Israeli citizens are redefining the meaning of the term, “Home Front”

Photos: Flash 90, Personal archives

Six weeks into Israel’s war following the Gaza massacre, Israeli citizens are redefining the meaning of the term, “Home Front.”

In the days after Simchas Torah, thousands of residents of the Gaza periphery were given hours to pack up their lives and board buses away from the war zone, temporarily resettled in hotels in Eilat and the Dead Sea. Thousands more, too fearful to remain in homes where they’d had to cower in bomb shelters, fled on their own. Like shipwreck survivors, they washed up on the shores of towns and cities across the country.

Days later, the same happened to thousands of residents of Israel’s northern border regions. With Hezbollah poised to attack, authorities ordered entire communities emptied. In their wake, many more fled, as the Lebanese terror group rained missiles on the region.

As up to 200,000 refugees — those evacuated and those having decided to flee on their own — suddenly drained into the country’s center and authorities were caught flat-footed and struggled to cope, civilian society stepped up to the plate.

Neighborhood by neighborhood, in moshavim, towns, and cities across the country, WhatsApp groups and email lists buzzed with requests for clothes, cribs, food  — and most critical of all, for thousands of roofs to put over the heads of the suddenly homeless.

What happened across the Anglo communities of Jerusalem and Beit Shemesh is a snapshot of this newest Operation Home Front — a story of individual and communal kindness in the face of sudden disaster.

October 15th, the first email pops up.

URGENT HELP IS NEEDED:

There are at least 2000 people from Sderot who need help with their laundry. If you can help with doing one or two loads please reach out

October 16th 6:03 pm. The laundry is waiting for pickup at the shul, if you can do a bag.

October 16th 6:37 pm. The laundry has all been picked up. Tizku lmitzvos!

October 21. If you can cook for the displaced families*Important Reminder* The families are used to one meat meal a day for Lunch at 1:30/2pm and they will figure out a light dinner themselves. 

October 22: Due to the influx of families that continue to arrive from the South and North, we would like to create a community-wide “Adopt a Family” program.

Almost a month later, the influx of emails to our inboxes from the local Neshei hasn’t slowed. Time hasn’t reduced the urgency of the requests and repetition hasn’t dampened entire communities’ fervent responses. “We want to help” is the ever-present mantra. We, who go to sleep in our beds, our arms around our children, we want to help those who have been displaced, evacuated, or scarred. And so, when the government can’t help, when these displaced families have no place to go as war has reached their doorsteps, they’ve turned to those whose arms are outstretched, and that includes us — Anglos whose Hebrew might not be fluent, but who speak the language of the heart. Apartment placing, meal organization, clothing and toy drives, white shirts, coats, shoes, pots and pans. Regular people-turned-chesed coordinators. Because when all of our nation is family, no one is ever homeless.