Hi, my name is Julie Remin and I decided to tell you about my October 7, 2023. I live in Bet Shemesh, Israel so it is very different from the south of Israel and their story. I made aliyah one year before the war started.
My story:
I woke up in the morning and all I heard was birds chirping. After I ate breakfast and got dressed, I went to daven in my backyard. All of a sudden, I heard a noise like a siren, but it was very low, so I wasn’t sure if it was a siren. I ran back inside just in case, and my mother asked me, “ Julie, is that a siren?” and I said, “No, that is too low for a siren.” Then my mother said, “I think it is a siren, because last time we had one it also didn’t sound so loud in our house,” (We had one other siren before the war, and I was at school, where it sounded very loud.) So we ran to the mamad (the safe room) and we closed the door and the window there because that is what you are supposed to do when you hear a siren. My dad and grandfather came back from shul to check on us.
When those sirens seemed to be over, my siblings and I decided to go back to shul. Once we got there, I was hanging out with friends, and suddenly we heard more sirens. We had to run quickly into the shul to enter the mamad there. We kept hearing big booms while going to a kiddush outside. Then a siren went off again and we had to run into someone’s house. Baruch Hashem we were all okay. We continued to have a few more sirens that morning and it was definitely a scary feeling for me because I was still a new oleh at the time and we don’t have sirens often where we live. By the time we went home for lunch we were still hearing lots of booming noises but no more sirens went off that day.
The following days after the war broke out and we understood more of what was going on, our community, Ramat Shilo, dove headfirst into helping displaced families from the South and North of Israel and the chayalim. I went with my mother to help shop for twins that lost their parents and all their belongings on October 7. I got together with friends to make cards for chayalim and bake for them each day. The first Friday after the war, two hours before Shabbos, we heard 300 chayalim were coming to Bet Shemesh and needed everything for Shabbos. Our youth group made cards, my mom and I cooked for them and I went with my grandfather to deliver the food. When we walked towards the house gathering all the supplies, you could see hundreds of people helping bring food, mattresses, sheets and anything else needed for the soldiers’ Shabbos stay. There was such a wonderful feeling of achdut among klal Yisrael.
During the first two weeks after the attack on October 7, we had no school so we did as much chesed as possible. I remember that families from Netivot and Ofakim stayed with friends of ours. My siblings and I went to the candy store and filled up bags of snacks and treats to give the terrified children from the war zone some happiness. It made me feel really good that I could cheer up kids that needed it. I felt l grown up to be able to do these kindnesses. We also brought dinner to the different families who needed places to stay the first month of the war. It felt good to be making a difference in other people’s lives, and it taught me how I as a 10-year-old can also contribute to my fellow Jews.
Julie Remin, 11 years old, lives in Ramat Beit Shemesh, Israel.
