Visiting the Israeli home front, these New Jersey Jews got more than they gave 

Photos: Chazak Yemin Yisrael Mission

When a group of professionals from New Jersey decided to take a week out of their pressured, busy lives to give chizuk (and badly needed material support) to soldiers, hostage families, displaced people, and grieving parents, they knew the scenes they’d see and the stories they’d hear would be wrenching — but in the end, they received a lot more than they bargained for

Where We’re Needed

Rabbi Yosef Tzvi Rimon, who serves as rabbi of the Gush Etzion Regional Council, has been going from army base to army base every day since the October 7 war started, to make sure soldiers have their spiritual support as well as basic material supplies. While on his rounds, he found that those on base and on the front — many of them sleeping under the sky — were short on winter accessories, especially as the weather was getting colder.

And that was prescient for a group of community members from Clifton and Passaic, New Jersey, who were organizing their own solidarity trip to Eretz Yisrael on behalf of their local tzedakah organization, Chazak Yemin Yisrael. The group of seven — lawyers, accountants, and business owners — pressed pause on their professions for almost a week to carry out a five-pronged mission: to give chizuk to hostage families, to visit grieving families, to give financial support to displaced families, to visit injured soldiers, and even to roll up their sleeves and work the abandoned fields.

Yet after days of giving and giving, they insist that they got much more in return.

Between the group’s connection to Rabbi Rimon and to General Benzi Gruber — vice commander of the 252nd armored division with over 30,000 soldiers under his command — the volunteers compiled a list of items the soldiers needed and started filling duffle bags. They also got many boxes of clothing from Yad Leah in Clifton, which sends $5 million worth of clothing annually to 25 communities throughout Eretz Yisrael, expediting their standard delivery of warm clothing.

And so, with a wad of freshly raised funds, 17 70-lb duffel bags, and a pile of Yad Leah boxes, the group headed for the El Al counter at the airport. (El Al was charging a discounted $50 per suitcase for Israel aid, instead of the regular $150.)

No Exchanges

Visiting Kiryat Arba Mayor Eliyahu Libman, whose son Elyakim was taken captive on October 7, was a lesson in emunah and bitachon. Sitting in his office, a bookcase of seforim on one side and an M-16 on the other, Libman — a voice of strength for other hostage families who grew up in Chevron where hard-core faith was a constant companion — says he is surviving the ordeal through emunah and by focusing on the positive, while at the same time juggling the day-to-day needs of his constituents.

“We are called Yehudim, from the word lehodot, to thank,” he said. Yet his own hopeful demeanor doesn’t change the sad repeat of history. His brother, Shlomo Libman, was murdered in 1998 while on a jeep patrol around the perimeter of Yitzhar, and the killer was later released in the Shalit deal in which over a thousand terrorists were freed. Libman is adamant that his son not be released in a similar exchange, at the expense of the safety of the country’s eight million citizens, and is the voice of the few hostage families not advocating for another such deal.

Meanwhile, another two Libman sons are in combat in Gaza, their tanks rumbling over the very tunnels in which their brother is possibly being held. The brothers in action have been spraying graffiti on walls around Gaza with messages to their brother, “We’re on our way,” and “Mom is waiting for you at home.”