A scorched storefront on Kiryat Shmona’s main drag bears signs of a Hezbollah missile strike in November 2023. (Uriel Heilman)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
No matter what happens in the war, Kiryat Shemona may not be able to return to the way things were. According to a poll conducted in June, 43% of the city\u2019s approximately 30,000 residents are considering not returning to their homes, while 13% have already decided they will not go back\u200b.<\/p>\n
Other residents of the north are facing tough judgment calls ahead of the holiday. Shani Tzililm has spent much of the past week sheltering with her four kids in their home in the Haifa suburb of Kiryat Bialik from rockets fired by Iran and Hezbollah. Their city has not yet been evacuated. But this week, she won\u2019t be celebrating Rosh Hashanah with her mother in the nearby city of Akko \u2014 because it\u2019s 10 miles further north, and even more unsafe.<\/p>\n
Her mother\u2019s home in the ancient mixed Arab-Jewish city lacks a safe room, and the nearest bomb shelter is in a school several minutes away. Tzililm\u2019s apartment building, at least, has a bomb shelter, though during a barrage of successive sirens on Sunday, she fell and tumbled down the stairs with her three-year-old in her arms.<\/p>\n
\u201cI prefer to sit at home where I feel safer. But who knows anymore what\u2019s safe?\u201d Tzililm said. \u201cI can\u2019t cope with it anymore. My 8 year old is full of anxiety, she cries all day. I\u2019m scared to death myself. How much longer can we live like this? I pray every day for this war to end. I don\u2019t care how, it needs to be over.\u201d<\/p>\n
Daniel Ohana, a municipal coordinator for the thousands of evacuees living in hotels throughout Tel Aviv, said that his team conducted hotel visits ahead of the holiday to ensure that evacuees had everything they needed.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s difficult. We\u2019ve moved a whole city \u2014 which has a certain culture and pace of life \u2014 to another city with an entirely different culture,\u201d Ohana said. \u201cBut we\u2019re trying to do everything we can to make sure we preserve a sense of community and family. Little gestures like pre-holiday toasts.\u201d<\/p>\n
He emphasized that the work wasn\u2019t only a one-way effort; evacuees from Kiryat Shemona were also volunteering to help by packing food parcels for needy Tel Aviv families.<\/p>\n
In Haifa\u2019s Rambam Medical Center, Rosh Hashanah preparations were underway at the Sammy Ofer Fortified Underground Emergency Hospital \u2014 the world\u2019s largest underground medical facility, built to remain functional during a rocket barrage.<\/p>\n
Now, the subterranean hospital has sprung into action: 600 patients were transferred there last week amid rocket fire, though around 200 ambulatory patients will be moved back to the regular hospital for the holiday, hospital spokesperson David Ratner told JTA on Monday.<\/p>\n
Rabbi Shmuel Turkov, director of Lev Chabad in Haifa, was organizing prayers and meals in cooperation with Rambam\u2019s onsite rabbi. \u201cPeople are concerned about how they will celebrate the holiday in the hospital. We\u2019re making sure they will hear the shofar, and have a proper festive meal with all the simanim,\u201d he said, referring to Rosh Hashanah foods symbolizing wishes for the new year.<\/p>\n
The widening war is affecting people throughout the country. Several nonprofits ramped up their activity this week to meet the sharp rise in demand for aid, addressing the new waves of needy people affected by the war, or what celebrity chef Jamie Geller referred to as the \u201cnew poor.\u201d Geller is working with emergency relief organization Yad Ezra V\u2019Shulamit.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have so many new poor this holiday season. They were givers last year and now need to be on the receiving end of charitable donations and food rations,\u201d Geller said.<\/p>\n
The organization had been asked by the Home Front Command to feed an extra 16,000 families impacted by the war, bringing the total up to 66,000 holiday food baskets.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are wartorn widows and orphans who not only have to prepare for the first holiday season without their loved ones, they also have to be concerned about putting food on the table,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Moshe Cohen, CEO of the nonprofit Chasdei Naomi, highlighted that the food baskets his organization would give out this year included extra staples and holiday-specific items because Rosh Hashanah immediately precedes Shabbat, extending the festival into a three-day holiday, a rarity in Israel. He also expressed gratitude for the many foreign volunteers, primarily from the US, who arrived to assist with packaging the increased number of food parcels.<\/p>\n
A woman and a girl hold pet carriers and other belongings as they prepare to depart from Kiryat Shmona in northern Israel near the border with Lebanon, Oct. 19, 2023. (Jalaa Marey\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Meanwhile, in Kiryat Bialik, Tzililm, who earns minimum wage as a kindergarten assistant, received holiday food vouchers from the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. This year, the group increased its annual holiday aid campaign allowance to $10 million, also extending its support beyond its usual roster of needy families to include those impacted by the war, including residents of border towns and displaced families, hostage families, survivors of the Oct. 7 attack and IDF reservists in financial need.<\/p>\n
But Tzililm said she wasn\u2019t even sure she had the strength to cook the food she had been given.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll be honest with you, I\u2019m just not in the mood to make the holiday this year,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
In Jaffa, single mother Karina Zilbersher\u2019s Rosh Hashanah plans were upended over the weekend when her only son, Liam, a soldier in the Israeli Air Defense Command, was deployed alongside approximately 10,000 other soldiers.<\/p>\n
With the growing threat of ballistic missiles and large-caliber rocket launches from Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies, soldiers in Liam\u2019s unit, responsible for operating David\u2019s Sling, an Israeli air-defense system, will be on duty throughout the holidays.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re the most needed soldiers right now, and I get that, but it\u2019s still so frustrating,\u201d she said. \u201cI have no other family in Israel. He\u2019s all I have, and they took him.\u201d<\/p>\n
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