Religious Committee

This is one of the best incredible Jewish story that touch the soul deeply. It’s more than a Kodak moment.

To mark the year since October 7, Danny Wise of Ami Magazine conducted 38 interviews focusing on the rebuilding efforts of the Israeli communities in the Gaza envelope. Among his interviews, he met with a woman named Dafnah from Kibbuz Re’im. She had been the cultural director of the kibbutz and was one of the organizers of the Nova Festival.

Touring the kibbutz, she showed him her charred house and the room in which her mother and children, Shira and Meir, were found murdered together. She is the lone survivor of her family.

Wise writes that throughout the conversation he thought of Kristallnacht and the destroyed shuls. He asked her if the terrorists destroyed any shuls in the communities along the Gaza envelope.

Dafnah responded, "Of course not. Not a single beit knesset was damaged in all 21 Gaza kibbutzim." Wise didn’t understand, how could no shul have been attacked, no Sefer Torah burned?

She explained, "It wasn't a miracle. How could they damage something that doesn't exist?" Most of the communities didn’t have designated or active shuls.

Dafnah, went on to explain,: "If you want to understand the day after, you have to understand the day before.”

Wise writes:

Rabbi Shlomo Raanan runs an organization called « Ayelet Hashachar » which seeks to bring outreach to irreligious kibbutzim. He came up with the idea of a basketball game between yeshivah bachurim and the kibbutzniks of Re’im. The game was set to take place on Chol Hamoed, October 2nd 2023, just days before the massacre. Dafnah had led the charge to cancel the game. To her, the match wasn't just a friendly contest; it was a Trojan horse, a way for religious influence to creep into the kibbutz.

"I was furious," she told me. "This was outrageous. We didn't need outsiders telling us who a good Jew is," she said, pulling out her phone and scrolling through old messages.

She showed me the texts she had sent to Rabbi Raanan, warning him not to bring his religious mission to her doorstep. "Cancel this game immediately," she wrote. "If you don't, we'll all block the entrance with our bodies."

In the spirit of peace, Rabbi Raanan canceled the game.

But five days later, the massacre came. Just over the border, in the tunnels of Gaza, Dafna found herself held hostage, face to face with the forces that had torn her world apart. "I said to an older guard in Arabic, why do you torture me? For 20 years, I've made programs for Arab and Jews.

The Jews are your cousins." As she pleaded in the darkness for some recognition of their shared humanity, she was met not with empathy but with a cold dismissal.

"You are not a descendent of Ibrahim! You are not a Jew!" he spat. "You are a European colonialist who stole our land! It was in that moment, Dafnah said, that something broke. Or perhaps, something began to be repaired. The accusation hit hard. Like many in the kibbutz movement, Dafnah had spent her life defining herself more as an Israeli than a Jew, and more dedicated to reconciling Arabs and Israelis than healing the divides between different groups of Jews.

Religion had always been secondary to her identity. But now, in the depths of that tunnel, being denied her Jewishness by a Hamas fighter, she experienced a crisis of self. "I started screaming, Ana Yahudiun, Ana Yahudiun, I am a Jew I am a Jew!" The guards restrained her, taping her mouth. But for Dafnah, the internal shift had already occurred. "For the first time in my life I saw my soul; I saw that I am a Jew. "All my life," Dafnah reflected, "I've been part of this community. We didn't see ourselves as Jews, in the traditional sense.

When I traveled overseas and someone asked if I was Jewish, I'd correct them. “No, I'm Israeli”; I'd say.

But when he called me a colonialist, it hit me. He didn't see me as a Jew because I didn't see myself as a Jew.

Dafnah paused for a moment, her eyes wandering over the ruined landscape. "Every Arab village has a mosque.

Christian settlements build churches. And here, we have nothing. Nothing to say that we are Jews. And in that moment, realized that if we were going to rebuild, we needed to reclaim our identity." "I will tell you," Dafnah said, "I took upon myself the new beit knesset project. When we rebuild, our beit knesset will be the most beautiful structure on the kibbutz.”

On Simchas Torah, Dafnah lost her family, but she found herself. They died, but her Jewish identity was born.