved by Righteous Gentiles. That also informs his life, he says. 

And Shimon’s revival? “Of course, it’s a miracle,” Rivkind says, surprised at the question. “A God moment.” 

When Rachel Ohana hears that Rivkind would be awarded the Israel Prize, she phones him and fills his ears with a cornucopia of blessings. She also has news to report. Her grandson Uri Meir, like his dad, is serving in the Border Police, protecting Israel. 

This is my favorite Avi Rivkind story. There’s also a story about me accompanying Shimon and Rachel to Paris when Avi spoke before skeptical French physicians, and Shimon stood up at the end of the speech. And there’s the day after the al-Qaeda attack in Mombasa, Kenya, where Israelis had gone to get away from terror, when a seriously wounded woman named Ronit looks up in the Mombasa hospital and sees Rivkind standing near her bedside. “I thought I was seeing angels,” Ronit says. 

A lifetime of stories. 

Mazal tov, Prof. Rivkind. 

“Had we not acted against the existential threat, had we not acted with determination and daring, the names of the death sites Natanz, Fordow, Isfahan might have joined the names of the death camps of the Holocaust: Auschwitz, Majdanek, Treblinka.” 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made this chilling statement at the Yad Labanim ceremony in Jerusalem on the afternoon before Remembrance Day. The words are still ringing in my ears. 

I was in the audience at Yad Labanim House not, thank God, as a war widow or bereaved mother. For me, the sacred passage between Remembrance Day and Independence Day begins with the ceremony for the victims of the Hadassah convoy. On April 13, 1948, seventy-eight women and men, among them Holocaust survivors, were murdered on their way from downtown Jerusalem to Mount Scopus, where the hospital and the Hebrew University stood. 

Every year, together with the children and grandchildren of the victims, representatives of Yad Labanim are there, too, the support organization for fallen IDF soldiers and victims of terrorism. They invite my Hadassah colleagues and me to their ceremony, which opens the national observances of Remembrance Day. 

Getting in is difficult, even with a personal invitation. I understand. The prime minister is there. Security has to be strict, even stricter than at Ben-Gurion Airport. Despite my long years in Israel, every now and then when I am flying out of the country, a youthful security person at the airport hears my lingering American accent and asks me to name my grandchildren who live in Israel. After I get through half the blessedly long list, all with biblical or modern Hebrew names, he or she laughs and lets me go. 

The frosty young woman who questioned me at the security tent in front of Yad Labanim’s building in Sacher Park asked me to name fallen soldiers or murdered civilians. She let me through after hearing a few names, but the experience was unsettling. An only-in-Israel moment, and not one to treasure. 

Still, the questioning was worth it because the ceremony was poignant, meaningful, and inspiring. Netanyahu was speaking both as prime minister and as the bereaved brother of Yoni Netanyahu, killed in the Entebbe rescue, 50 years ago this year. 

Auschwitz, Majdanek, Treblinka. The shadow of the Holocaust is always present. Even in private moments of self-pity or foolishness, I have found myself silently reciting the names of the camps, as if they could summon me back to proportion. 

Hadassah professors honored on Independence Day 

So when two Hadassah professors were honored on Independence Day, I could not help noticing that both are second generation, children of Holocaust survivors. 

Prof. Dina Ben-Yehuda, who lit a torch on Independence Day, was a universally praised choice. She is a world-renowned hematologist and the brilliant, ethical head of the committee that decides which medicines go into the health basket for Israel’s 10 million citizens. She is known not only for her genius but also for her compassion. 

As a medical educator, Ben-Yehuda teaches young doctors to stop searching for answers on their cellphones instead of touching and speaking to their patients. As a soldier, she initiated the military support system for bereaved families. Her mother was a Holocaust survivor. Her grandmother survived Auschwitz. “She only saw the good in people,” Ben-Yehuda said. 

The last national event of Independence Day is the awarding of the Israel Prize to men and women whose achievements have shaped this country. This year, among them was Prof. Avi Rivkind, a giant in Israeli trauma medicine. 

It seems almost impossible to believe that Israel once had no trauma units, until Rivkind actively sought support from the women of Hadassah to open the first. Today, trauma units are spread across the country. Imagine how many lives have been saved. 

Rivkind also ran a safe driving initiative at Hadassah, inviting high school students to see real images of peers who had driven too fast and too carelessly. During the Second Intifada, he was recognizable on television in Israel and abroad, including on 60 Minutes. I remember a wounded soldier recognizing Rivkind when he was doing triage at the entrance to the emergency room. “I fell into good hands,” the soldier said with relief. 

Rivkind is known for heroic efforts that go beyond the textbooks, and for urging others to do the same. I was present one Friday afternoon during the Second Intifada when a group of experts encircled the bed of a terror survivor about to go into surgery. “Can anyone think of anything else?” he asked. 

Rivkind is the only child of Holocaust survivors. Both of his parents were saved by Righteous Gentiles. 

Chosen to speak for all the recipients of the Israel Prize, Rivkind, sometimes the blunt Sabra, was eloquent. Here are a few excerpts (translated from the Hebrew): 

“More than once I stood in front of human suffering. There, I learned that there is a single moment, a split second, when in front of me is a wounded person I must save. In that moment, there is no room for doubt, only to fight, always to fight.” 

“My journey did not begin in the operating room but much earlier, with the harrowing story of my parents, of blessed memory, who lost their entire families in the Holocaust. From my parents’ home, the mission of my life was born, and I chose to practice medicine.” 

“Indeed, I have seen the worst that can happen to the human body, but I have also seen the best that can happen to the human heart.” 

He credits his belief that every human being will choose life, no matter how dire the trauma, to Rabbi Menahem Mendel of Kotzk, of whom he is a descendant. 

“In a world where we are all experts in investments, options, and exits, I tell you there is no greater exit than bringing a person back to life.” 

Rivkind’s most famous case, the rescue of border policeman Shimon Ohana in 2000 after he had been declared dead, deserves a column of its own. I plan to tell that story in my next column.

“Where are you from?” I asked. 
“Tel Aviv.” 
“Oh, you are worse than we are in Jerusalem.” 
“We’re from Nahariya.” 
“Oh, I’m so sorry about what you’ve been through.” 
“We live right here in Zichron Ya’acov. We wanted to try the new hotel.” 
“We’re nearby in Binyamina. Our parents couldn’t come from abroad, and we decided to go away near home.” 

We were all gathered at the newest hotel in Israel. Despite the extraordinary tensions in Israel, there was the ebullience of being together, as if we’d met fellow Israelis in a Chabad House in Seoul or Fairbanks, Alaska. 

A dear friend from abroad called me recently to ask what I was planning for August, and I started to laugh. “We hardly know what we’re doing next week!” 

The Israeli reputation for spontaneity and improvisation has never been needed so much as we do our best to pursue our occupations, avocations, and religious obligations despite missiles and rockets falling, airports closing, and family members serving in reserves. The Kotel was blocked to devotees, and even the number of travelers on intercity trains to and from Jerusalem was restricted. Not to mention that national parks, theaters, and many hotels closed. Even our dependable Waze seemed to be malfunctioning, possibly purposely. My daughter was returning to Jerusalem from the Carmel coast when the world’s best satellite navigation software advised her that she was driving through the Mediterranean Sea. 

Is a ceasefire really a ceasefire when rockets are falling on Metula and Ashdod? 
But forward we go. Israeli singer Meir Ariel’s 1990 much-quoted song more or less sums up our national resilience: “Avarnu et Paro, n’avor gam et ze.” (“We made it through Pharaoh, we’ll get through this, too.”) 

Which is why the opening of a brand-new, glorious hotel is a particularly exuberant occasion for celebration. 

Representing The Jerusalem Post, last November I took part in and reported for these pages about a journalists’ pre-tour of a new hotel then expected to open in February in the pioneering appellation town established in 1882, Zichron Ya’acov. The Gordonia Zikhron Ya’akov (with the rather strange spelling in English of the middle word) was under construction and still seemed far away from opening. 

The tour reminded me of one I took in 1989 in Las Vegas. The late entrepreneur and philanthropist Sheldon Adelson walked a small group of us attending a Hadassah convention around a still under-construction hotel called The Venetian. I later returned to the hotel and experienced the magnificent reality, with its indoor, air-conditioned Laguna di Venezia, complete with gondolas. It was everything Adelson rhapsodized about and more. 

What was already in place at the Gordonia in November was an 80-meter infinity swimming pool on the cusp of the hillside. I stood at the edge of the pool as the sun set over the verdant hillside, with the Mediterranean below, and I literally had to hold myself back from slipping into Israel’s longest swimming pool, even in its then unheated state. The pool would be warmed to 28˚ C through the winter, promised the hotel guide. 

So when my husband and I were choosing a hotel for spring vacation, he agreed that I needed to swim in that pool I’d been talking about for months. 

With all the complications in our country, the opening date was reset from February 1 to March 1. 
Then, on February 28, Operation Roaring Lion began. 

I’d been regularly calling a Jerusalem hotel where I’d promised a birthday breakfast for a granddaughter but was repeatedly told the hotel was closed for the duration of the war. Afterwards, I would phone the Gordonia, just to make sure it was really opening soon, and I always received cheerful assurances that it would indeed open. 

And then I received the happy phone call from the spa, asking if I’d like to book a massage. 
On March 22, the hotel received its first guests. 

Jerusalem to Zichron Ya’acov is an hour and a half drive, but it was our first out-of-town trip since the Roaring Lion war began. A grandson offered to drive us when we fretted that we would panic if sirens sounded on Highway 6. 

I was so relieved to get there and so eager to get to the pool that, to the distress of the solicitous hotel manager, I actually walked into a glass wall leading to the outdoors. Thankfully, a little bruising but no breaks in either this writer’s forehead or the spotless glass. 

I remembered, to my chagrin, that when I wrote the pre-review, I’d lauded the ubiquitous use of glass, stone, and wood to echo the Gordonia’s overall theme. 

Arrival amid uncertainty 

The hotel chain is named for the bearded Zionist pioneer Aharon David Gordon (1856 to 1922), who believed in honoring nature, manual labor, and settling the Land of Israel. His followers in the Gordonia youth movement, based on A.D. Gordon’s teachings, founded Kibbutz Ma’aleh Hahamisha in 1938. 

In 1940, the pioneers opened the first convalescent home in the Judean Hills near Jerusalem. The Gordonia hotel chain owners preserved the historical name in their flagship project, a renovation of Ma’aleh Hahamisha, and also now in Zichron Ya’acov. 

The time to swim had come. It was only 14˚ outside, overcast with clouds, with the strong sea breeze swaying the hillside cypress trees and terebinths. I braced myself for the entry chill of nearly every body of water, but to my delight, as promised, the resplendent pool was heated, warm, and welcoming. As we say in Yiddish, “ah mechaye.” 

I don’t think I’d ever been in a hotel where I was the first to sleep in the bed or to use the rainforest shower. In the guest suites and the synagogue, the furnishings still exuded a woodsy aroma that blended with the Gordonia’s pervasive signature scent, a mix of patchouli, freesia, and pear. 

Chatting in the lobby over Gordonia wine and lemonade with the manager and the vice president of the Gordonia chain, I learned that the months before opening were full of anxiety and apprehension for them. They were enormously relieved and proud that they’d opened despite the challenges. They still looked hyper-vigilant as the all-new staff, check-in clerks, and waitpersons  fulfilled their tasks. 

Also contributing to the family-esque feeling, local post-army and university students had answered the hotel’s help-wanted ads and could have been our grandchildren. The blond barista told us he’d spent two years operating drones in Gaza as he poured the gratis ice cappuccinos into plastic highball glasses so we could drink them on the chaises near the pool. The young woman who escorted us to our dining table had just finished serving in the Home Front Command. 

Even though the hotel has 141 rooms, it felt like a small hotel. The omelet chef remembered from one day to the next how we liked our eggs. After the five-star Israeli hotel breakfast, when one is certain one could never eat another bite until dinner, there’s a welcome free light buffet at mid-afternoon to stave off any nascent hunger pains. 

My husband deemed the hotel’s theme “nothing spared,” from the snow peas and blueberries on the buffet tables (my favorites were the hot cheese-stuffed portobello mushrooms and marmalade salad) to the narrow couch at the foot of the bed, perfect for tying sneakers. Even the shining Sephardi Torah scrolls in repoussé silver wore elaborate tasseled crowns. 

One morning, I was the first to the pool. Swimming alone, looking at the fertile fields and cobalt sea, I was particularly meditative. Suddenly, I was joined by four swifts, swooping down to get a drink, and then soaring back up to the cerulean sky. Swifts are annual visitors to Israel, sleeping and even mating in the heavens, then leaving their eggs to hatch as avian Sabras. 

Watching them rise effortlessly into the sky, I realized they shared the Israeli airways with missiles and interceptors, yet returned the following year, living, like us, between uncertainty and faith.

1. Returned hostage AlonOhel played the piano dedicated to him in Hostages Square.
2. On thedaythe hostages were released, spinning classes in Jerusalem cycle to the rhythm of the Breslov Hassidic song “(God) Always Loves Me.” 
3. At a Greek kosher restaurant in Jerusalem, a young woman is dancing Sirtaki with an M4 carbine on her shoulder. She was on furlough from the Iron Dome service.
4. We not only invented the cellphone. We have the Iron Dome and David’s Sling to protect us.
5. The Iron Beam harnesses lasers to destroy incoming missiles, rockets, mortars, UAVs, andaircraft.
6. 
   According to the website pickles.co.il, computerized video cameras are scanning Israeli olives on each side, one at a time, to achievea high level of sorting. 
7. The pickle capital of Israel is a religious kibbutz calledKvutzatYavne, founded in 1941. Before pickles, they produced fried potatoes and canned meat for the British Army. 
8. Newbie Team Israel won a gold and two silver medals in the 2025 Pickleball World Cup in Florida, defeating the reigning champion in Puerto Rico.
9. The Bamba factory inKiryatGat is a top tourist destination for Israel and Jewish day school students from abroad. 
10. Bamba, whose name sounds like baby talk and melts in the mouth, was invented in 1964. Studies show that due to extensive consumption of Bamba by infants, peanut allergy is rare among Israelis. New Bamba is filled with halva and may conquer sesame allergies, too.
11. 
    There’s an app to find the closest bomb shelter. 
12. In a friend’s neighborhood bomb shelter, someone opened a grocery store to make shopping more convenient. You can get pickles and Bamba there, too.
13. 
    Before Passover, one shelter had a matzah bake.
14. Israel Radio announcements: “If you are having trouble hearing the news in your safe room, try our new shelter-friendly app.”
15. Yoga anyone? Tel Aviv shelters offer classes and disco parties. Am Yisrael chai!
    16. Meet yourmatch. Hooked, a location-based dating app developed by Noa Barzani and Roi Revach, lets singles scan QR codes and find a partner in the same bomb shelter. 
16. Conveniently, Israelis held weddings in shelters, too. No need to heed the siren under the huppah (canopy used at Jewish weddings).
17. No modern shelter? In the Old City of Jerusalem, residents and tourists use ancient cisterns.
18. In 2025, Israel achieved its best-ever performance at the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) in Australia, ranking 6th out of 110 nations, with four gold medals, one silver, and one bronze. All six high school team members won medals, placing Israel among the top performers globally.
19. European Girls’ Math Olympiad (EGMO): In April 2025, Israeli female students won two gold medals and two honorable mentions, competing against 56 countries.
20. Within an hour of the Bondi Beach mass shooting, Hadassah Hospital psychologists were sharing trauma treatment knowledge with the Australian Jewish community.
21. Prof.EsiSharon-Sagie, who volunteered for the Dental Forensic Identification unit throughout the Gaza war, identified hundreds of victims in Gaza and also arch-enemy Yahya Sinwar. She went into Gaza to identify the final deceased hostage, Ran Gvili. Sharon-Sagie is now the worldwide expert lecturing to Interpol. She was named one of the 100 people positively influencing Jewish life by The Algemeiner newspaper. 
22. The Biblical Zoo in Jerusalem celebrated the birth of an endangered Persian deer. The zoo staff often stay at night to keep animals safe and calm when there are sirens and rockets.
23. Stav Koren, 26, from Beersheba won the Tuff NUffbantamweight title, making history as the first Israeli to win a mixed martial arts championship belt in that competition. He weighs only 66.7 kilograms. His nickname is “The Red Head.” 
24. The nickname of the Israel men’s national basketball team is “The Mensch.”
    26. Team Israel won the gold medal in wheelchair basketball in the Invictus Games in Vancouver. 62-7 over the United States!
25. Israeli Olympic gold medalist ArtemDolgopyat, born in the impossible-to-spell city of Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine, won the gold in floor exercises at the Artistic Gymnastics World Cup in Germany in February, and another gold in Croatia in April, where he was joined as “Hatikva” was played by NoamBerkovich, who won bronze. (Last year, Indonesia refused to give Dolgopyat a visa to compete at the World Championships.) 
26. Kickboxer YuliaSachkovwon gold at the World Championship in Abu Dhabi. She was born weighing 900 grams, but maybe came out kicking. Team Israel brought home seven medals. 
    29. Israel leads in water tech start-ups, which include smart irrigation systems, leak detection, and efficient desalination. 
27. Per capita, Israelis use far less electricity and between a third to half of the water that Americans use.
28. Water everywhere. The newGordoniaHotel in Zichron Ya’acov, named for Zionist leader A.D. Gordon, has a 70-meter swimming pool and a Watergen drinking faucet that pulls water out of the air. 
29. 
    TheGordonia Hotel opened for the first time while the airports were closed and in the midst of Operation Roaring Lion and the ongoing battle with Hezbollah. 
30. Our soldiers, including my children and grandchildren, are still showing up at every battle front.
31. 
    Israel has four different beaches – the Mediterranean, the Dead Sea, the Red Sea, and the Sea of Galilee – and is small enough so you can swim at all four in a single day.
32. Our beach volleyball team took third place in the Goa India Beach Pro Challenge in March when the temperature was 38 degrees and humid.
33. The nation comes to a two-minute standstill on Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Day and on Memorial Day.
34. Two million persons have listened to Holocaust survivor stories in small groups in private homes in the ZikaronBaSalon (“A memory in the living room”) program in the last 15 years.
35. 
    The names of Holocaust victims are read aloud in the Knesset in the Unto Every Person There Is a Name program.
36. President Isaac Herzog read the names of his own relatives killed in the Holocaust.
37. Joel Mokyr was the 18th Israeli to win a Nobel Prize. S.Y. Agnon was the first. Mokyr won for havingidentifiedthe prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress. Mokyr was born in Leiden, Netherlands, in 1946 to a family of Dutch Jews who survived the Holocaust. His widowed mother, Gonda Jacobs Mok, brought him up in Haifa. 
38. Even amid our wars,we’restill in this year’s top 10 list of happiest countries in the world. 
    42. Israelis under the age of 25, which includes our drafted fighting forces, ranked as the happiest group within the country and placed third worldwide. 
39. Israel ranks 4th among OECD nations in longevity, with an average lifespan of 83.8.
40. 
    Israel ranks second among OECD countries for the lowest mortality rate from preventable causes.
41. 
    81% of Israelis receive critical cardiac catheterization within 12 hours.
42. 
    We have a public health system, and everything is covered, including fertility and cancer treatment.
43. Israelis have invented an app for when you can take a shower during the war.
    48. Most baby booms happen after a war. Israel has a baby boom during a war, with a 7% to 10% growth rate in births.
44. Hadassah Mount Scopus chief midwife Elisheva Levin remarks: “The glorious cries of the newborns drown out the sound of the missiles.”
45. Despite the economic challenge, purchases of baby equipment have risen sharply.
    51. Still Start-Up Nation. Despite the war, Israeli hi-tech companies raised$15.6 billion in 2025, with major global companies expanding their presence in Israel. 
46. The tech sectorremains20% of GDP and over half of exports, showing extraordinary resilience. 
    53. Israel ranked 14th in the Global Innovation Index 2025 and 1st in its region, continuing to excel in research, patents, and hi-tech innovation. 
47. Israel and the United States launched a $200 million AI and quantum technology center, aimed at global technological leadership and regional cooperation.
48. No surprise here. Israel’s defense tech sector surged in 2025, becoming a major strategic asset and integrating AI andnew technologiesrapidly into real-world use. 
49. Israel ranked 3rd globally in energy innovation, according to the World Economic Forum.
    57. Hadassah’s retired surgeon AviRivkind won a lifetime achievement Israel Prize. He fought to bring the first trauma center to Israel and also initiated a program to teach teens to drive safely by showing them the results of accidents. 
50. The young owner of a tire company in Jerusalem gave me his home cellphone number to call him if I ever get stuck again while driving at night.
51. New Purim costumes: People in bathrobes caught showering while missiles fell.
    60. El Al and other Israeli airlines dodge rockets to bring back Israelis while missiles are falling in their hometowns.
52. If theycan’tget on a flight to Ben-Gurion Airport, Israelis find ways to come home via Egypt and Jordan. 
53. Hospitals move patients underground into parking lots and all safe areas and continue to care for everyone.
54. While the enemy builds attack tunnels, we build underground emergency rooms.
    64. Priorities: Passover Dungeons and Dragons camp continues despite the war.
    65. It’s time for a love song, after two years of war-related Eurovision entries. Upbeat song “Michelle,” performed by Noam Bettan, gets early high betting. 
    66. “Catbam,” a popular song of the war about spotting enemy drones, becomes a national hit. Only in Israel. 
55. “Catbam” was written by an 11-year-old boy, NirKrigel, from MoshavZvi in the Gilboa area. 
    68. Nir actually wrote “Catbam” for the previous war with Iran. His parents treated him to a session in a professional recording studio for his birthday. When Operation Roaring Lion started, his sister Adi uploaded it to TikTok. 
56. Israeli military and hospitals developed AI-assisted triage tools to help prioritize treatment in mass casualty situations.
57. The Tel Aviv Museum of Art has been included on the list of the world’s top 100 most visited art museums of the past year.
58. We have prayers in synagogues for our soldiers, of course, but now also for American soldiers joining us in battle.
59. The road from Jerusalem is lined with flags: Israeli flags, and American red, white, and blue to honor our allies.
60. With the threat of a war starting, on February 27, the day before the war began, the Tel Aviv Marathon resumed with a record number of runners.
61. Nothing kept Tel Aviv café goers from their favorite cappuccinos and matcha among missile attacks.
62. Some of our street mendicants now accept bank phone moneytransferby BIT. 
    76. An ice cream truck on Passover boasts dairy and parve ice cream with and without kitniyot. 
    77. In 2025, archaeologists uncovered a rare First Temple period structure in Jerusalem, a Second Temple stone vessel workshop, and a coin from the Great Revolt against Rome. 
63. US Secretary of Defense PeteHegseth:Whenthe Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps looks up, says Hegseth, they only see two things on the sides of aircraft  –“the Stars and Stripes, and the Star of David – the evil regime’s worst nightmare.” 

 

Whenever I walk back up the 52 steps from our building’s shelter to our apartment in Jerusalem, after hearing the booms in the skies, I thank heaven and I whisper a thank you to Amir Peretz. 

Young readers, you may not know who that is. After all, he was defense minister for just one year. 

Amir Peretz, who turned 74 on March 9, served as defense minister of the State of Israel from 2006 to 2007. In that short span of time, he fought skeptics and approved the development of the Iron Dome. This altered Israel’s military objectives and our future.mute 

Amir Peretz, then called Armond, was born in the central Moroccan town of Boujad, also spelled Bejaad, known for its vibrant red Berber rugs. The town was unusual in that the Jewish community wasn’t segregated into a Jewish section, like the mellah in most Moroccan cities. The Jews of Boujad lived among non-Jews, which might have something to do with Peretz’s future liberal political identification. His father was the head of the Jewish community. 

When Armond was four, the family made aliyah, settling in the rough-and-ready town of Sderot, two years after it received permanent housing, and residents moved from tin huts and tents. Now calling himself Amir, he was already a teen activist and would eventually win the mayor’s office running for the Labor Party. 

When he became defense minister, he was scorned as an inexperienced bad fit. 

Amir Peretz stands next to an Iron Dome battery model, 2019. (credit: FLASH90) 

Although six Israeli defense ministers were former chiefs of staff, and eight served as prime minister, among them were other significant defense ministers who weren’t battlefield heroes but geniuses in strategy and procurement of arms. In the IDF, Amir Peretz wasn’t a pilot or general. He served in the less glamorous Ordnance Corps, where he rose to become a captain. He was run over while serving in the Mitla Pass and spent a year recovering in a hospital. 

Peretz served as defense minister during the controversial Second Lebanon War and was publicly disparaged for lack of military expertise. Nonetheless, the Winograd Commission, which investigated the war’s successes and failures, found that responsibility for the war’s losses was shared also by then-chief of staff Dan Halutz and prime minister Ehud Olmert. 

A snapshot taken by photographer Effi Sharir caused the seemingly irreparable damage to his image. Decades before we used the term “going viral,” in the photo of defense minister Peretz inspecting troops in the Golan Heights, nodding agreement as IDF chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi explained what was happening in the terrain, the protective caps were still on the binoculars. 

The supposedly humorous imagine confirmed everyone’s prejudices. Reportedly, the cap was on only for a short time and quickly corrected, but the picture of the mustached social organizer without glorified military experience as the antithesis of the heroic Ashkenazi generals stuck. Ironically, chief of staff Ashkenazi wasn’t Ashkenazi, either. 

For six years, that picture worth a thousand words made Peretz a laughingstock. Then, as journalist Shmuel Rosner wrote eloquently in The New York Times in 2012, “Peretz may be the one laughing now, as Israelis laud him for seeing what experienced generals didn’t see with their open binoculars.” 

Because Peretz was an outsider, he could think outside the box. It brings to mind the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Con men convince the king they can weave him elegant invisible clothing. Everyone parrots the praise of the new garments until a little boy in the crowd shouts that the emperor is actually naked. 

The Israeli strategy had, in fact, focused on offense and ignored defense, leaving us as exposed as the emperor. It took a defense minister who grew up in beleaguered Sderot to make defense a priority. 

In 1983, American president Ronald Reagan planned the grand-scale Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly called Star Wars. Reagan wanted to protect the US from long-range intercontinental nuclear-armed missiles. The program was canceled before it could be realized. 

Not that the doubters were idiots. There was adequate reason for skepticism. The idea that a missile could hit another missile with exactitude sounds fantastical. Even after the Iron Dome was showing its worth, you can look back in military history to find claims by so-called experts magnifying its imperfections. 

Once Israeli ingenuity was applied to defensive systems, an Amir Peretz priority, additional systems were developed with the confident financial support and technical collaboration of the United States. David’s Sling and Iron Dome are complementary layers of Israel’s multi-tier missile defense. Iron Dome works for four to 70 kilometers, intercepting short-range rockets and mortars, while David’s Sling intercepts up to 300 kilometers and defends against medium- to long-range missiles, cruise missiles, and drones. David’s Sling was jointly developed by Israel’s government-owned Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and US contractor Raytheon. The next level is protected by Arrow 3, jointly developed by the Israel Missile Defense Organization and the US Missile Defense Agency. The primary contractor is Israel Aerospace Industries. 

The same Amir Peretz concluded his three-year tenure as chairman of Israel Aerospace Industries in November 2024. He successfully boosted international partnerships and company revenue. 

The newest Israeli defense system, Iron Beam, depends on the development of powerful fiber lasers and is designed to destroy drones, rockets, and mortars at the speed of light, at a negligible cost per interception. None of these amazing tools is complete or airtight. The defensive systems are not “hermetic,” as the IDF spokesperson reminds us daily. Even with 90% accuracy, we have experienced enough misses to understand what horror we would face without our made-in-Israel protection. Bigger and richer countries than Israel do not have the defense systems we have. 

So thank you, Mr. Peretz, for your foresight and persistence. President Donald Trump wants to name an American defensive system Golden Dome. He just might be calling you.

The subject came up recently when I attended the inauguration of the newest branch of the Hadassah Medical Organization in the southern city of Netivot. I found visitors from abroad looking at me quizzically whenever I used the term “periphery.” 

Despite our tiny size compared to America – we are, after all, just the size and shape of New Jersey, the fourth-smallest US state – here in Israel we speak so often of “outlying areas,” that in Hebrew we use the Hebraicized version of the word: periferia. 

The theory of “center versus periphery,” or “core versus periphery,” actually goes back 75 years and was related to economics. It was originally a description of inequality of power in trade relations between First World and Third World countries. 

This was called the Singer-Prebisch theory. (Sir Hans Wolfgang Singer was a German-born British Jew.) The concept was later expanded to include the difference between the fiscal advantages of urban over rural areas. 

In Israel, the use of the terms has expanded to merkaz v’periferia (“center and periphery”) to describe the disparity in income, education, and even health services between haves and ‘haves-less,’ most often the discrepancy between the Tel Aviv metropolitan area/Gush Dan and outlying development and border towns. 

It’s also used to contrast disadvantaged areas within cities with affluent neighborhoods, although the former may be “inner” cities. 

In such a small country as ours, we might not expect these economic and now sociological categories to apply. Netivot, for example, is just 100 km. from Tel Aviv. 

Israel’s south and northern border considered disadvantaged 

Nonetheless, Israeli planners consider towns in Israel’s South – and now especially on the northern border – “distance disadvantaged.” 

Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) defines a peripheral area as one that is distant from “opportunities, activities, or assets.” 

The statistics bureau actually builds an index to rank localities from most peripheral to most central, using factors like size, distance from the Tel Aviv hub, and accessibility by public transportation. 

On a 10-point socioeconomic scale based on income, education, employment, and housing, Netivot is ranked only four. 

The Dan region has far greater job opportunities, as well as offering economic advancement through informal connections and networks – the chance meetings, internships, and professional communities that thrive in greater Tel Aviv. 

The average monthly salary in Netivot is roughly 30% lower than the national average. When Netivot was founded in 1957, it was called Azata because of its proximity – seven kilometers – from Gaza (Aza in Hebrew). 

The city was soon renamed with an enduring spirit of optimism, from the oft-sung biblical proverb: “Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.” “Paths” in Hebrew are netivot. 

The city started as a ma’abara, a transit camp to house immigrants mainly from Morocco and Tunisia, who lived in tin shacks and tents on the sand and scrubland. 

Their homes were scorching in the Negev summer, and muddy in the winter. Nevertheless, Netivot grew from a ma’abara to a development town and was finally declared a city in 2000. 

Today, rows of modern, attractive apartment buildings attest to a city experiencing a remarkable growth spurt, making it one of the fastest-growing cities in the country, with an estimated 47,000 residents and predictions of it doubling in the coming years. 

Young families, priced out of the center, can find affordable apartments at a fraction of what they would pay in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, or Haifa. According to Netivot’s heralded and long-serving mayor, Yehiel Zohar, more than 30,000 housing units are under construction. 

This plan is in line with a study in 2021 by the Jerusalem-based Taub Center for Social Policy Studies. 

It found that a previous trend of people moving out of Israel’s South was reversing, with more Israelis moving to the South than away from it – despite decades of rocket fire from Gaza. 

Population size, of course, isn’t the only factor in turning periphery into center. 

In 2021, the Schwartz/Reisman Science Education Center – Western Negev was opened by the Weizmann Institute of Science, including a science high school emphasizing advanced physics, chemistry, and biology. 

Some 700 students from Netivot and the surrounding Negev area – more than half of them girls – are studying there. 

Around the same time, the Hadassah Medical Organization, with the support of the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, began construction of its 2,000-square-meter medical facility. 

Mayor Zohar has called the opening of the facility “a transformative milestone for the city and for the entire Western Negev,” bringing medical care, leading specialists, and innovative technologies, “exactly like those available in the center of the country.” 

 

The inauguration drew many of Israel’s renowned medical experts, who were ebullient about bridging the center-periphery gap and who pledged to regularly travel to Netivot to see patients. 

“It’s our affirmation of Zionism,” said one of the professors. “And it feels good.” 

As the city boosts science and medicine, let us not forget Netivot’s warranted reputation as a hub of mysticism and Kabbalah. 

The most celebrated Netivot resident was Moroccan-born Rabbi Yisrael Abuhatzeira (1889–1984), popularly called the Baba Sali (Arabic for “praying elder”). 

Abuhatzeira, the precocious grandson of Moroccan Jewry’s towering figure Rabbi Yaakov Abuhatzeira, was a scholar and purported miracle worker. 

His grave and the large complex of institutions that have grown out of his humble home and synagogue have become a pilgrimage site. In January 2026, an estimated 100,000 visitors arrived for the hilula, the anniversary of his death. 

Interestingly, although they never met, the Baba Sali and the Lubavitcher Rebbe maintained a close relationship. On October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists failed to penetrate Netivot’s defenses. 

If you seek an explanation on the Internet under “miracles of Netivot on October 7,” you’ll find a point-by-point description of the successful response of the city’s extraordinary civil defense volunteers. 

But you’ll also find a cluster of curious legends in which Hamas terrorists are stopped at the gate by “an old religious man who looked just like the Baba Sali.” 

Others claim that the city earned heavenly protection because of the residency of a different rabbi, Yoram Michael Abergel (1957–2015), founder of the Kol Rina educational network. 

Still others point to the town’s famed spiritual diagnosticians. Netivot is home to Kabbalist Rabbi Yaakov Israel Ifargan, 59, known as “the X-ray” (HaRentgen) for his reputed healing and prognostic powers. His sister, spiritual adviser Rabbanit Bruria Ifargan-Zvulun, is called “the CT,” and his half brother, Rabbi Hayim Amran-Ifargan, is known as “the MRI.” 

As the new Hadassah Medical Organization branch in Netivot has installed an actual MRI scanner, part of the advanced imaging services bringing modern diagnostics closer to Western Negev residents, the city now has multiple ways to look beneath the surface. 

It can boast a rare and empowering combination of learning and lore. Like the intense magnetism of an MRI, Netivot itself is developing its own powerful pull, drawing the city closer to Israel’s center.

The part in Yehoram Gaon’s song “You Won’t Defeat Me,” when the adorable first graders dance, made me cry. 

I was in an old-fashioned gym in the young city of Modi’in. The population is estimated to be 112,692 – which is 410 more than the previous count of 108,682 as of Independence Day 2025. The municipal website posts regular updates on new schools opening to accommodate the blessed birth rate. 

Many Jerusalemites, like our son and daughter-in-law, were drawn to this city 30 kilometers west of Jerusalem where they grew up. They didn’t go there – as suggested in the increasingly problematic Wikipedia – because of “the growing haredi [ultra-Orthodox] population.” They went there because of the youthful vibe and the more reasonably priced family homes.  

The city – officially called Modi’in-Maccabim-Re’ut – is marking its 30th anniversary during these days, and there’s cause to celebrate with its constant expansion and success. Thus, the municipality is holding a giant Adloyada parade a few days ahead of this Purim, on Friday, February 27. Floats, dancers, and puppets will travel along Hula Valley Street to Jezreel Valley Street and on to the Fish Park! (I love the street names; there is a whole neighborhood – Moriah – with streets named for women, from the biblical matriarchs through to Queen Shlomzion.) 

I know about the celebration not from the family but because Deputy Mayor Eliad Shimonovich mentioned it when he was speaking before a recent dance performance that I attended in the Modi’in Cultural Hall. The teen division of Zooz n’ Dance, the city’s well-known dance studio, was having its midyear performance. 

The shows are so popular that tickets are notoriously hard to obtain. Hundreds of teenage girls, our granddaughter Eliana and cousin Amalya among them, perform jazz, hip hop, and modern dance at an astoundingly high level – reflecting the city’s love of the arts. 

The performances are contemporary not only in their style and execution, but the repertoire also included a memorial dance for the Supernova festival massacre, and another for Israeli musician Matti Caspi, who died several weeks before the performance. These young dancers from Modi’in have performed in multiple national Independence Day celebrations at Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl and have become a beloved trademark of the city. 

Our son and daughter-in-law are both Sabras (native Israelis), but cousin Amalya moved to Modi’in from Denver, Colorado, four and a half years ago. Her family left Rocky Mountain skiing behind and made aliyah out of their strong Zionist feelings. They chose Modi’in over other places because of its central location, the abundance of English speakers, resources for new immigrants, and its range of school options for their triplets. 

We need your pure prayers 

Two days after the spectacular dance performance, I was back in Modi’in to attend the Siddur (“prayer book”) Party of Eliana’s little sister, first grader Ye’ela. She attends a strongly Religious Zionist public school aptly called Shivtei Israel (“tribes of Israel”). Indeed, in this 2026 first grade class, there are dedicated Hebrew language lessons for French- and English-speaking newcomers. The Hebrew speakers have last names that draw from many of the world’s Jewish communities. 

The theme of the Siddur Party was “The Gift of Prayer.” Just as the deputy mayor brought greetings to the dance performance, the Chief Rabbi of Modi’in, Yaakov Chikotay, attended the event to bless his six-year-old parishioners. 

He urged the children to use their new siddurim. “Yours are prayers of purity, and we need them,” he said. Everyone stood up as the rabbi entered, an old-fashioned and honorable gesture of respect that has fallen away in some other places. 

The school principal told the children a story about a little boy who, unlike them, hasn’t yet learned to read. Nonetheless, he stands and moves his lips in synagogue. The little boy explains that he only knows the aleph-bet and repeats the letters over and over, certain that God will put them into the right order for the words of his prayer. 

We adults talk a lot about Jewish values, and this simple Siddur Party was replete with treasured values that reinforce those inculcated at home: respect, faith, gratefulness, Zionism. In a pre-recorded video, all the children answer the question of naming what they are most thankful for. Along with answers related to family and friends, several children say “peace” and “the return of the hostages.” To further illustrate the gifts these youngsters have gratefully received, there were stacks of “thanking” cardboard boxes labeled “food,” “water,” “plenty,” “Grandma and Grandpa,” “home,” and “education.” 

Watch over our children 

I think back to Ye’ela’s babyhood during the corona pandemic when we grandparents were cautioned not to hug our grandchildren lest we become infected. Then came the war. These first graders have been hustled into safe rooms and shelters throughout nursery school and in kindergarten. 

Their city has been suffused with fear and grief as their parents and older siblings have put on uniforms. Modi’in ranks among Israel’s leading cities for enlistment in the Israel Defense Forces. In 2024, the city recorded a 91.8% enlistment rate. Every fallen soldier – and there have been at least 35 – is commemorated with a park, a garden, or a pathway named in his or her honor. 

So, when these darling first grade boys and girls donned small military berets and sang the prayer for the soldiers in their high-pitched, breathy voices, my heart melted and my throat clogged. I looked at our beautiful, petite granddaughter, her blue eyes so serious beneath the black beret with its gold star, and issued the prayer that every Israeli parent has whispered at the birth of a child or grandchild: “May he/she know war no more.” 

When the first graders stood up again, Ye’ela reached for her classmate’s hand to organize their next circle dance. 

They bopped to the 2023 Eyal Golan version of “Am Yisrael Chai” (“the nation of Israel lives”): “God, the blessed One, watches over us so/who can triumph over us because we have no other state?/ Please make peace among us/ watch over our children because faith isn’t lost.” 

Watch over our children. And then, these tots who now know how to read the ancient siddur prayers, twirled on the gym floor in a city that bears the name of the Maccabees. The song was Naomi Shemer’s, written in 1984 but remastered for the Swords of Iron War that they have already lived through: “Lo Tinatzhu Oti” – “You won’t defeat me.” Wouldn’t you have cried, too? 

On Tuesday night, 10 days after the return of Ran Gvili’s body, members of my Jerusalem synagogue Shira Hadasha gathered in an evening of song and to store away, in personalized fabric cases, the many accoutrements related to the return of the hostages. These, it was suggested, could be opened at appropriate times, such as on October 7, on Passover “to teach it to our children,” or on Memorial Day. 

Everyone was encouraged to write their own messages. I have my share of yellow ribbon pins, yellow ribbons from my car, and a dog tag in gold attached to a necklace with birds flying free. But the symbol of identification that was most personally meaningful to me was on my fingernails – where the hostage yellow ribbon was created and recreated over the past two years in gel polish on my ring fingers. 

So on Wednesday, I took a deep breath, and sat across from Hadassah Hospital-based manicurist Annael Toledano to remove the ribbons from my nails. It wasn’t a full manicure, so it was over in two minutes. It was emotional for her, too. 

In January 2024, my friend, Jerusalemite Shari Greenwald Mendes – who volunteers for the IDF reserve unit tasked with preparing the bodies of fallen female soldiers for burial – spoke to a visiting mission of Hadassah leaders from the United States. She had just returned from testifying at the United Nations. 

Greenwald Mendes described the appalling conditions of the bodies that she and her teammates treated with love and respect. An architect attuned to color, Greenwald Mendes spoke of the only bright colors amid the dark hues: pink, blue, and red polished nails. Many of the young women soldiers had polished their nails or gone for manicures for Simchat Torah, even though they would be spending the holiday at their army bases and not with their families, boyfriends, or synagogues. 

The team paused to picture those women on October 6, and took a moment to honor them. Sitting to my right at the talk was Jerusalemite Madelaine Black, who volunteers at Hadassah Hospital. “Let’s polish our nails yellow in their memory and for the hostages,” she said. “Let’s spread the word.” 

And so it started – a campaign for yellow nails that began in Jerusalem, and then spread to the Diaspora. I think I was the first to polish my nails yellow, and Toledano, who provides uplifting manicures to harried staff and scared patients, suggested taking it one step further. She turned the pinkie fingers yellow, and then painted a three-dimensional-looking ribbon on both ring fingers. 

She started offering it to clients, and even created a stand on International Women’s Day at the hospital. Then we were off to Hostages Square in Tel Aviv, offering yellow polish to visitors and families of hostages. I made a vow that I would continue until the last hostage was home, thinking then that it would be a matter of weeks or months. Hadassah women led the charge of nails in the US, and my Facebook feed filled with yellow. 

Wherever I went in the Jewish world, women and men (who wanted to show their wives) took photos of the ribbon. When I met OPI nail polish co-founder Suzi Weiss-Fischmann in the summer of 2024, she was giving out yellow polish at the Hadassah Convention in Las Vegas, and I had the opportunity to tell her the moving origin story, which she hadn’t known. 

What would I do when the hostages came home, I was frequently asked. I would turn those nails orange, I always answered, in honor of Shiri, Ariel, and Yarden Bibas. We wouldn’t find out they were murdered for another year, in January 2025. 

From yellow to orange 

So, it was on Thursday that I went with orange nails to see the newest woman-to-woman musical David the Servant King, my first time in a lovely theater in Jerusalem’s Talpiot Industrial Zone. Who knew? I was among 495 women there, nearly all in the modest dress and assorted head coverings of contemporary Orthodox Jews. There were enough young women for the tickets to include a request “not to bring babies.” There was also a list of biblical, Talmudic, and Midrashic sources in the playbill. 

I felt exhilarated to be sitting among all these women from a sector that has played an out-sized role fighting in the war. They’re also probably the only audience in the world familiar with the aggadic interpretations dramatized in the play. One of Jerusalem’s great women Torah teachers was sitting in front of me, and I had the opportunity to ask her about her wounded nephew, whom I’d met in rehab. 

Like the Bibas family, King David was reputedly a redhead, and the musical emphasizes his fraught childhood and unlikely kingship. All parts are played by women, a reverse of Shakespeare’s productions, and the actresses had training in adapting their movements to look more like men. 

Playwright and lyricist Shlomit Koffler Weinreb first imagined the King David musical in 2017. She believes it was a heavenly inspiration shared with the creators of the House of David series for Amazon Prime, which had premiered in February 2025, and the enormously successful animated movie David, released that December. Esteemed journalist and author Melanie Phillips, also a Jerusalemite, has spoken of the “return of the heroic David warrior” – the valorous men and women who fought this war above and below ground and who maintained the thorny home front. 

Readers of this column know that I am a longtime fan of the genre of women-to-women theater, music, and dance, in which Orthodox women who don’t perform before men express otherwise hidden and unexpressed talents. It’s hard for me to believe that it was 44 years ago that I went to my first women-to-women rock concert to raise funds for the family of Chaya Malka Abramson, recovering from a horrendous gas fire in the Old City of Jerusalem. 

Koffler Weinreb was a composer, guitarist, and vocalist in her own women-to-women band called Ayelet Hashachar (“morning star”) in Baltimore. She plays a stirring prophet Samuel in David the Servant King. Tamar Rabinowitz, a co-creator and vocalist of that same women’s band, brings to life David’s resolute mother, Nitzvevet. Their band’s first performance on September 9, 2001, two days before 9/11, was a fundraiser for victims of terror in the Second Intifada. 

David is played by the magnetic singer, actress, and scriptwriter Avital Macales. When, in the musical, Samuel anoints the future king, and the chorus sings the familiar words from Psalms and “Hallel” – in the midrash, from the mouth of David’s mother: “The stone the builders despised has become the cornerstone” – the tears in my eyes were not only for the ancient king of Israel but also for my unfairly reviled magnificent homeland and for our irrepressible people.