INBOX: Living Through the War, A Shliach on the Gaza Border Part #1

by Rabbi Levi Kantor

Situated less than ten miles from Gaza is Moshav Patish that’s the place of my Shlichus. That’s right, Patish, funny name, isn’t it? But that’s its name and it has been my home for close to seven years.

For nearly seven years I have been so close to monsters who desire blood, my blood, and the blood of every Jew, but! it never felt that way. Never felt that way until that morning of Simchas Torah.

Gaza! That hateful place where babies are taught to kill! Gaza! That hell on earth where brainwashing people to spill the blood of innocent Jews is top priority.

So close and yet psychologically so far, yes, whenever those monsters send rockets we can see most of the iron dome hits from the beautiful view in my back yard, and yes we have thirty seconds to get to a bomb shelter, but Patish itself was mostly calm, see although we can see everything happening in the sky, most of the rockets where not directly overhead so we didn’t have to go through the scare of hearing sirens often.

Everything changed Simchas Torah morning.

Early Simchas Torah morning I wake up. Not sure what time, but something was bothering me. Sounds, lots of them, Far off I can hear what sounds like rockets exploding when hit by iron dome missiles, but it’s really strange it can’t be, see I have never heard so many “Booms” at one time, and I have been around for some of the largest barrages.

Ok! so I get up wash my hands say Modeh Ani and go to the front door, curiously I open the door and very confused walk outside. Then I hear them, sirens, everywhere, north, south east and west from every direction besides my peaceful Patish.

Finally, I figured it out, they the beasts of evil had awakened to ruin our Yom Tov. Like I said, from my backyard I can witness it all even though I’m not in the trajectory off most of the rockets, Boruch Hashem!

I quickly go to wake my wife, it’s obvious to me that I only have a few minutes maybe a few seconds before sirens go off in our Moshav, such a barrage will surely be aimed in our direction to (I wasn’t wrong during the next few hours we receive a record breaking forty sirens). I decide with my wife not to wake the children. Am I nuts!? What about going to a bomb shelter!? Good point, only like many of the homes in my area we umm don’t have one, and being that it takes thirty seconds there’s no way I’m getting to one in time. So for the time being we’ll stay put and not traumatize the children.

One problem with the plan. Me and wife get very nervous when there are sirens, how in the world are we going to play calm? Luckily for us we have a secret weapon, Hashem. See on that day Hashem decided to bestow upon me and my wife the gift of calm.

Almost immediately the sirens start. Thoughts running through my head “no shul, no dancing, this is gonna be a rotten simchas Torah, it’s hard enough spending Simchas Torah without other Lubavitchers, but this! This is just the worse.” If only I knew…if only I knew how Hashem was protecting me at that moment.

Eventually my oldest wakes up. “Mami Tati! What’s all the sirens? Why didn’t you wake me up?” oh I laugh “it’s nothing ziskiet, we have some Sisu and Simchu in the sky for Simchas Torah” she’s bewildered, we were never this calm around sirens.

Thoughts running through my head “I’m gonna be so grumpy today, sitting at home no Hakofas grrrr, wait! stop! don’t go there. on Simchas Torah we must be Happy! We have to dance, Chassidim dance! As a Chassid as a Shliach I must dance!”

By now the other children are awake, my wife tells me at some point that she thought she heard automatic gun shots, I tell here it was probably something else, besides she doesn’t even know what gunshots sound like.

And then at some point quiet. A lull in the continuous Booming since the morning. I go out of the House and head into the street, I see the neighbors son with another boy from the Moshav, they’re both looking into their phones with serious expressions, it was odd because they’re the type of people who hide their phones when they see me on Shabbos, but then again we had just spent several hours listening to sirens and booms it made sense that they would be checking out what happened.

One of them looks at me “Chag Sameach!” I boom (a different sort of boom).

“Rabbi” he replies “if you knew what was going on you wouldn’t say “Chag Sameach”.

“What happened?” I ask.

“Hundreds of Terrorists maybe 200 are running wild there are several hundred dead, they’re in Urim (3 miles from me in one direction) and in Ofakim (4 miles in the other direction) any moment they could be here” he says pointing in the direction of the open field just behind me.

“Are you sure? That doesn’t make sense” I say.

“Rabbi no one knows what’s going on but it’s all true”.

I head quickly back home, I don’t know what to think, obviously something is going on and obviously the guy is receiving exaggerated reports.

I go inside my house lock the door, and quietly tell my wife that there’s a serious situation with terrorists and we have keep the door locked the entire time.

We were completely oblivious to the danger we were in and to the horrors happening literally a few minutes from our house. I made a Kidush with the children, then we had Hakofas at home singing at the top of our lungs hugging the toy Seffer Torahs to our hearts. All the while ignoring the constant sirens and booms overhead.

I stop my story here to tell you what was going on.

If you open google maps you can check the distance between Patish and Re’im, where the music fest was happening, it’s less then six miles.

Although I didn’t go to shul because I live a fifteen-minute walk from there, there are many people who live near to the shul who decided to brave it, and also there’s a corona minyan which survived until this day with a group of neighbors.

The latter were in the middle of trying to do Hakofas in between sirens when people started walking out of the fields surrounding the Moshav. They looked strange, they where hysterical, many half dressed, some had blood on them. The people there saw these groups emerging from the fields and somewhere scared, others yelled at them “what are you guys doing in the fields during this crazy barrage of rockets” but they kept on coming, more and more.

These where survivors, running away from terrorists, they had come on foot running through the dessert and fields, this is how close we are to the massacre of Re’im.

By now even some Shabbos observant Yidden where turning on their phones and TV’s to find out what’s going on. Very quickly it become apparent that there where many people being chased down by a large group of terrorists.

Now let me explain something about Moshav life, it’s the wild west of Israel, no not guns, freedom, freedom to roam and enjoy the earth. A thirteen-year-old can take a horse, motorbike, desert bike, or simply an electric bike and ride out with his friends into the great yonder, speeding over sand dunes and flying over ditches (yup it’s dangerous and each of these kids has a Malach who’s probably a nervous wreck worrying about the next genius stunt he has to save his little neshomale from) in other words this is their land, they know the desert here better then anyone else. This is the way it has been for several generations.

Many of the Moshavnikim decide to go out and save people from the clutches of the monsters. There are no better suited people for the job, they know every hill every dune and ditch. And so they drive, they drive and they dive, dive behind dunes to avoid bullets and RPG rockets, they find someone running away or wounded, load him on the pickup (I did say this is the wild west of Israel) and continue. when the pickup is full they head back to the Moshav (a six-seven minute ride by way of dune and ditch) drop off the survivors and head off again to save more people.

Some people saved over a hundred Yidden on that day. A very sad story is of Assaf. Assaf was one of these drivers, and while he was risking his life to save Yidden his own daughter, his oldest daughter a soldier serving in Urim a post only a three minute ride away from Patish, was being murdered with every single soldier and police officer at that post (I believe there was only one survivor).

At the Moshav an emergency shelter and medical bay has been set up, we can’t send them anywhere there are reports of terrorists in every direction. in one corner a person making a list of everyone coming in so that they can contact their families. In another corner a person is lying with a severed hand. “I need more bandages!” yells someone attending the wounded “get me as much rope as you can or anything to tie with” roars another who’s administering emergency blocking of vital arteries. A small group are walking around giving out water and something to eat to the survivors.

I stop here dear friends and ask, almost every village and post was attacked on the road leading from Gaza to Ofakim, the highway was filled with bullet ridden vehicles and anything that moved, was shot at. My Moshav is the only one with gates always open. yet the terrorists just drove right by. Not one of those monsters entered. We unlike most of the other towns and villages in the area had no organized response in place of an attack Chas Veshalom. And Hashem Protected us “they have eyes but do not see” we where saved and merited to save. Every day since then I think about it. We like Avrohom Avinu were thrown into the flames, yet we had not a hair on our body singed.

Thank You Hashem.