A Special Couple on Separate Israel Trips
This past Shabbat we hosted a wonderful group from the FIDF, Friends of the IDF.
After October 7th, 99% of our scheduled groups cancelled. But not the FIDF. Even now, with rumours flying that the war with Lebanon is about to start any day now, the FIDF didn’t flinch.
So I told this group of 34 young professionals how much it means to people in Israel nowadays to see tourists on the streets. Even if nobody says a word to them, they should know that in their heart of hearts they are giving people here strength.
Afterward a young woman named Arielle from the Upper East Side told me that her husband, Jon, had come with another FIDF mission we hosted in May.
“Why did you come on separate missions?” I asked her.
“Both of us are members of the Young Leadership Executive Board,” she explained, “so it was important for both of us to come, but we have a year-old son named Ryder. We decided it was too heavy of a mission to bring him along, so we took turns.
“Jon and I are both passionate about Israel. We met while spending a semester abroad at Tel Aviv University. We named Ryder after my grandfather, Roger. My grandfather’s Hebrew name was Israel Tzvi, so that’s Ryder’s Hebrew name too. And not only is he named Israel, he was even born on Israeli Independence Day!
“My mother was a bit nervous about me coming now. But it’s important to Jon and me that when Ryder grows up, and we talk about this time, we’ll be able to show him that we stood by our values and we showed up and stood for Israel.”
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Great!