This past Simchat Torah, Rabbi Yosef Zvi Rimon, the president of the World Mizrachi movement, composed a series of individual hakafot prayers that attempted to balance the essential joy of the holiday with the painful memories of October 7.
The first hakafa was a prayer dedicated to the soldiers and security forces; the second was a prayer for the return of the hostages; the third hakafa was a prayer for the healing of those injured; the fourth was dedicated to the families of soldiers; the fifth hakafa was for the unity of the Jewish people; the sixth was in memory of those who had fallen; and the seventh hakafa was a prayer for an Israeli military victory and an end to the war.
It was a beautiful way to acknowledge the many hardships that have resulted from the current war. However, there was one group of individuals who were not included in these hakafot. I call them Israel’s forgotten victims: They are the many displaced families from both the North and South in Israel who were forced to evacuate their homes once the war began.
According to recent statistics, there are still about 100,000 Israelis who have evacuated their homes and have not yet returned to their communities. Unfortunately, many of them never will.
I spoke to Masha Silverberg of Kiryat Shemona, who was forced to evacuate her home on November 27, 2023, after she received a message from the home front command instructing everyone who was still in the area to leave immediately unless they absolutely had to remain.
She and her husband went to Mevaseret Tzion to live with her elder sister. A bit later she moved into a small condo nearby, where she was able to have her own kitchen and live a more independent life. Masha’s husband suffers from Parkinson’s disease and requires rehab services. The rehab center in Kiryat Shemona was bombed and no longer exists, which prevented Masha and her husband from returning to the community. They are waiting for more provisions before they decide to return.
Of the 25,000 residents in Kiryat Shemona, only about 3,000 remained in the community. Once the schools closed, all families with children had to evacuate. Many families are finally going home now to begin the cleanup and the repairs of their homes, but the future remains unclear.
When Masha and her husband left their home, they were able to take with them some basic necessities, but they had to fill in with many household items. Fortunately, she found some second-hand shops in Jerusalem to buy some needed supplies. And she discovered that she could get along with much less than what she used to have.
Masha told me that the government has been very generous with emergency funds for the evacuees. However, she said that the people who were hurt the most were small businesses because their inventory had rotted or been destroyed. Most of these businesses were unable to reopen in their new communities.
Many of the houses in the Kiryat Shemona community have been infested with mice, according to Masha, since they have been abandoned for more than a year. Masha’s daughter, who also lives in Kiryat Shemona, no longer has windows or window frames in her home because of the shock waves from the missiles that fell near her home.
The folks who were most affected by the displacement, according to Masha, were families with school-age children. Makeshift classes were set up for children in hotels where many evacuees relocated, but this required an enormous amount of time and effort to find teachers and set up classrooms. It has been enormously unsettling and disorienting for the kids, some of whom had to readjust several times to new classes, classmates and staff, while their parents attempted to find themselves work.
The hotel stays were funded by the government, but this kind of life proved to be very disrupting and demoralizing to families. So many people moved into rental apartments that they found on their own, where their children could attend neighborhood schools. Parents of kids with special needs had to find classes and schools that could meet those needs, which required a lot of help from the educational authorities in each city and town. For the most part, people were very happy to help but there were sometimes difficult situations, like when a special ed school was overbooked and couldn’t open another class because they didn’t have enough staff or equipment.
Since Masha is now living in a small apartment, she no longer can host all her children and grandchildren together, something that she and her husband often did at home. Her grandchildren frequently ask her when they can come to their grandparents’ house.
Next week, Masha’s daughter, who was also evacuated from Kiryat Shemona with her four small kids, will be moving to her fourth abode since she left her home. Many apartment owners could not commit to long-term leases because they didn’t know what the future would bring. Masha also has two sons, married and fathers of five and three kids, who each spent more than 250 days in reserve duty this year, leaving their wives as single parents. Their kids had to adjust to their absence and then readjust to their coming home, which was very unsettling.
Despite all the difficulties, says Masha, people in her situation have all tried to help each other. They look for ways to contribute to the war effort, to help soldiers and their families, the bereaved families, the hostage families and the evacuees as well.
Will the residents of Kiryat Shemona return? “From what I hear most people will come back,” says Masha. “Some will wait for the end of the school year because their kids have just been through too much and they can’t bear the thought of uprooting them in the middle of the year. No doubt, some people will decide that Kiryat Shemona is too dangerous for them. Or perhaps they found another job, have settled into a new community and need the stability it provides. That is OK. Everyone must find his or her place. Others will move to Kiryat Shemona, and we will rebuild together. A few hundred of us have already started a campaign to reach out and recruit new families to come to Kiryat Shemona. A short video about the town was made and everyone sent it around to everyone they know on social media. Every family [that’s] interested fills out an online form, and then they are matched up with a family that volunteers to adopt, mentor, support and generally help them settle in. The recruitment phase is underway and many have filled out forms and are being contacted by veteran residents like us.”
Despite all the hardships she has faced, Masha is optimistic about the future. Said Masha, “We are a vibrant, resilient society. We are facing an impossible reality, after we tried to tell ourselves that our enemies were just people like us who want the good life, and that if we give it to them, all will be well. That illusion, that delusion, has now been destroyed and it is having a sobering effect on us all. The uncertainty that we face is daunting; the dangers and challenges are immense. But we will meet them because we must and because we can. And we will do it better than ever—and we will do it together. Am Yisrael Chai.”
Michael Feldstein, who lives in Stamford, is the author of “Meet Me in the Middle” (meet-me-in-the-middle-book.com), a collection of essays on contemporary Jewish life. He can be reached at [email protected].
