{"id":260898,"date":"2026-01-28T00:15:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T00:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/260898\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T00:15:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T00:15:09","slug":"i-walked-into-israel-and-didnt-come-out-the-same","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/260898\/","title":{"rendered":"I walked into Israel and didn\u2019t come out the same"},"content":{"rendered":"

I knew this trip would matter. I just didn\u2019t know how quickly it would get under my skin.<\/p>\n

It started on Day 1. Shabbat. Jan. 16. Several members of the Jewish Federation of St. Louis<\/a>\u2019 Israel & Overseas Partners Committee and I landed after an overnight flight, jet-lagged and stubborn, determined not to sleep. So, we walked. Straight into the shuk.<\/p>\n

\"\"Me at the Shuk.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been in crowds before. Three World Series. A Stanley Cup. Parades and celebrations that shut a city down. This was different. It was chaos, sure, but joyful chaos. Loud, compressed, moving in every direction at once. And it wasn\u2019t just a crowd. It was a sea of Jews. All kinds. All ages. All rhythms. I found myself literally surrounded, stuck in motion, carried along whether I wanted to be or not.<\/p>\n

And it felt incredible.<\/p>\n

The only way I can describe it is this: I\u2019ve been a member of the club my whole life, but suddenly I was inside the clubhouse. No explanations required. No introductions. Just belonging. It was illuminating and exhilarating and joyful, even before I knew why.<\/p>\n

The Wall<\/p>\n

Later that same day, we went to the Kotel.<\/p>\n

\"\"Me at the Kotel, just before Shabbat on Jan. 16<\/p>\n

As we approached, Elliott Kleiman, the chair of the committee and I had to separate from Karen Sher and Lisa Greening, two others on the trip. As I moved closer to the wall, the crowd thickened. The current shifted. And then, somewhere near the wall, I lost Elliott, too. One moment he was there, the next he wasn\u2019t. I didn\u2019t panic. I didn\u2019t even really look. I just kept moving forward.<\/p>\n

By the time Karen found me again and asked what it was like, the only honest answer I had was this: I was lost in a sea of davening.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t fully Shabbat yet, but it was filling up fast. Ultra-Orthodox Jews everywhere. Black coats, hats, prayer books worn soft with use. Davening in a language I don\u2019t speak, in a rhythm I don\u2019t know. I don\u2019t daven. I don\u2019t know the choreography. I didn\u2019t know when to sway or stand still.<\/p>\n

But I floated there anyway, surrounded by prayer.<\/p>\n

I felt connected. I also felt intimidated. Both things can be true. I didn\u2019t understand the words, but I understood the gravity. I understood that something ancient and special was happening around me and that, somehow, I was allowed to be inside it.<\/p>\n

Expectations<\/p>\n

Before this trip, I was overwhelmed by how much everyone else assumed I was going to love Israel. People were genuinely surprised when they learned I\u2019d never been. That surprised me. I\u2019m Jewish. I\u2019m curious. I\u2019m a journalist. And yet, somehow, I\u2019d never made it here.<\/p>\n

Part of me worried Israel wouldn\u2019t affect me at all. That the skeptic in me, the lifelong wise ass, would take over. I braced for indifference. I told myself that was fine. Honest, even.<\/p>\n

Day 1 flipped that script almost immediately.<\/p>\n

I should explain why I was there. In early 2023, Federation invited me to join a planned trip to Israel after realizing I had never been<\/a>. We were supposed to leave Oct. 15, 2023. Oct. 7 made that impossible. After multiple postponements, I eventually traveled as an observer with the committee, which oversees the distribution of about $1.5 million annually to Jewish community partners across Israel. The trip lasted 10 days.<\/p>\n

Re-wiring<\/p>\n

But the final shift, what I\u2019ll call my re-wiring, didn\u2019t come into focus until Day 4, at Kibbutz Nahal Oz.<\/p>\n

Kibbutz Nahal Oz, founded in 1951, sits less than half a mile from Gaza. On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists overran the kibbutz and nearby military base, killing civilians and soldiers and abducting residents. Eight kibbutz members were taken hostage.<\/p>\n

Moran Freibach, the director of agriculture at Kibbutz Nahal Oz, stood with us and pointed.<\/p>\n

Just pointed.<\/p>\n

Gaza.<\/p>\n

\"\"Moran Freibach, the director of agriculture at Kibbutz Nahal Oz.<\/p>\n

Less than half a mile away. Six hundred meters. A distance I could walk in a few minutes if there weren\u2019t fences and walls and history in the way.<\/p>\n

My whole life, Gaza was a word. A complicated one. A place I knew through headlines, distance and abstraction. The war of 2023 brought it closer emotionally, but it was still 6,500 miles away. Now I was standing there, hearing explosions, watching someone casually indicate a direction that had lived for decades in my head as an idea, not a place.<\/p>\n

Borrowed Calm<\/p>\n

We heard several loud booms while Freibach spoke. I jumped. Of course I did. Then he said something I won\u2019t forget: if he keeps talking, all is good. If he ducks, duck too.<\/p>\n

He kept talking.<\/p>\n

So I kept standing.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s how I learned something fundamental about this place. People don\u2019t eliminate fear here. They manage it together. You watch each other. You borrow calm. You keep going.<\/p>\n

What Stayed<\/p>\n

Another image won\u2019t leave me alone. It looks like nothing at first. Foliage. A path. Ordinary greenery.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Nadav Tzabari, an attack survivor, pointed to it and told me that after he escaped, he asked another survivor what he saw from his hiding place. The answer: three Hamas terrorists were hiding there. An armored Israeli vehicle happened to be nearby. It rammed them.<\/p>\n

After he said this to me, I stood there and took the picture, while the rest of the group moved on. I lingered, then caught up. The image burned into my brain.<\/p>\n

Razor Wire<\/p>\n

But the moment when I realized I wasn\u2019t just witnessing anymore came quietly, almost mundanely. As we drove the perimeter, I saw the barbed wire up close. Razor wire. Layered. Aggressive. Surrounding a farm.<\/p>\n

A wall of razor surrounding a farm and a bunch of Jewish farmers.<\/p>\n

That image collapsed everything for me. This isn\u2019t a war zone next to a community. It\u2019s a community forced to armor itself just to grow crops. To exist. To stay.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when the stories stopped being things I was hearing and became things I was carrying.<\/p>\n

Coming Home<\/p>\n

When I think about going home to St. Louis, I catch myself laughing at what worries me most. Not that people will disagree with me. Not that they\u2019ll challenge what I say. I worry they won\u2019t believe me.<\/p>\n

That they won\u2019t believe I was affected. That I get it.<\/p>\n

I get the joy. I get the chaos. I get the whole point of Israel. I get why farmers live behind barbed wire and still plant anyway. And I know that coming from someone who has made a career out of skepticism, sarcasm and being a wise ass, that may sound improbable.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s true.<\/p>\n

This trip didn\u2019t make me someone new. It stripped away the distance I didn\u2019t realize I was keeping. And once that distance is gone, there\u2019s no honest way to put it back. And I\u2019m cool with that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I knew this trip would matter. I just didn\u2019t know how quickly it would get under my skin.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":260899,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-260898","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260898\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}