On October 3rd, 2023, I celebrated my 63rd birthday. I spent that afternoon at Rambam Hospital doing routine CT scans of my chest, stomach, and pelvic areas. That evening we had dinner in our daughter Shani’s sukkah. She lives with her family in Amirim in the northern part of Israel. That day was the 4th day of the festivities of the joyous weeklong holiday of Sukkot.

Since 2016 I have been living with the cancer diagnosis of Clear Cell Sarcoma, one of the rarest of subsets of sarcomas which represent 1% of all cancers. My body has housed the cancerous cells in 3 different areas of my body. Each subsequent operation prepared me emotionally and spiritually to getting closer to the Creator and to the meanings of living life and dying death.

In Hebrew we have the ‘nefesh’ and the ‘neshama’. As I understand it, the ‘nefesh’ is the body and mind while the ‘neshama’ is the soul.

On October 7th, 2023, Hamas, a blood thirsty terrorist organization invaded, slaughtered, raped, maimed, tortured, and decapitated the bodies and souls’ of 1400 innocent Israeli civilians while injuring thousands. It savagely kidnapped 240 men, women, and children. This ‘Black Sabbath’ traumatized an entire Jewish nation and peoplehood. In Israel and beyond we are all reeling in pain, our bodies, and hearts aching. The collective soul is panting, gasping, and breathing heavily.

Within the Hebrew word of ‘neshama’ lies the root of three letters: ‘noon’ ‘sheen’ and ‘mem’. To breathe, to resuscitate and breath are words with the same letter derivates.

Aghast, Hamas is an organization with cells worldwide waiting to destroy the Jewish state and anyone who gets in their way. What is fundamentally necessary is that we cannot let these cells multiply as they influence university campuses, the young adults and professors who are ignorant of the complicated Arab/Israeli conflict and blinded by the lies that are being told. And alas all this has been fueled and propagated by the United Nations in 1975 that supported the birthing notion that Zionism is Racism. (Watch Michal Cotler Wunsch’s address to the United Nations on youtube.)

The moral compass of humanity is in question as the forces of evil are prevalent in the minds of many who are antisemitic and supporting Hamas. We must stop this ‘cancer of thought’ from spreading.

During these dark days since October 7th, 2023, I often think of our beloved father/Aba Mr. Leon Broitman z”l who was one of the 200,000 Jewish Russian soldiers who fought the Nazis. He was injured during battle defending Leningrad and was shot in his left arm. All his family were murdered by the Nazis except his surviving brother Abe. Our father proudly and painfully proclaimed to his 4 children that if he had a chance to kill the monster Hitler and lose his life, he would unequivocally do so!!!

Our beloved Israeli soldiers find themselves in a relentless battle defending and fighting for our existence to continue to live as Jews in our ancestral homeland. Historically as a nomadic Jewish people in the Diaspora for over 2,000 years we have not been immune to hate. We have faced many enemies that persecuted, waged pogroms, spread lies and created the atrocities of the Holocaust which killed 6 million Jews from 1939-1945. In 1948 the Jewish nation was created from the ashes of crematoriums like Auschwitz.

Wait…. Do you smell or hear something? Is it the burning bush that is talking again?

“Hee-ne-nee” …. (Hebrew) Here I am.

And it is our dormant or active Jewishness that replies ablaze with horror, anguish, and anger.

“We will answer to the barbaric acts of Hamas and proclaim: Here we are in Israel and beyond where our Jewish internal flames will never be extinguished.”

Amen.

Yours soulfully,

Rachel Devorah from Israel

Debbie Winks