Looking for a fun night out that won’t put you into overdraft? Try one of Israel’s women’s basketball games. 

In the past two seasons, my husband and I have become regular attendees at the home games of our local women’s Premier League team Hapoel Lev Jerusalem. Even though an average game of the men’s Hapoel Jerusalem team draws 6,500 fans, and playoffs can attract up to 11,000 fans in the Jerusalem Payis Arena, the bleachers in the women’s games in the Malha Arena are sparsely occupied. 

We cheer our team together with only a hundred or two hundred Jerusalemites in an auditorium that has 2,000 seats. What a shame more spectators don’t come.  

From the beginning, we surprised ourselves how involved we got, shouting and cheering and singing with the rest of fans. The play on the court is exhilarating and professional. Have I mentioned that admission in the regular season is free? 

We started attending Hapoel Lev Jerusalem games last season after Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, became a sponsor of the local Premier League team and its expanding network of girls’ and teens’ basketball clubs. With the high stress level borne by Israeli children, playing basketball is an excellent outlet for physical and emotional health. More than 600 elementary and high school girls take part in Jerusalem’s neighborhood basketball teams. 

The players come from all sectors of Israeli society: Jews and Arabs, extremely religious and secular, as well as special-needs youngsters. In the junior teams, you can see girls playing in shorts, others in long skirts, and still others in long pants and hijabs as they dribble, shoot baskets, and block opponents. Basketball for girls is no longer out of bounds for recreation; and for rising stars, it’s perhaps even a career. 

It’s about time. 

Israeli women have won Olympic medals in judo, artistic gymnastics, and sailing, but we are behind in women’s basketball achievement. 

Here’s what you might not know: Women’s basketball was invented by a Jewish woman! 

The game of basketball was invented in 1891 by James Naismith in Springfield, Massachusetts. Naismith was coaching disruptive youth at the YMCA Training School and was challenged to find an indoor game for them in the frigid New England winters. He supposedly asked the janitor to pin up two boxes on poles, but the janitor brought peach baskets instead. “Basketball” was born. 

Thirty-two kilometers away from Springfield in Northampton, Massachusetts, a Jewish woman was teaching physical education at the prestigious all-women’s Smith College. The teacher heard about the new basketball game and decided to try out this new game with her students. 

Senda Berenson Abbott was born Senda Valvrojenski in the Vilnius Governorate of what was then the Russian Empire (today Lithuania). Her parents had moved the family to the United States when she was seven. Finding the name Valvrojenski awkward in Boston, they changed the family name to Berenson. 

To make basketball more appropriate for her Smithies, she tweaked the game to make it less aggressive and more modest. For example, women were only allowed to dribble three times. She authored a women’s rulebook that would be used for women’s basketball until the 1960s. Today, the rules for women’s basketball and men’s basketball are almost identical, with the exception of women using a smaller ball. (The Smith team’s mascot and nickname was changed in May 2025 from “Pioneers” to “Smith Bears” to honor Berenson.) 

Women’s basketball in the US received an assist from revolutionary legislation: Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.” 

After several failed attempts at women’s professional leagues in the US, the Women’s National Basketball Association was founded in 1996. An average of 1.5 million viewers tune in to watch WNBA games. 

Israel has yet to experience that boom. In our ancient capital city of Jerusalem, our Premier League team – Hapoel Lev Jerusalem women’s basketball team – is only six years old. 

The fortuitous meeting of two Israeli women gave birth to Hapoel Lev Jerusalem. 

Dr. Netta Abugov, mother of four, grew up in Holon, playing volleyball and windsurfing. The two older children of her four led her to the basketball dome. Son Imry easily found team opportunities, but daughter Tenne (her name means “basket,” like the kind used to carry first fruits on Shavuot) had to join a boys’ team to play because no girls’ teams existed where they were then living, in Kfar Oranim. Ten-year old Tenne and another girl player were regularly benched whenever they competed against teams from religious boys’ schools. 

Abugov was determined to change the reality for her daughter and all other girls. She got the ball rolling in the basketball world by joining the volunteer administration of a basketball team in Israel’s northwest, where Imry was playing. Abugov used her position as a sponsor and later club chairwoman to nurture the local women’s team. When the team did so well that it was promoted to the Premier League, the local municipal council refused to allocate the funds to sponsor it. 

One of the disappointed top players was American-Israeli Rebecca Ross, who, when growing up, also played basketball with the boys “when they let her in.” Ross persevered, and even though she’s a petite 165-cm.-tall woman, she played on teams in Israel and the US. In parallel, she always coached girls’ basketball. She particularly wanted to create basketball opportunities for girls on the autism spectrum, and she shared Abugov’s hoop dreams of creating a Premier League team for women in Israel’s capital. 

Abugov and Ross got together in Tel Aviv’s Basel Square to brainstorm. If Theodor Herzl said “In Basel we created the Jewish state,” Abugov and Ross, sitting on a bench in Basel Square in Tel Aviv, created Hapoel Lev Jerusalem. 

Today, among the 600 girls and women who take part in Hapoel Lev Jerusalem basketball teams, three teams play at Shalva, Israel Association for the Care and Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities. 

There are also women’s teams in Ashdod, Ramle, Ramat Gan, Holon, Ramat Hasharon, Rishon Lezion, Petah Tikva, Haifa, and Kfar Saba. 

The starting five at any Hapoel Lev Jerusalem game are skilled professional hoopsters, a mix of Israelis and foreign hires. Most of the basketball players are in their 20s, although center Ziomora Morrison, from Chile, is 36. Among the younger players are IDF soldiers designated as talented athletes and allowed to continue playing. 

At every game, girls around age nine from the Jerusalem kids’ clubs are invited to shoot hoops during the halftime intermission. On Monday, January 20, the team is honoring seniors. So if you’re over 65, you might get a chance to throw a three. 

At the end of last season, Hapoel Lev Jerusalem made it to the semifinals. My husband and I found ourselves dressed in the team’s red colors, passengers on our first-ever fan bus from Jerusalem to Rishon Lezion. Our team wasn’t going to face their fierce orange-and-white competitors, Hapoel Rishon Lezion, without us.

The US government stopped producing the Lincoln one-cent coin last month when the Philadelphia mint struck its last penny. There was even a mock funeral for the familiar coin last week, when hundreds of people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to mark the end of penny production. 

While penny-pinchers will bemoan the tendency of retailers to conveniently round off prices higher – no more $9.99 sales – I am more interested in the penny’s Jewish story. 

A word about America’s one-cent coins. The first – called Fugio or Franklin – was produced in 1787, even before Congress established the United States Mint and mandated that a penny be valued at one one-hundredth of a dollar. The Mint distributed its first set into circulation in March 1793. On the centennial of 16th president Abraham Lincoln’s birth in 1909, the Lincoln penny was issued.Un 

Duration 30:33 

Theodore Roosevelt was then president. Before 1909, American coins didn’t bear the likenesses of real persons, just allegorical figures. The head of a generic Indian adorned the one-center. 

However, Roosevelt was a great admirer of Lincoln, who had saved the Union and was of Roosevelt’s same Republican Party. He reputedly viewed a bas-relief plaque of Lincoln that he loved in a Lower East Side settlement house, and learned that the artist who created it was an immigrant named Victor David Brenner. 

Avigdor ben Gershon Brenner was born in Siauliai (Shavl), Lithuania, in 1871, then part of the Russian Empire. He received a traditional Jewish education and engaged from a young age in the family expertise in metalwork. Some say his grandfather was a blacksmith. Then his father became a metalworker and maker of family seals for aristocracy. 

Avigdor ben Gershon learned the trade of die-cutting and worked in his father’s little shop in the vibrant Jewish community. At 16, he traveled around the region, learning line engraving for publications, how to cut rubber stamps, and jewelry engraving. For a time, he had his own small shop in Kovno, today, Kaunas. At age 19, he – like tens of thousands of Jewish immigrants fleeing pogroms and seeking opportunities – sailed to the US. 

Avigdor ben Gershon then changed his name to Victor David Brenner. Despite his many skills, he had a hard time finding work in New York City. He finally got a job in a small shop on Essex Street, where he engraved badges for neighborhood clubs and societies and cut dies for jewelers and engravers. Two years later, he opened his own shop on Fulton Street and managed to bring over his parents and brothers to America. 

One day, a well-known coin collector came across a badge featuring the head of Beethoven in a Lower East Side shop. The badge had been created for a local choir. The collector admired the work and sought the designer –Victor David Brenner, and introduced him to the head of the American Numismatic Society. Brenner subsequently received commissions for prestigious metals. 

Despite his growing success, Brenner boldly closed his shop and traveled to Europe to improve his artistry, studying at the Académie Julian in Paris with artist Oscar Roty and sculpture with Alexander Charpentier, an adherent of the Rodin School. Brenner won awards at the Paris Exposition of 1900, finally returning to New York in 1909. He was 38 and now a full-fledged artist. 

At that time, America’s 26th president, Theodore Roosevelt, decided to redesign American coins. For the centennial of Lincoln’s birth, Roosevelt wanted to replace the Indian Head cent with an image of Lincoln. He reportedly saw a sculpture he loved in a Lower East Side settlement house, made by Brenner. Roosevelt met with Brenner and hired him to do the coin design. The new penny was so popular, that the New York police had to control crowds at the Subtreasury Building when it was issued. 

Nonetheless, soon a controversy erupted: There were complaints that Brenner’s initials on the coin were too large. Among the complainers was The New York Times, asking sarcastically why they didn’t print Brenner’s address and his picture on the penny as well. 

The production halted to remove his initials. 

According to the leading American numismatic magazine Coin World, for more than a century collectors have been asking whether Brenner, the man who designed the most popular coin in the history of the world, was denied his due in 1909 because he was Jewish. 

“Over the years, darker motives have been ascribed to the removal of the initials. Brenner was a private medalist and a Jewish immigrant. Mint employees, particularly chief engraver Charles E. Barber, chafed at seeing outsiders work on US coins and fought using them at every turn. Some numismatists believe, too, that antisemitism might have played a part in the decision to remove Brenner’s initials,” the magazine wrote. 

In 1918, the year after Barber died, Brenner’s initials were returned to the coin – in letters so small you need a magnifying glass to see them. They can be found on the beveled edge at the base of Lincoln’s portrait, just below Lincoln’s shoulder. 

WHY AM I so interested in Brenner’s story? Not because my late father was an avid numismatist with a specialty in colonial currency, the banknotes produced before the United States unified its money. 

There is a presence of Victor Brenner in Jerusalem, where many Jerusalemites have literally walked over without recognizing his art! 

Women’s Zionist Organization spreads throughout the US 

Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization, was founded in 1912 and soon spread throughout the United States. There was a competition among regions to create a seal. New York Hadassah turned to its local artist, Victor Brenner, who helped it win the competition. 

A version of Brenner’s Hadassah seal, executed in Jerusalem mosaic, is embedded into the Hadassah Hospital floor, right before the staircase of the rather grand entrance hall designed by International Style architect Erich Mendelsohn, who fled Germany in 1935 and received the hospital commission from the women of Hadassah. 

The seal has a Star of David in the middle, surrounded by branches of myrtle – hadas in Hebrew, the root of the organization’s name and also the Hebrew name of Queen Esther. Brenner’s original Lincoln penny had wheat sheaves on the reverse. 

Hadassah Hospital on Jerusalem’s Mount Scopus was opened in 1939, in time to absorb many doctors and nurses fleeing Hitler. It was moved to temporary quarters in town after the massacre of the medical convoy of April 13, 1948. The empty buildings were guarded by Israeli armed personnel until the Six Day War. 

When Jerusalem was reunited in 1967, then-mayor Teddy (another Theodore) Kollek called then-Hadassah national president Charlotte Jacobson to say, “Charlotte, I have your keys.” It took a decade to renovate and modernize the building. 

The Brenner-designed seal in mosaic was preserved along with the Mendelsohn dramatic staircase, an oddity for a hospital. 

Whenever I give a tour there, I like to have a Lincoln penny jingling in my pocketbook to remember the Jewish artist of the most reproduced work of American art. 

Pause next time you’re there, and have a look. 

Brenner died in 1924 at age 53 and is buried at Mount Judah Cemetery in Queens, New York. 

A 1909 Lincoln US cent with his initials VDB was placed on a calibration device on board the NASA Curiosity rover located on the surface of Mars. 

Last month, I wrote about the disappearance of my sense of humor. Two years of war, nonsensical accusations against the State of Israel, and rising antisemitism had dampened by spirits. I just couldn’t find anything funny. So, I asked you, dear readers, to flood my inbox with jokes. You kindly responded. 

In addition to the jokes, which I will share below, I also received life tips. One lovely reader offered me a free course in meditation. I very much appreciate the offer, but I have to confess that I’ve flunked meditation every time I’ve tried it.  I do my deepest thinking while swimming. 

Here is a selection of the jokes that happily came my way. I haven’t asked permission to use the contributors’ names. But you know who you are. I thank you all! 

In this season of light, let’s try some lightheartedness. 

Catskills humor 

A reader heard this joke 50 years ago in the former heartland of Jewish humor, the Catskills (the Catskill Mountains in New York State). 

A man is standing in the vestibule of a train near the doors. 

The conductor comes over and says, “Sir! You are not allowed to stand here while the train is in motion. Please go and take a seat and take that suitcase with you.” 

The man ignores the conductor and stays right where he is. The conductor again asks him to move, and still the man ignores him. When the train pulls into a station, the conductor takes the suitcase and tosses it out through the open doors. 

The train then moves on and the conductor says, “That’s what you get for breaking the rules. What do you say about that?” 

The man smiles and, in a sing-song manner, he utters…. “Yuba, buba, yuba, buba… It’s not my suitcase!” 

Blissful Humpty Dumpty  

Another reader sent me a cartoon of Humpty Dumpty enjoying autumn. Humpty Dumpty is blissfully lounging in a pile of colorful leaves, having slipped from a tree. The caption reads: “Humpty Dumpty had a great fall!” 

From a kibbutznik 

The phone rings. A 12-year-old girl answers and speaks very softly. 

“Is your mother home?” the caller asks.  

 The girl answers, “She’s taking a nap.”  

“Is your father home?” the caller asks. 

“He’s also napping,” she replies. 

“And what are you doing?” the caller asks. 

 The little girl replies, “I have trumpet lessons…”  

The Sahara Forest 

During the Great Depression, a newcomer from Russia applies for the only job available, that of a lumberjack.“Mr. Schwartz, you don’t look like a lumberjack.” 

“Appearances can be deceiving. I’m a very experienced lumberjack.” 

“So where did you work before?” 

“I worked in the Sahara Forest.” 

“You mean the Sahara Desert?” 

“Well, now it’s a desert!” 

Down the motorway 

 A woman calls her elderly parents on their cellphone.  

“Be careful, Mom and Dad. It says on the radio that there’s someone driving the wrong way down the motorway.” 

 “It’s not one, honey,” they answer, “it’s hundreds of them.” 

Lunch at a kosher deli 

Two older Jewish men are having lunch at a kosher deli. The Chinese waiter addresses them in flawless Yiddish. When they pay the bill, they compliment the owner on the excellent food and service and ask how the waiter knows such good Yiddish.  

“Shh,” he whispers. “He thinks we’re teaching him English.” 

The wrong Colchester 

Another reader suggested that I had been looking in the wrong places to find something funny. Although I grew up in Colchester, Connecticut, I should be investigating what makes people laugh in the original Colchester – that is, the British city.  In short, he said that British humor would be guaranteed to make me laugh. 

I admit to initial skepticism.  

When I was 15, my Connecticut parents took my sister and me on our maiden trip abroad to England and Denmark. Having heard about the wonders of West End theaters, they asked the hotel concierge to book several shows for us. 

In addition to catching Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap, we found ourselves in the stalls of the Palladium with a “beloved comedian, renowned for his sharp wit and playful humor.” While the other 2,282 people in the audience laughed through the show, the four of us Americans sat there bewildered.  

Nonetheless, I take readers’ ideas seriously and hoped that the British comedians would heal my broken “humorous” bone. He suggested that I might want to combine something Jewish and British, and begin with a dose of “The Two Ronnies.” And yes, I laughed through it. It defies description; just search The Two Ronnies: Insurance against becoming Jewish. 

One YouTube video led to another.  

The great Jackie Mason 

The lords of YouTube sent me on to a clip of the late and great Jackie Mason’s lecture at Oxford University’s Oxford Union Society, Part 1. Mason had the rare distinction of being popular in both the United States and Britain. When he received an award from the esteemed society at the esteemed university in 1992, he was given instructions, which he promptly ignored, to give a serious lecture. No jokes.  

Mason hailed from a long line of rabbis and was an ordained Orthodox rabbi himself. His “bima [pulpit] humor” filled the house of worship before he became a full-time comedian. At Oxford, Mason’s self-effacing Jewish jokes had the youthful audience – a mix of non-Jews and Jews, a fair number of whom wore kippot – roaring with delight. 

Everyone seemed very relaxed about the jokes, which included a stream of them about Jews “spending their whole lives trying to prove they’re not Jewish,” such as driving Mercedes cars and having plastic surgery. “Every time you are talking to a Jew, you’re looking at bandages for an hour and a half,” Mason said. 

Today, I would feel intensely uncomfortable sitting in the audience of nearly any American or British university having Mason, one of the funniest people in the world, tell such jokes. Mason died in 2021, at age 93. I wonder what his comedy routine would include today. 

From Jerusalem, wishing you a lighthearted Hanukkah.  

 

My late and beloved mother refused to use an Israeli senior citizen bus card when she was way over the age to qualify. When I asked her why, she shrugged, “No one needs to know how old I am.” 

Mom never left the house inelegantly dressed or without beauty-enhancing makeup, so I considered her use of a younger person card a touch of pleasant vanity. Now that I’m officially a senior citizen, I’m wondering whether it was wisdom or a generational embarrassment that informed her decision. 

My mother was spry and clearheaded until the final years of her life, and could have flaunted her ability to keep up with the young folks in her aerobics class or boasted about her concentration levels – she read three books a week. Maybe she feared inviting in the evil eye by pronouncing aloud the number of her years.   

Maybe she understood ageism before the term was used. Was ageism, with its negative stereotypes and pressure to remain youthful, so embedded in her mindset that not mentioning her age had become a habit of avoiding judgment? 

There’s even a toxic concept called “internalized age shaming” when older people feel guilty, ashamed, or embarrassed about their age. That certainly doesn’t help make the growing-old pains of age easier. 

In a 2024 study by the giant American Association of Retired People that actually deals with seniors who aren’t retired, two-thirds (64%) of workers have reported seeing or experiencing age discrimination in the workplace – even though it’s officially illegal. This study says that “older workers” can be as young as 51! 

So the question remains: Should we be so free with our ages once the number climbs past the culturally comfortable? Should age be a badge of success or like a code we keep tucked in our wallets when we can’t remember which PIN goes with which credit card? Living in Israel, where strangers have few inhibitions about asking the most personal questions, how should we respond? 

The late Prof. Yoram Maaravi, a leading Israeli figure in geriatrics whom I knew at Hadassah Medical Organization, always belittled the “anti-aging” industry. He always said that we need to be “pro-aging.” 

It’s easy to misjudge reactions to revealing one’s age. Once, when I was swimming at the YMCA, I couldn’t help myself from giving advice to a young man who, otherwise fit, was a particularly inept swimmer who was turning his head 90 degrees with every stroke. He thanked me and tried it. Later, he asked me how old I was.  

I took his reaction that I was his grandmother’s age as a compliment. When I related this to one of our grandsons of similar age, he rolled his eyes. No young man would want to get athletic tips from someone else’s grandmother, even if she was once a summer camp swimming teacher like me. 

I understand my mother’s insistence on only revealing her age with a reluctant sigh when a doctor was examining her. She felt vulnerable revealing her true tally of years. It invites judgments, a report card of sharpness and relevance, and a reading of the map of lines on our faces. 

To get some perspective on this issue, I consult Tova Weinberg, a senior woman who frequently deals with the question of whether or not to reveal age. Weinberg is one of the Jewish world’s most experienced and successful matchmakers.  

Fixing up seniors is her specialty. Weinberg is the co-founder of SawYouAtSinai.com, the popular and successful service that combines online profiles with experienced matchmakers. She took on this profession (Weinberg actually qualified as a dentist) to counter intermarriage. She and her husband moved from Pittsburgh to Israel. 

Since 2003, the site SawYouAtSinai has made 2,530 matches, according to its daily tally. Weinberg herself modestly only takes credit for 374 marriages. 

Shadchanut, matchmaking, is often associated with a certain measure of, shall we say, embellishment and veiling. 

Weinberg prefers to call it “fudging.” She provides an example. 

“A widower aged 55 said he wanted to marry someone five years younger,” she says. “He had just gone through the painful bereavement for his wife and wanted to marry someone younger. 

 “I had the perfect match for him, but she was 60. So, I told him that I didn’t know exactly how old she was, but she looks as if she’s in her 40s. They hit it off right away and are happily married. He told me that he would not have gone out with her if I’d told him she was five years older, and has thanked me often for making the introduction. 

 “Of course, for this couple, the question of having children is no longer relevant, as it would be for a potential young couple. 

“Age is just two little numbers, and I never recommend that a couple discuss age on their first date. Maybe their fifth date is about right. I sometimes tell a couple that ‘I’m not going to discuss age’ until they meet. The question is whether or not they click.” 

When she’s not getting beyond people’s reluctance to meet someone who isn’t in their idealized age group, Weinberg thinks it’s important to be matter-of-fact about your age. Whatever it is, claim your age without shrinking, and be proud of it. By the way, she’s 72. 

Ironically I was recently trying to get a handle on artificial intelligence and signed up for the paid version of ChatGPT, I was locked out because I hadn’t provided proof of my age! Somehow, the all-wise ChatGPT insisted that I lived in Italy, where you have to be at least 18 to use ChatGTP. After numerous failed trials, when I almost summoned grandchildren to help, I managed to pass a simplified test, taking a selfie from my laptop, posing with my passport.  

I had to hold my passport with precision; the computer kept ordering me to move back, move center, remove glare – until I got it right. I received an email congratulating me on passing the test, as if it were the bar exam. 

Now that I’m approved, I try ChatGPT on our question of whether or not to be forthright or coy about age. “Our years are the map of Israel: the wars survived, the children raised under sirens, the moments when we held our breath together, the miracles we counted – sometimes in daylight, sometimes in darkness” 

Pretty good for a secular computer. 

There is copious advice on the Internet that touts proactive announcements of age. It says seniors should “live truthfully, to give people a chance to see what we’ve accomplished.” There are equally strong voices saying that we should never give out our age, and they provide polite but lighthearted ways of discussing it – e.g., “old enough to drink legally,” “old enough to remember when phones had cords… but young enough to still lose my phone daily.” 

There is, of course, the advantage of seniors riding free on Israeli public transportation, which even my dear mom might have agreed to, now that the lower age is only 63  

I never liked the statement, attributed to diverse authors and with slight differences, that youth “is too important to be wasted upon the very young.” 

Who of us would want to live again the emotional challenges of a teenager? 

A brand new lavish hotel has, excitingly, sprung up in Zichron Yaakov, on the Carmel Coast, on the west side of the city, overlooking the verdant mountain coastline. It’s spacious, modern, with an exhilarating sea view from every bed in every guest room, from the dining room, from the lobby, and from the lawn. And yes, from the shower. The new hotel is called Gordonia Zikhron Ya’akov, and it cost NIS 200 million shekels to build. 

The Gordonia hotel chain is named for the bearded Zionist pioneer Aharon David (A. D.) Gordon (1856-1922), who believed in honoring nature, in manual labor, and in settling the Land of Israel.  His followers in the Gordonia youth movement, which was based on A.D’s teachings, founded Kibbutz Ma’ale Hahamisha in 1938. In 1940, pioneers opened the first convalescent home in the Judean Hills near Jerusalem. The Gordonia hotel chain owners preserved the historic name. An earlier project was the luxury renovation of a hotel in Ma’ale Hahamisha. They have also taken over the ownership of the upscale, charming Elma Hotel in Zichron Yaakov. 

Gordonia Zikhron Ya’akov is the chain’s first hotel built from scratch. The project has been in the planning for a decade, and has moved ahead despite the tourist-challenged years of the COVID pandemic and a two-year war in Israel. The view, over hillside fields and fishponds and sea, captured the imagination of the owners, the management company, and the architects – who all sought not to disturb the area’s natural beauty. 

The 141 deluxe guest rooms and suites make copious use of natural materials, such as wood and stone. The lobby opens up onto a grand plaza, with an infinity swimming pool lining the cusp of the mountainside. 

I recently took part in a journalists’ peek of the hotel. Wrapped in a mid-November warm breeze, a projected three months before its slated opening, I stood at the edge of the 81-meter-long pool as the sun set. I had to hold myself back from slipping into Israel’s longest swimming pool, even in its unheated state. Once the hotel opens, that glorious pool will be heated year-round to 28°C. 

A private pool? 

For those who also like their own private pool, there are deluxe guest rooms with small private pools, too. Seeking the ultimate splurge, you can also book the 109 sq. m. Presidential Suite, which features two bedrooms, a living room, and a huge terrace with a private pool and jacuzzi. And, of course, you can soak in boundless, magnificent views. 

Chapeau to the Gordonia movement for maintaining earthy tones in the interior: cinnamon and camel, buff, bronze, and beige. 

A novel touch is that the afternoon refreshments offered in the lobby are all included in the price of the room. Want a cappuccino, or better a glass of Cabernet in this wine region? Just ask. No one will enquire for your room number. 

Families will want to note that the hotel does not welcome children under the age of 10, except for the Jewish holidays. There are no plans for kiddie clubs or wandering clowns. There is, however, a kiddie pool, if you’re there with toddlers on the holidays. 

The spa spreads over two floors, with 11 treatment rooms. The piece de resistance is a Watsu therapy pool that resembles a large mikveh, which offers treatment to music above and below water. There are also a large jet pool, wet and dry saunas, a Turkish bath, and even an ice bath. Although there are archaeological, historic, and culinary sites nearby, the management encourages vacationers to stay on the property to relax and enjoy. 

The cuisine, says the chef, reflects the region, with its mix of venerable Jewish settlement (Zichron Yaakov was founded in 1882), and nearby Arab villages. You can watch the chefs at work, preparing, for example, meat, chicken, and fish on three charcoal tandoors, or cylindrical clay ovens. And of course, there will be plenty of wine. The kosher certificate is issued by the local rabbinical authority. 

The hotel will be managed for the next 25 years by the Kerem Management company, in cooperation with Efraim Kremer of Eshet Tours, and headed by Gadi Priver, whose personal story of bellboy-to-chain-manager is film-worthy. 

Priver’s theory is that Israelis want to feel like royalty when they go on vacation and are willing to pay high prices if they feel they are getting good value for their hard-earned money. Hence, the Gordonia chain emphasizes self-indulgence, excellence, and pampering. The price for the run-in period is about NIS 3,000 a night for half-board for a couple, plus VAT for Israelis. 

As the hotel isn’t yet open, I can’t evaluate the comfort level of the beds or the lavishness of the breakfast. I hope I’ll be back. I’ll try to remember to pack lightly, because my one complaint about its planning is having no closed closet space to hang up my skirts and dresses. There is something like a chin-up bar over the suitcase holder for hangable garments near the bedroom. 

A second Gordonia hotel will open this year on the Kinneret, at the site of the Luna Gal waterpark that veteran Israelis, like me, will remember fondly as a place of family fun. While we were in Zichron Yaakov, Priver unveiled a dazzling list of new hotel ventures planned throughout Israel, in a vote of confidence for local and international tourism. 

 

In the new musical Heroines! Songs & Soliloquies for the Soul, the 10-woman cast on the stage harmonizes in a song titled “How Does One Remember?” 

Two years after the Oct. 7 massacre, how are we all to remember the early days of the war, the sights and sounds, the fears and determination? 

I’m still wearing mnemonic yellow nail polish on my pinkies and hostage ribbons painted on my ring fingers, waiting for the murdered hostages to be returned. When they’re all back, I’ll switch to orange because with all the people and events that have crowded our memories, I don’t want to forget Shiri Bibas and her red-headed children.te 

The musical Heroines, produced by the 24-year-old Raise Your Spirits Theatre group of Gush Etzion, brings back those memories, highlighting the courage and resilience of the women of Israel facing terror, fighting in combat units, facing the death of loved ones, and stepping forward to help others. Even though several of the stories presented in Heroines were familiar to me, I was grateful for the reminder. 

There is so much to remember in Operation Swords of Iron (recently name-changed to “The War of Revival”), that women’s bravery and fortitude are apt to be forgotten. The valiant, bold IDF soldiers are mostly men. They rushed to defend Israel, fought the enemy on every front, and endangered themselves to rescue comrades. Nearly a thousand men gave their lives; more than 20,000 are war-wounded. These soldiers saved Israel and the Jewish people. They can never receive enough appreciation and gratitude. 

Playwrights/librettists Toby Klein Greenwald and Shayna Levine-Hefetz from Gush Etzion use a combination of monologue and song to honor the women of Israel. The nearly two-hour, all-women performance premiered in Modi’in last week to, as always, a women-only audience. Among the performers are women who restrict themselves from singing before men because of their religious beliefs. Elisheva Savir is the music director, and Tammy Rubin co-produces the show with Klein Greenwald. 

Full disclosure. One of the stories is based on a column I wrote in The Jerusalem Post about a mikveh attendant whose bus was hit by a missile, and she saved her fellow passengers but was wounded herself. I met her on her way to recovery in the rehabilitation center at Hadassah-University Medical Center, on Jerusalem’s Mount Scopus. Another monologue is the story of my Atlanta-born cousin Rose Lubin, 21, who helped protect Kibbutz Sa’ad and then was murdered serving as a Border Police officer in the Old City of Jerusalem. 

I admit, also, that I am a longtime fan and admirer of the genre of women’s musical theater created by Klein Greenwald and her neighbors during the Second Intifada, when buses were blowing up in Jerusalem. 

THE SHOW opens with the story of Adi Vital-Kaploun, who was murdered protecting her children on Kibbutz Holit. There’s a monologue about the heralded, first-in-history, all-female tank crew. The audience also meets the women of the military burial society who honored the murdered female soldiers as they prepared them for burial. 

Sixteen stories are fully showcased, plus others in snapshots. As Klein Greenwald says, there could be hundreds, maybe thousands, of stories of courageous intrepid women. The selected stories represent the vast collection of stories that could and should be told. A number of the heroines are well known, such as Rachel Edri of Ofakim, who stalled terrorists with her home-baked cookies; Shifra Buchris, a mother of 10 and commander in the Border Police; and Rachel Goldberg-Polin, mother of murdered hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin. It was a video of Goldberg-Polin speaking so eloquently that inspired Levine-Hefetz to propose the show to Klein Greenwald. 

Among the heroines are also volunteers – those who cooked and drove to bases, and taught yoga. Klein Greenwald, who hails from Cleveland, Ohio, reads the line of a volunteer who recalls finding a 1950s Cleveland Browns sweatshirt while sorting clothing for evacuees. It’s details like this that make the stories personal and powerful. The spotlighted women aren’t spartans or paragons. They reveal their imperfections and fears, anguish and pain. 

And somehow there’s also humor. For instance, the song that follows the monologue about the evacuees is “It Takes a Woman to Make an Ark a Home.” 

In the first performance, amid the shattering story of a family bereaved over three generations, one of the performers misspoke and described a Chabad woman as operating a tattoo parlor in Tel Aviv! The devout woman actually runs a tattoo-removal clinic. Her fellow actress corrected her, and the audience enjoyed the blip so much it might remain in future shows. 

The women actors (are we back to calling them actresses?) in pink, purple, and plum maxi dresses sit on tall stools. The stories are told from different points of view. You might meet the heroine, her mother, her sister, or even her grandmother. The performers are a mix of ages, from maidens to grandmothers. 

Although it’s impossible to be comprehensive in bringing forth the wide spectrum of heroism, the playwrights have done a good job of it, by including Jewish women, Druze women, and Bedouin women, those who took up arms and those who provided support to family, friends, and strangers. 

The final song describes the biblical Miriam leading the women across the Reed Sea. As we all recall, they didn’t forget to pack their tambourines because they knew there would be cause to rejoice. 

I have seen most of this ensemble’s shows and have often brought my then-young daughters or granddaughters. This show is too hard for younger children who have had their own war experience with which to cope. The ensemble’s website recommends it from age 16 and up. 

Do bring your tissues if you’re going to the show, and you should. The stories may make you cry, but they’ll also infuse you with hope, pride, and inspiration. 

You won’t forget them.  

Call it a busman’s holiday. On a beach vacation, I find myself reading Henrietta Szold: Hadassah and the Zionist Dream, by Francine Klagsbrun (Yale University Press, 2024). 

As much as I’ve read about Szold (I even put on a one-woman play about her, which I’ve performed for Jane Fonda and playwright Eve Ensler), I always learn something new when I read about this colossal Zionist hero. 

I learned here that Miss Szold, as she was called, was embarrassed as each of her birthdays was celebrated with a fundraising campaign by the women of Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America. Yet, knowing the dire health and educational needs of pre-state Israel, she always agreed. 

Her particular discomfort was a comfort for me. As pleased and honored as I was to recently receive Hadassah-Israel’s Builders of Jerusalem Award together with my friend and colleague Barbara Goldstein, I felt discomfited by inviting people to attend a ceremony that included a financial contribution. 

The cause couldn’t have been a better one. All funds went to help complete the Gandel Rehabilitation Center on Jerusalem’s Mount Scopus, opened in haste in January 2024 to accommodate our newly wounded soldiers. This week, the number of our soldiers wounded since Oct. 7 was announced to be a disheartening 20,000. Never have we needed rehabilitation more. I have personally witnessed the return to full life that this first-class rehabilitation center can provide. 

 More or less, what follows is what I said as I accepted the award. 

A word about my co-honoree, veteran Hadassah activist Barbara Goldstein. We share the same first name – which turns out to have been the most popular name in American in 1942 when she was born in New Jersey. Seven years later, when I was born in Connecticut, the name Barbara had been outstripped by Linda and Mary, never to reign again. 

Because we work together and often think alike, we are sometimes called “the Barbaras” – like the “Carolinas.” North and South Carolina were once a single colony which split up, but we’re a good fit together, and understand each other’s goals, frustrations, and sense of humor. We Barbaras share a love of Israel and the values of Hadassah. 

I want to thank you all in the names of the soldiers and civilians who are benefiting from the Gandel Rehabilitation Center. 

Let’s remember that two years ago, we didn’t have a first-class rehab center in our capital city. 

We are approaching the second anniversary of Oct. 7, and I’m thinking of two of the war wounded who were sharing a room at Mount Scopus already on October 8. 

One was an undercover officer whose first name we could never mention. We just called him H, and when visitors came, he wore a mask like Zorro. 

H had saved for a long time to buy himself a Hummer. On Oct. 7, he drove south from Jerusalem and, without connecting with his unit, fought terrorists in the kibbutzim. 

His hospital roommate was a police detective named Timor. “I’m just a plain policeman doing my duty,” he told me. “I have no story.” 

I would later find out that Timor was the first police officer to confront the terrorists in Sderot. He fought off a pickup truck of terrorists with the 14 bullets in his handgun, rescued a fellow police officer, and sounded the alarm in the hard-hit city. 

Both men returned in ambulances, without their cars. Both had serious bullet wounds. Their beds were in the obstetrics wards. 

But now we have a wonderful rehabilitation center – although it’s far from completed. Whenever I’m there, I’m uplifted by the spirit of the soldiers, who are eager to get better fast so they can return to their buddies in the field. 

A tank gunner who used a break in reserve service to travel to the US, where he was run over by an ISIS terrorist in New Orleans, described the Israeli rehab process he is undergoing as a kind of “tough love” in which you are nudged to work harder. 

How proud I am that we who live in Jerusalem have taken on this holy cause. What did the prophet Isaiah say? “Zion will be redeemed in judgment, and her captives with tzedakah.” 

The paths of my life have all led to Hadassah. 

I grew up in the rural small town of Colchester, Connecticut. In my family, “Hadassah” was a sacred word. I went with my father to a Hartford antique shop to find the perfect gold pin into which to set my mother’s life membership badge. My mother made my sister Charlotte and me life members, too. 

In fifth grade, we Colchester Jewish kids all joined Young Judaea, then sponsored by Hadassah. By my senior year of high school, I was elected Connecticut region president, and was driven to lead activities at clubs around the state. 

One evening, we were dancing the hora, and the music changed to “Jerusalem of Gold.” I had an emotional jolt and felt something shift inside me, too. At a Young Judaea retreat, the Israeli emissary challenged me about the authenticity of my commitment to Zionism. I was insulted. Here I was, spending my free time with Young Judaea while my classmates were driving around in ’55 Chevys. That day, amid the Connecticut greenery, walking near the rippling Salmon River with its New England covered bridge, I had an epiphany. I saw myself hiking in the Negev. I knew I was destined to live in Israel. 

When I started writing the true stories that have become my trademark, especially in my Jerusalem Post Magazine column, “The Human Spirit,” the first one was about a remarkable woman who rescued her three children and her grandmother from a blazing fire. She was a patient at Hadassah hospital. 

The heroine of my novel, The Thirteenth Hour, is a researcher at Hadassah Hospital. I wasn’t working for Hadassah at the time. 

All our children have had part of their studies or professional lives associated with Hadassah. 

So when a headhunter offered me a public relations job for Hadassah, I agreed to do it for a year. 

Here I am, more than 25 years later, hundreds of stories and videos and speeches later, and continuing. At the same time, I was privileged to be offered to write this column for the Magazine. Here I am, 677 columns later – but who’s counting? 

I’ve been fortunate to be accompanied on this journey by my supportive husband, Gerald Schroeder, by friends and family, and blessed with beautiful and brilliant children and grandchildren. Zionists all. 

This award, so graciously presented to me, is called Bonei Yerushalyim, “Builders of Jerusalem.” Three times a day, Jews everywhere pray that God’s presence should return to Jerusalem. The blessing begins with the word “and,” which connects it to the previous blessing, which ends with the word tzaddikim, “the righteous.” That’s all of you – who are building Jerusalem. Not only the building on Mount Scopus that is helping to rebuild so many lives, but by living here and summoning God’s presence from the Heavenly Jerusalem. 

Jerusalem is built of stone, not plywood or bricks. Sometimes I think we, too, need the extra strength of stone to live here. As the old Jerusalem song “Hakotel,” written after the Six Day War by Yossi Gamzu, says: Yesh anashim im lev shel even; yesh avanim im lev adam. “There are people with hearts of stone; there are stones with human hearts.” 

Thank you for the recognition. May we forever have the strength of stones and caring hearts.

The first question our friends asked about our vacation in Italy wasn’t how the weather was. They wanted to know how we fared in Europe at this time of protests. Had anyone shouted at us or even attacked us? 

On a recent cruise from Haifa reported in these pages (“‘Tzuris’ in Syros – New enemies don’t deserve our business,” Magazine, August 1, 2025), I was among 1,600 plus Israeli passengers who were prevented from debarking at the Greek island of Syros. When the destination was changed to Cyprus, protesters were waiting there near the beach, causing us to take a detour. 

This week, cruising Israelis were attacked in Crete. Our teenage granddaughter and her friends in Greece were taunted by antisemites. One of our adult children was repeatedly interrupted on an invited lecture in Northern Europe because the research came from an Israeli institution “complicit with the IDF.”  

European concern 

My husband and I were indeed concerned as we departed on our El Al flight for our annual vacation in Italy. For 10 years, we have been going to the same apartment, same small seaside town in the southern Italian region of Abruzzo, about 210 kilometers east of Rome. Between our vacations, the landlord stores our kosher pots and pans, Shabbat accouterments, and beach towels. As we pulled into town, it looked unchanged, except that the St. Agnes café has been renamed Il Buen Amor (good love). 

Even though we’ve been going there for more than a decade, not everyone knows we’re Israelis. We don’t hide it, but we don’t flaunt it, either. It was summer, so nearly everyone was wearing beach hats like us. The Elul shofar blowing from our apartment was obscured by the sound of crashes of glass as the garbage woman dumped the recycled vetro containers into her truck. No one asked about my yellow-polished pinkies or the yellow ribbon drawn on the red nail of my ring finger.  

And, of course, no one could hear the music on my headphones as I swam the waves of the turquoise Adriatic, two kilometers along the shore, to the voices of Hanan Ben Ari, Yoram Gaon, Yonatan Razel, Eden Golan, Aya Korem, Ofra Haza and Yuval Raphael – whom I listened to singing “New day will rise, life will go on” (from Israel’s 2025 Eurovision entry. Thank you, IDF intelligence granddaughter for helping me upload so much Israeli music). 

It isn’t a Jewish area. It’s not Milan or Rome or the ghetto of Venice. Our landlord, who grew up there, said there are no Jewish people living in the town. We didn’t hear any Hebrew, and only a sprinkling of English. We were likely the only ones of the thousands at this family beach resort who woke up with the Houthi missile alarms on our phones. 

Welcomed with hugs 

Still, there were those who knew our country of origin. How would they react to us this year? 

As soon as we arrived, our landlord hurried to see us and gave us bear hugs. He asked: “Before we say anything, I have to know how are your children and grandchildren? Are they all right? The ones in the army, too?” 

He and his wife touchingly texted us offers of free refuge in their rental apartment on Oct. 7, and this last June during Operation Rising Lion against Iran. 

The woman who runs the local tourist agency also ran up to hug me. “I was so worried for you all year,” she said. “I prayed for you.” 

I stopped by the beauty parlor to make my usual appointment. But before we looked at a calendar, there were emotional embraces and expressions of how good it was to see me. The hairdresser, a dedicated runner, hoped to take part in the next Jerusalem Marathon. 

In line in the supermarket, two women from Rome on a seaside vacation asked me where I was from. When I told them “Jerusalem,” they said, “You must have had a difficult year. Enjoy the vacation.” 

Abruzzo’s Jewish history 

Okay, this isn’t all of Italy. There have been protests in Rome and at the Venice Film Festival. But just maybe, let’s hope, the people in beautiful Abruzzo, with its rugged mountains, golden beaches, and nature parks, are typical. 

Although the Italian coast of Abruzzo was once reputedly popular among vacationing Jews from colder European countries, and one of the guest houses still bears a Jewish name, we assumed we were the only Jews or Israelis in town. 

Italy, of course, has a long Jewish history, much of it on the Adriatic coast. In the port of Ancona, 150 kilometers north, Doña Gracia Mendes Nasi led a boycott after a massacre of the local Jews in 1555. To the south, the Jewish communities of Puglia (Apulia) suffered the vicissitudes of Jewish history. We read their emotive Jewish liturgical poems (piyyutim) in slichot (penitential prayers) and on Yom Kippur. There were also internment and concentration camps in Abruzzo in World War II. 

But in the south Italian region today, the most prominent remnants of a past Jewish presence are the odd and ancient fishing structures called trabocchi (singular traboccho). South of Pescara, Abruzzo’s most populated city (400,000), the blue flag beaches of the region’s coast yield to a 40-kilometer distinctive patch of craggy shore line where the trabocchi stand. 

Although some credit ancient Phoenicians, many sources insist that Jewish immigrants built them. The prevalent explanation is that in the 17th century, an extended family of Sephardi Jews fled persecution in southern France for the Italian coast. This was around the time that the 1627 earthquake and tsunami wreaked destruction on the shoreline and the fishing industry.  

The French family’s expertise was reputedly in building wooden bridges, not sailing, and they created these platforms reaching into the sea, with wooden walkways anchored to the coast, leading far out enough to water that is sufficiently deep to catch fish (at least six meters). Five hundred years ago, nets were lowered and raised from these pine platforms through an ingenious system of winches and levers. 

The trabocchi 

Over the centuries, artists have painted and poets have extolled the strange beauty of the trabocchi. The most often quoted description appears in an 1894 novel by Abruzzo archwriter/politician Gabriele D’Annunzio titled Il trionfo della Morte (The Triumph of Death). 

“A strange fishing machine, entirely composed of planks and beams, like a colossal spider. Stretching out from the rocks, like a lurking monster, with its hundred limbs the traboccho had a formidable appearance…. The contraption seems to have a life of its own, to be a living creature.”  

I wonder if the controversial pro-fascist writer, who was no friend of the Jews, knew of their origin. 

Today, the trabocchi house trendy seafood restaurants that feature foods like squid and octopus, which would have alarmed their Jewish ancestors. 

On a day trip to Pescara, my husband and I walked for hours in the city, glad not to see even one anti-Israel graffiti. We passed up visiting the Gabriel D’Annunzio museum and, of course, the trabocchi restaurants. In the city’s outdoor market, I did find a decorative pillow with a drawing of the trabocchi. To me, it is a tribute to Jewish inventiveness. 

The gray-haired proprietor in the linens stall patiently helped us measure tablecloths with motifs of figs and olives to bring home for our children’s holiday tables. When she heard where we were from, she joyfully tucked in her own gifts to us: colorful dish towels. “Gifts to us from the people of Italy.” 

On the final day of the recent Hadassah Hope and Healing national conference in Aventura, Florida, three Israeli doctors were scheduled to speak a final time, also giving the audience of 500 mostly women a chance to ask questions. 

Two of the three doctors wanted to change the program. 

Their stories are “usual,” they insisted. The third doctor’s story is unique, and they wanted to give her a chance to do a full presentation as opposed to being part of a panel.  

If you’ve ever been to an America-based conference, you know that the program is written in stone and printed months ahead. 

The two doctors who wanted to give up their slots aren’t actually “usual.” 

One, a senior surgeon in his day job, has done hundreds of days of reserve duty treating the most severely wounded among 3,000 paratroopers. He has to decide, on the spot, whether to and how to evacuate soldiers under fire in Gaza and Lebanon. That requires weighing the soldier’s chances of survival by land evacuation or if he has to call in a helicopter crew under fire. Happily, every soldier he has evacuated has survived. 

The other doctor rides in one of those helicopters, treating soldiers on the ground or flying over the battleground. In his day job, he heads an intensive care unit, treating seriously wounded civilians and soldiers. 

Both doctors are so significant in their military roles that I cannot publish their names, although they’re both superheroes. Being Israelis, they were ready to pivot and change the program at the last minute. And they were stubborn about it. 

The conference organizers agreed. 

And so, after a short introduction and expressions of gratitude for the support they get from the American Hadassah members, they vacated the stage, leaving one speaker. 

Her name is Dr. Esi Sharon-Sagie. 

She is the world expert at identifying the dead by their teeth. 

She has been teaching Interpol colleagues at a meeting of 66 countries in France. 

Her day job is head of the postgraduate program specializing in prosthodontics at the Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Dental Medicine. That means teaching dentists how to, among other things, return the smiles to civilians and soldiers. A subspecialty is treating children and young adults who have not developed a full set of teeth. 

She and her teammates have also been repairing the faces of soldiers who have been shot in the head. 

Her volunteer job for the Israel Police is head of the dental forensic unit. She is charged with determining the identity of deceased people via their teeth. 

What words can describe her presentation? Grisly? Gruesome? Inspiring? 

All of the above. 

I was worried whether the audience would be able to tolerate it. 

Dr. Esi, as everyone calls her, first showed a family photo: her husband, three daughters, and two daughters’ boyfriends sitting around a dining table, enjoying the Sukkot holiday on October 6. One daughter and both boyfriends are soldiers. 

On Oct. 7, Dr. Esi was about to take her usual morning run through Jerusalem. She’s slim and athletic, with hazel eyes and a brunette ponytail. 

But then she received a WhatsApp from her police volunteer unit to prepare for service, and the sirens began to sound. 

“What does that mean to prepare for service?” she asked. “No watching news. No social media. I need to come to the challenge with the clearest mind possible in order to do the work.” 

She was in charge of 30 dentists, most of them colleagues from Hadassah’s dental school. 

She had been called to identify bodies many times before, but no one could imagine the scope of the challenge on Oct. 7. 

An unprecedented challenge  

The bodies kept arriving, in civilian and military vehicles, in refrigerator trucks usually used to deliver frozen foods and chocolate milk. 

The usual forensic facilities were too small. The site of examination of the 1,200 body bags is the Shura Base, the main base of the Military Rabbinate, south of Ramle. 

“The identification had to be done speedily. How else could we know who of the missing was kidnapped?” Dr. Esi said. 

The halls filled with body bags. They were scanned first because grenades were often embedded in the bodies and needed to be extracted by sappers. 

The body bags often contained only pieces of the bodies. Sometimes the remains of more than one body were in the same bag. 

Many bodies were incinerated remains, from which it is impossible to check fingerprints or DNA. 

Sealed military biometric data, including DNA and dental X-rays, taken when a soldier enlists, were opened by special order. 

Private and health fund dentists all over Israel needed to be contacted to find dental records for comparison. Many of the victims were not Israel-born. Dental records needed to be gathered from around the world. 

Many of the victims came from Israel’s South. Special IDF units entered dentists’ offices while under rocket attacks and removed bullet-ridden drawers of handwritten files. 

The Internet was searched for smiling photos that showed teeth. 

Archaeologists sifted soil and ashes for teeth. Forensic anthropologists helped with bones. 

The bodies were so mutilated that gender was often impossible to discern. 

Interpol software was helpful, but the dentists were even faster at matching images. “Dentists know teeth,” said Dr. Esi. 

The photographs Dr. Esi showed made clear the difficulty of the examination: a jawbone discerned amid the ashes that lined up perfectly with a once-smiling grandmother. Crowns melted together in the extreme heat matched with dental work done years earlier. 

Outside the facility, families whose loved ones were missing waited to hear the resolution. 

Dr. Esi, in charge, could feel their presence. 

Inside, the teams worked day and night, and day and night again. When their shift with the human remains ended, they called dentists and sought dental records. They were in a race with passing time with its decay, rain, and heat making the job harder. 

When our soldiers entered Gaza and found bodies, they sent photos of their teeth. In uniform, Dr. Esi’s former dental residents went into Gaza death sites to examine teeth. Babies and toddlers have no dental records. 

When a woman’s body was brought in with the Bibas children, Dr. Esi could tell immediately that the woman wasn’t Shiri Bibas. 

When arch villain Yahya Sinwar’s body was brought in, Dr. Esi could instantly identify him. 

She knows the teeth of every hostage in Gaza. 

For 40 minutes, the 500 people in the conference hall sat silently. No one left the room, despite the difficult photos. 

Was anyone not thinking of the Holocaust and the mass graves, the Babi Yar-like pits, the hill of ashes at Majdanek? Every person has a name, we say, but for so many there were no names. 

Dr. Esi and her team gave them back their identity. 

The audience rose to their feet as one, applauding for five minutes. 

Even with the memory of Oct. 7, 2023, still fresh and the war continuing, we need a reminder. The world needs a reminder.  

“My American English came in handy,” says Eytan Gittler, 29, a young man who grew up in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. 

He’s at our shared workplace, Hadassah’s offices in the Jerusalem Ein Kerem hospital, where he is an operations coordinator and in charge of special projects. 

After graduating from Georgetown University seven years ago with a degree in hospital administration, Gittler moved to Israel and enlisted in the IDF, inspired by his dad’s long-ago service as a lone soldier. Following discharge, he completed an MBA at Bar-Ilan University, “much of it on Zoom from an army base because I had so much reserve duty.”  

He’s a gentle lion of a young, single man, a burger-loving foodie, ebullient and intelligent. Today, at his day job, he solved a thorny tech problem of digitally storing the 80,000 historic and recent donor recognitions on the hospital walls. 

Gittler’s best friends are his former fellow lone soldiers from Garin Tzabar 2019 at Kibbutz Lavi. Of the 29 lone soldiers in his cohort, 27 have remained in Israel. On Thursday night, June 12, they were celebrating a birthday at a Mahaneh Yehuda pizza parlor. 

“On Thursday night, we all assumed that there might be an operation with Iran based on the back and forth in the news about issues with a US-Iranian nuclear deal,” says Gittler. 

“We all agreed that nothing would happen until later the following week because Bibi’s son was about to get married. I went to sleep at 1 a.m. and vaguely remember hearing a siren go off a couple of hours later. I went back to sleep, thinking most likely it was the Houthis.” 

He checked his phone when he woke up at 8 a.m., with plans to go running. “I had literally hundreds of missed messages from my friends and family checking in, but more importantly, from my reserve unit. I wish you could have seen the shock on my face when I realized what I had missed the night before.” 

He called his commander and caught a bus to Tel Aviv. He serves in Battalion 997, a search and rescue and combat unit. Among his responsibilities is evacuating trapped civilians from collapsed buildings. 

“We’ve been called to reserve duty in Tel Aviv multiple times since Oct. 7. Unfortunately, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and the Iranians like to fire rockets and drones into populated urban centers,” he says. 

“I spent the rest of Operation Rising Lion in the first-response teams. A commander directs and oversees the team and the damage site. An engineer assesses the stability of a building before we go in, and a medic accompanies us to do triage and provide medical care. 

“This core team relays information to Central Command with its teams that specialize in the heavy rescue equipment. Still, another team oversees gathering information that helps us understand who may have been in the disaster zone.” 

On Friday, June 13, an Iranian ballistic missile struck the middle of a modern 42-story luxury apartment building in Tel Aviv. 

“My team rushed to our vehicle with our equipment. While we were on our way, another siren sounded. We needed to seek shelter in a nearby building,” he recalls.  

“When the engineer gave the okay, we ran up the steps to the 10th floor, which had the most serious damage, and started helping people get out. Thank God, people had listened to the Home Front Command and had remained in their reinforced safe rooms. Otherwise, so many people would have been wounded or worse. 

“As it was, we had to help people who were badly shaken and shell-shocked. Surprisingly, many English speakers and tourists were in the building. I immediately began speaking to them to calm them down and direct them out. Many didn’t want to leave. Their excitement upon hearing a native English speaker in uniform was surprisingly energizing for me.” 

For two hours, his team walked the stairs up to the top of the 42-story building and then to the bottom, knocking on doors and helping residents leave their apartments. 

“Fortunately, no one needed immediate medical attention. This was a happy surprise because several floors in the middle of the building were completely wrecked, with their interiors destroyed and filled with debris.” 

When they finished clearing the building, another alarm siren sounded. 

“My team ran to a nearby building – a tall and well-known shopping center – and raced to the underground parking garage. A few minutes later, there was a loud boom, and the building shook. I thought the building was hit. My instinctive reaction was to run. Of course, there was nowhere to run. 

“When we got outside, we saw that the rocket had hit a nearby building. We were among the first to arrive on the scene. Thank God, the damage to this building, an important one, was minimal. 

“Lucky for me, hot food arrived for Shabbat dinner courtesy of the army and civilian donors. ‘Kiddush’ and a Shabbat meal go a long way in grounding you and providing a sense of normalcy in unexpected and crazy times,” he says. 

The June 15 horrendous attack on Bat Yam was technically outside of Gittler’s team’s jurisdiction, but they were called to assist. 

“We were given some information about the residents. One apartment was divided into sub-units. The tenants were old, young, Arab, Jewish, and Druze. I remember thinking, ‘This is a typical Tel Aviv setup.’ The place was completely destroyed with massive holes in the wall, with rubble, broken glass, upturned furniture, and trash everywhere. 

“One of the residents was a hoarder and had dozens of plastic grocery bags filled with expired food and old clothes. We feared that someone had fallen out of the window, which was now a massive hole from floor to ceiling. We called in a team with dogs. A heat-seeking drone found the bodies of two people outside.” 

As the search and rescue soldiers were leaving, the roads were already being cleared of burnt-out cars and rubble. 

And then, as suddenly as it started, the war with Iran was over. Gittler was promoted to sergeant major. The IDF gave him two days of vacation. He renewed his apartment lease in Nahlaot and restocked his refrigerator. Then he went back to his job, but not for long. He has already received notice that in July he’ll be called up again for two and a half months of combat reserve duty. 

“I never for a moment regret my decision to move here,” he says. “I can see the difference between my friends, who, like me, stayed in Israel, and my friends back in the US. Here, we’ve developed Israeli resilience. I love being able to do something for Israel. My day job at Hadassah and my military service are both extremely meaningful.” 

According to the government, more than 550 ballistic missiles and over 1,000 drones were launched during the 12-day war. Thank God, only 20% got through. 

Thank you, Eytan; thank you, IDF; thank you, lone soldiers. Thank you, Israeli developers of the Iron Dome and David’s Sling, who, despite doubters, pursued their concepts. The alternative is too horrible to imagine.