Several months ago, I heard about an all-women volunteer trip to Israel through OU Birthright with a group from Baltimore. I immediately joined; I didn’t think about how my husband would handle eight days alone with the kids, putting it in the “future” category of problems. And before before I knew it, five months later, I was in line to board an El Al flight, surrounded by the women in my group. It was very hard for many of us to leave our families, but we comforted, consoled, and supported each other. This was my first experience with how wonderful this group of ladies was.

Day One

Our group of 29 women came mostly from Baltimore, but we also had members from New York, Memphis, New Jersey, Silver Spring, and even Australia! After arriving at 6:00 a.m., we headed to our hotel in Jerusalem. We had the day free until check-in at 3 p.m., so, I did what any normal person just arriving to Israel on a Thursday does: I headed to the shuk! Our hotel was in a great location, right next to the bus station and the light rail, so it made for easy travel and walking to popular destinations.

At our opening meeting, we got to know our wonderful madricha, Shoshana, and each other. We shared where we were from, some of our current life story, and the reason we wanted to go on the trip. Many women expressed how, after October 7^th, they felt powerless from afar and wanted to find a way to give to Israel. And give is what we did.

I took my first Birthright trip in the winter of 2007, and I was last in Israel three summers ago visiting family. But this December, I was given the opportunity to return to Israel with Birthright on an alumni trip. As soon as they contacted me, I immediately said yes. The trip was supposed to happen in the summer 2025. However, the war with Iran caused a delay, and it was separated into smaller trips this winter. I just returned on Monday, December 15.

Birthright has now opened its doors to older people as well as to those who have taken previous trips. There has been renewed interest among the Jewish people, Post-October 7^th, in discovering (or rediscovering) our land. People want to support the tourism industry. They want to volunteer on the land. And with much of the world against us, they want to see for themselves what we are fighting for, even as our enemies creep into our birth countries and make us feel unwelcome. As one Birthright participant stated, “I am glad I went on this volunteer trip because it allowed me to view Israel from a different perspective and grow as a person.”

by Drs. Shmuel and Binyomin Liebman

 A gemara in Rosh Hashanah (11a) likens the Avos – the Patriarchs – to mountains. Rabbi Aaron Gibber commented that when one stands atop a peak with its sweeping view, it is difficult to appreciate the mountain itself. Its height, majesty, and scale can only be recognized when one steps back and sees it from below.

So it is with our father, Dr. Mayer Liebman, z”l. Even five years after his passing, words are inadequate to capture the scope of his goodness, his devotion to others, and his mountain-like presence that shaped the lives of those he touched.

We had a variety of lovely guests on a Shabbos afternoon, and as I was preparing the next course, the ladies congregated in the kitchen, and we started talking about cooking. We reminisced about feeding our families “once upon a time.” One of the women admitted that she no longer enjoys cooking. My eyes grew wide as she went on to confide that she felt downright fear. I couldn’t believe my ears because all along I thought I was the only one.

My memory of those bygone days is rather sketchy, but I know for a fact that I kept my family well-fed. Like my contemporaries of that time, we cooked and cooked and cooked some more. In those out-of-town years, our friends were our family, and so we had guests aplenty to cook for, along with the home crew. I can’t say I was ever a chef; cooking was something I just did. And as my grandmother, a”h, used to say, “And how!”

Many young couples choose to begin their married lives in Eretz Yisrael. I was curious about how and why they do that and what the experience is like for them. Although it seems clear that the best time to move is as newlyweds, when couples do not have to worry as much about expenses and children, most of those I asked did not cite those factors. Instead, they responded incredulously. They assumed it would be obvious that Eretz Yisrael is the land of the Jews and one does not need a specific reason to want to live there.

I only spoke to the wives, so these words are from their perspective.

I’m not usually one to wax poetic about the days of yore, but when I was a kid life was simpler. In the summertime, instead of carrying around enormous water bottles, we played in the backyard and drank from the garden hose. In the wintertime, instead of going to an Airbnb (which didn’t even exist) in Florida, we built snowmen and went sledding in the park. Food was also simpler. We drank water, soda, iced tea, or Kool-Aid, none of which exceeded three syllables, and we could always pronounce the ingredients in our food.

Although we are now far into sefer Bereishis, I am writing this in the week of parshas Noach, which brings back a memory that I want to share.

We are living in interesting times. As I walked to shul over Yom Tov, I rejoiced seeing so many observant young families passing by. The sight of a mother and father pushing a baby carriage, accompanied by a number of small children was the norm. Recently, I have been davening at Shomrei Mishmeres Hakodesh, whose Rav and Rebbetzin, Chaim and Devorah Schwartz, are welcoming and where the davening is inspiring and the weekly kiddush cholent delicious. The new shul is almost complete and the mikvah for Shabbos and Yom Tov use in the Cheswolde neighborhood is soon to open. Although I belong to three other shuls, Rabbi Schwartz is only a block-and-a-half from my home. It is not as easy for me to walk to Shomrei, although not so many years ago, I could walk six miles to Randallstown every Shabbos.

As the years pass, I am thrilled to see the fantastic growth of the Baltimore community. We see a plethora of new shuls opening and existing shuls building enlarged edifices. We see new schools opening to accommodate the exponential growth of our school-age population and the proliferation of new restaurants. I remember when going out to eat meant going to Liebes Delicatessen.

My six-hour guarding shift at our base near the gates of Gaza was almost over, following a four-hour emergency standby. Just then, shortly before sundown on Friday afternoon, I got the call from my company commander. “They need someone to help tonight in Gaza. The convoy leaves in 10 minutes. Can you go?”

I had already showered and put on my clean uniform in honor of Shabbos. I was thinking through the Torah idea I planned to share in the base shul that night. But the army was sending crews every evening to install sophisticated security systems on the guard towers of forward outposts inside Gaza. These outposts, which can accommodate up to 100 soldiers, include tents, fortified positions, and mobile command centers. Because the roofs of the outposts are exposed to Hamas sniper fire from less than half a mile away, they only work under cover of darkness. Every night’s delay in getting the security sensors up there means another day our soldiers’ lives are endangered. So, I grabbed my helmet, borrowed a bulletproof vest, and ran to the mission commander’s warehouse to help load the truck. The commander, a weathered lieutenant colonel who’d been doing this since before I was born, looked me over, pointed to a large box, and barked: “Are you strong enough to lift this?”

The tumultuous events of the past few years, the quickening pace of ever-more momentous headlines, and the increasing political chaos and antisemitism around the world challenge us to make sense of it all. It has become common to hear, from both rabbanim and ordinary Jews, that we are living in the “end of days,” in the ikvos hamashiach, when the “footsteps” of mashiach can be felt. But how to respond? Some embrace the unfolding miracle that is Eretz Yisrael in our day. However, others decry activism, physical or emotional, for Israel and counsel an anti-Zionist stance as the true path of the Torah. I hope, in this article, to shed light on this split in hashafah.

This past weekend, we celebrated a very exciting Shabbat Chevron with many thousands of visitors, reading parashat Chayei Sarah with its story of Avraham Avinu’s purchasing burial graves and fields from Ephron the Hittite. This constituted Avraham’s first recorded real estate purchase in the Land of Israel; hence, it merited 22 verses, very rare in the Torah for a land purchase.

We had six guests, all of them yeshiva students. Four of the six were from the baal teshuva yeshiva Machon Meir, which has been sending us Chayei Sarah guests for many years, since the days when I was translating the parashat hashavua sheet of Machon Meir. Every guest is a treasure and a world unto himself, but this year the award for most interesting guest might go to Yisrael, age 61, a successful Hong Kong businessman who decided in midlife to convert to Judaism and study Torah.

With Corona and the war, it has been five years since we residents of Kiryat Arba-Chevron enjoyed a full Shabbat Chevron such as we enjoyed during all the years since 1994. This year, we felt magic and electricity for weeks before the actual Shabbat. Visitors from the outside started to arrive on Wednesday. We had arranged to have our six guests weeks in advance. We then spent two weeks having to say no to people calling and asking for a place to stay.