Chairman of the KKL-Junk Board of Directors Yifat Ovadia Lusky in a personal column/Alex Kolomoisky
This year, we at KKL-Junk are commemorating Tu Bashvet in the shadow of the "Iron Swords" war.
Now, during the war, the plantings across the country take on an extraordinary meaning of regrowth and hope and convey an important and strengthening message - we are here, planted with strong and firm roots.
Even strong winds will not succeed in uprooting a stable and solid tree.
We are here, in our beloved country, in the State of Israel, replanting life.
You have to remember, planting is a way of life, it's a process and processes take time.
You need persistence, listening and patience.
The growth processes are not immediately visible to the eye and some of them are underground, they are slow and sensitive.
Bell planted, this is exactly what we need now - faith in the process, faith in the rightness of the path even if it is slow and even difficult.
With this belief that accompanies us and our day during the war, we will win the battle, we will re-bloom the damaged settlements and strengthen the settlement in them.
It seems as if a deliberate hand has attached Tu Bashvet this year to International Holocaust Day, which began on January 27. A direct line is drawn between destruction and revival, and growth. The history of the Jewish people is full of suffering and horror. From the destruction of the House and the expulsion from Spain to the Holocaust, but the annals of the Jewish people are not The history of disruptions is the history of uprisings.
The history of the Jewish people is not a sequence of deportations and pogroms, it is a sequence of growth from them, of shaking off dust, of being able to see what is in the present, but hope for what will be in the future in the rest of our lives on this earth. On January 27 , the year 1945, the gates of Auschwitz were opened and masses of Jews found themselves facing a world of war, they stood at the lowest point in history. Part of my own family was also cut off. My father's aunt perished with her husband and their four children in Yun and Treblinka. Millions of families were destroyed, entire communities were burned, Endless property was stolen and looted. The survivors had every reason to give up, to despair, to run away, but they did exactly the opposite. At the lowest point, they found the opportunity for revival. The hope that beats in the heart of every Jew ever since the Exodus, this hope beat in them as well. History stood them The supreme test facing the Jew: will you be able to see the built Jerusalem in the hour of destruction.
The question "if we manage to rise from the destruction", is not a historical question, it is completely topical and addressed to each and every one of us.
About four months ago, the State of Israel was attacked in a barbaric terrorist attack.
For one day we experienced a devastation that has not been the same for eighty years, this devastation will accompany us as a nation and as a society, but now the question is put before us on what to concentrate on: what we were or what we can be.
I am sure of the answer - after the victory - we will rebuild the damaged communities, replant the destroyed fields, and put another solid link in the chain of resurrections from which the beautiful and hopeful faces of our people rise.
In collaboration with KKL-Junk
More on the same topic:
Tu Bishvat
International Holocaust Day