Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are that of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of the Union for Traditional Judaism, unless otherwise indicated.
In December, 2023, while I was heading to the shower mid-stride, the sole of my right sneaker adhered to a floor tile. I stumbled, my left knee hitting the floor with the impact of a hammer blow. Pain made me shout words my wife was surprised I knew, and it was clear something bad had happened. The ambulance took us to the closest hospital, Barzilai Medical Center.
Barzilai serves the Ashkelon Coastal Region of Israel, and is nearest to the front in Gaza, just over 7 kilometers away. It is a five-minute drive from our home.
The physicians at Barzilai quickly determined that I had broken my patella (kneecap) and required emergency surgery if I was to regain use of the joint. The operation took place the next day, which happened to be Friday.
In Ashkelon, with a population of about 150,000, we have grown used to the constant threat from Hamas and the reality of rocket-propelled bombs fired at us periodically. Since the horror that struck from Gaza on October 7 and the subsequent war followed by the erosion of Western support for Israel, it has become ever clearer to me that the West doesn’t understand the reality of life in the Middle East–particularly, in Israel.
My first roommate in Barzilai’s orthopedic unit was a young man who underwent surgery for his broken shoulder. He was not a soldier but a civilian worker who had fallen from a ladder when a missile alert sounded. His foot snagged as he was scrambling to get down and reach shelter within the 30 seconds it takes for a rocket to reach Ashkelon from Gaza.
My surgery began around midday but lasted longer than anticipated. By the time I returned to my room, it was after nightfall and the beginning of Shabbat. The patient in the second bed was released earlier in the day, and since I had insisted that my wife not remain with me in the hospital overnight, I found myself alone in a post-operative fog.
In the orthopedic ward across the hall from me lay Avishai, a young man about 30 years old. On the previous Shabbat, Avishai was helping clean up after a minyan (prayer quorum) arranged in a house of mourners who preferred to pray at home throughout the seven-day shiva period. As he was taking out the trash before heading home, he noticed a stray piece of metal partially covered in dirt, and picked it up to discard. Only after it was in his hand did Avishai realize he was holding a failed Hamas rocket. His trembling hand fumbled the bomb that fell to the ground and exploded.
Avishai survived but lost his left leg. His shattered right leg is currently being held together with surgical wires, plates, and screws. Its future is unknown.
As I lay in an anesthesia haze that Friday night, a young woman wearing a traditional Jewish head scarf came into my room bearing a silver cup filled with grape juice. She asked if I would like to make Kiddush, the blessing over wine or grape juice that sanctifies the Shabbat eve. I was delighted as I thought I’d missed the chance because of the late hour. I recited the Kiddush from memory and the young woman commented that she was unfamiliar with my version. I was not sure if it was because she was Sephardic and I had chanted the Ashkenazic text, or because in my hazed state, I had mumbled a heretofore unknown wording.
Her name was Eden. Much to my joy, Shabbat morning she appeared again with grape juice and cakes for the daytime Kiddush. I was struck with the sensitivity of the hospital staff, knowing that I was observant, to care for my spiritual as well as physical needs. Later I would discover my error.
I was taken for follow-up x-rays and upon my return, a nurse told me that my things had been moved to a different section of the unit because two injured soldiers had been brought in from Gaza and my room was needed for them. I was happy to oblige. That evening, although I was now at the opposite end of orthopedics, Eden sought me out bearing the candle, spices, and grape juice used in Havdalah (the ritual conclusion of the Shabbat).
Eden was not part of the hospital staff. She is the wife of Avishai who was nearly killed by the Hamas bomb. When she and he noticed me alone in my room, they determined to make sure I could fulfill the basic rituals of Shabbat.
Avishai and Eden have four children, the oldest of whom is 6. All of their futures have been radically altered by an indiscriminate attack on their civilian lives. I cannot imagine how they will manage. In their situation, most of us would be too immersed in our immediate sorrows to focus on anyone else. Yet Eden and Avishai saw a stranger in the bed across the hall and thought to bring him a cup for Kiddush. Where does such selflessness come from?
The book of Mishlei (Proverbs) answers: “Train up a child in the way he should go, even when he is old he will not depart from it” (Mishlei 22:6). Caring is learned with mother’s milk. The irony is that the method for implanting selfless values is identical to that used to implant hatred.
The imperative to erase Israel and murder Jews is also learned at the maternal breast. We who live in Israel and have suffered the unceasing threat of death and destruction from Hamas and its Islamic benefactors in Iran comprehend this. Much of the West does not wish to understand. Thus, somehow, European and even North American leaders try to make an equivalency between those like Avishai and Eden on one side, and the Hamas murderer who after killing 10 Jews in their beds and cribs on October 7, called home and was praised by his mother who told him she was so proud of him she wished she could be with him. “Train up a child in the way he should go…”.
With such mutually exclusive indoctrinations happening next door to one another, it is improbable that there can ever be a meeting of the minds. Eden and Avishai have no desire to kill Palestinians in retribution for the ruination of their lives. They want to live in security, where their children need not fear accidentally picking up a bomb. Hamas and its supporters are happy to kill and maim Jews indiscriminately and have their own Gazan children become “martyrs”. Only if Moslem children in Gaza are taught love of life and humanity, rather than the mathematics in their textbooks of “two dead Jews plus two dead Jews”, will things change.
Each Friday night, when my wife and I and Eden and Avishai welcome the Shabbat into our respective homes, we will thank God for the gift of the values we have imbibed from our parents. We will pray for continued opportunities to pass those values on to children and children’s children. And if we must, as is the case today with Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and others aligned to destroy us, we will fight to do so.
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Rabbi Ronald D. Price is the executive vice president emeritus of the UTJ. He served as executive vice president for 26 years, beginning with the founding of the UTJ in 1985 and as the founding dean of the Institute of Traditional Judaism, the Metivta, from 1990 until his retirement in 2011.
A native of Washington, D.C., Rabbi Price graduated from the University of Maryland in 1971 with a BA in Political Science. He received an MA in Hebrew literature from the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1975 and was ordained there in 1977. From 1977 until moving to Israel in 1980, Rabbi Price was Assistant Dean of the Rabbinical School of JTS. Following the break with the Conservative movement, Rabbi Price took his advanced ordination in 1992 under Rav David Weiss Halivni, reish metivta of the Institute of Traditional Judaism.
A highpoint in Rabbi Price’s career came early in his tenure with the UTJ. In 1988, when the “Who is a Jew?” crisis arose and threatened the relationship of Israel to the North American Jewish community, Rabbi Price, on behalf of the UTJ, authored a proposal for a halakhic as well as political solution to the “Who is a Jew?” issue which gained much support in all segments of the community and was praised publicly by the government of Israel as “a bright light at a dark time”.
Rabbi Price also authored the first halakhic living will which continues to be used by individuals and hospitals around North America and is part of the Elder Care Law Library, housed in Washington, D.C. He has lectured extensively and published many articles on subjects such as pluralism in the Jewish community; the right to die and Jewish tradition; creating traditional communities; the realignment of religious Judaism; and the risks and benefits of outreach to the intermarried.
Rabbi Price has dedicated his life to developing ways of making traditional Judaism accessible to the lay community and is the creator of the video education curriculum, “Taking the MTV Challenge: Media and Torah Values,” a Jewish response to media which has been taught in more than 300 institutions across the denominational spectrum around the world.
Rabbi Price lives in Ashqelon, Israel with his wife Tziporah.