As I was getting ready to celebrate the first night of Hanukkah with friends last week, I realized the streets in Haifa were backed up with Christmas traffic, so I took my bowl full of sfenj—traditional Moroccan donuts—and set out for the celebration on foot. Haifa’s German Colony, the site of a large hanukkiah and Christmas tree in the center of the mixed Jewish/Arab city, was aglow and full of families celebrating the holidays.
The holiday merriment made me happy, but in all honesty, it also made me a bit anxious. Big, tightly packed crowds have been stressful for me ever since my service in the military reserves, although the stress has faded a bit with time.
As I walked, I found myself thinking about where I was during the first night of Hanukkah last year. We had just entered Gaza on little notice, soon before I was supposed to be finished with my military service. We kept a small camp in the dunes amid the darkness. We were surrounded by ruins, and because of the ongoing battles, we couldn’t have lights in the camp. Every so often, the flames of a massive explosion would briefly light up the view and we could see.
The first night of Hanukkah last year was only one day after my unit’s entry to Gaza. We had been serving in the reserves for more than two months straight by then, and we hadn’t expected that we would be called to Gaza. We didn’t really know where we were, and we had no way of knowing how long we’d be there. There, we lit the Hanukkah candles, we sang songs in the dark, and we spoke of the miracles each one of us had experienced.
One soldier spoke about his father and brother who fought bravely on October 7. His father was injured, and his brother fought in the reserves afterwards and was killed in Gaza in an early battle. Never in my life had I lit candles in darkness like this.
Gaza was a pit of darkness, and we were marking the holiday of lights there without much hope. Reflecting on that moment one year ago, it felt strange to think that life in Haifa was carrying on while we were there in Gaza.
As a result of the cruel and fanatical attacks of October 7, 2023, Gaza became a battlefield between religions and nationalities. And here in Haifa, Muslims, Christians, Jews, and others gather in the streets, everything lit up and aglow. Jewish children and Arab children feel safe amid the multilingual crowd.
That’s no small thing here in the Middle East, where minority populations in Syria are fearful for their post-Assad future and Christians in Lebanon are constantly fleeing the country.
Theodore Herzl, the father of Zionism, imagined in his 1902 book “Altneuland” that Haifa would be the capital city of the new Jewish state. He imagined that Haifa would be home to the Hall of Peace, a kind of temple for practitioners of all religions.
Herzl’s imagined Hall of Peace never was established. But what does exist in Haifa is an assurance that life in the Middle East can be different. I am not much of a believer in miracles. But I have in me the hope that next year, the whole Middle East, including Gaza, can look a little more like Haifa.
This article was translated from Hebrew by Leah Schwartz.
