The Hebrew word davka means “precisely paradoxically.” I spent five weeks in Israel during autumn 2025 davka to help the country during a war, and to spend the holidays with family and friends in Judea, the Golan, and the radiant Mediterranean beaches in Tel Aviv. I was born in Santa Barbara and lived in Israel from 1996-2000. This was my first trip back to Zion.
I was galvanized to volunteer after the massacre of October 7, 2023. Again, the one tiny Jewish nation, established as a sanctuary state in the historical, spiritual, and indigenous homeland of Jews, was fighting enemies hell-bent on her annihilation: the terrorist militias Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Houthi — all funded with billions of dollars, weaponry, and training by Iran and Qatar. And here UC Santa Barbara students who never heard of Gaza until the murders, rapes, and kidnappings by Hamas, were shouting “globalize the intifada” (kill Jews everywhere) and “free Palestine from the river to the sea” (kill all Jews in Israel).
Ironically, “Palestine” is a Roman name (Syria-Palestina) given after Rome colonized the Kingdoms of Israel and Judea, destroyed the Temple, expelled and crucified Jews and renamed the land after their Biblical enemies, the Greek Philistines and Assyrians.
I volunteered with a Birthright group of 22 Jews from Uzbekistan, the U.S., France, and Australia, our leader an Iraqi-Jewish Israeli. We planted cabbage sprouts on a farmer’s field where Thai agricultural workers had been murdered by Hamas (46 Thai nationals killed, 31 hostages). We harvested hydroponic lettuce, and we packed fruits and vegetables at warehouses. A massage therapist by trade, I joined an envoy of massage therapists to work on an elite unit of men and women IDF soldiers who had spent months in Gaza.
Being a Jew practicing Judaism in Judea felt seamless. My cousin, a rabbi, and his wife hosted me in Mitzpeh Yericho in the Judean Desert. Below ground in a thick-walled bomb shelter-turned-synagogue that he runs, we sang the uplifting Rosh Hashana liturgical prayers, melodies by Shlomo Carlebach.
At a midnight prayer in Jerusalem I stood with 50,000 Israelis at our most sacred site — the Western Wall of the Temple — the Kotel. It was a pre-Yom Kippur service with call-and-response Sephardic songs and shofar blasts. Shofar, so good.
I took a side quest to Hebron in the Judean Hills, to The Cave of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, on a rare day it was open to Jews and Christians. Me’arat HaMachpela: the tombs of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah … and legend has it … Adam and Eve! For 4,000 years it is the Number 2 most holy site in Judaism. In 1267 it was expropriated by Mamluk conquerors and turned into a mosque: Jews were banned for 700 years, until the 1967 Six-Day War. Now, local rabbis and imams together choose which days are reserved for Jewish worship and which for Muslim worship.
I wandered through hundreds of monuments for the slain hippie ravers at the Nova Festival Memorial. I walked the gardens of Kfar Aza where 64 people were murdered, 19 abducted, now an HQ for the IDF. I witnessed the Tkuma wall of burned cars; horrendous.
The first Palestinian leader, Amin Al-Husseini, spent 1941-1945 in Nazi Germany as Hitler’s advisor. The Palestinian movement origin is Nazi ideology: kill Jews. There was a clothing store in Gaza called “Hitler 2,” where mannequins had knives taped to their hands. Kanye would’ve liked it. There was also a 6th century synagogue in Gaza, built before Islam existed. Starved and tortured hostages were bribed with food to convert to Islam in the terror tunnels, not one hostage complied.
In 2005 every Jew (8,000+) left Gaza, and their thriving flower industry, in exchange for peace. Gazans destroyed greenhouses, burned synagogues, and immediately shot rockets into Israel. It could have been a hub for commerce and tourism, but Palestinian Islamic Jihad,the PA, and Hamas’s obsessive hatred and jealousy turned it into a wasteland. I wish the West understood the Islamic concept ofmuqawama “forever warfare”: the only goal is continuous bloodshed, not land and not peace; a death cult of end-time “martyrs.”
The world wants to carve a 58th Muslim country out of Israel while Palestine’s fractured terrorist régime, with ties to UNRWA, rejects Jewish sovereignty and plots to establish a sharia law caliphate in its place (women are property, death to gays, no free speech). Countries are being tapped for the Stabilization Force in Gaza to, hopefully, begin to deradicalize one of the most heavily armed per capita, and indoctrinated populations in the world to hate Jews and democracy.
It is not the 1930s anymore; the Jewish people, Arab-Israelis, Israeli-Druze, Christian pilgrims, migrant workers, and the asylum seekers Israel hosts (many Eritreans) have a flourishing, innovative, and beautiful country to defend and cherish. Jews in Zion deserve to live in peace, raise families, and practice Torah in their ancestral homeland.
The war being over and the return of all the living hostages is wonderful! Their unification with family is what we have prayed and petitioned for these past two years. Am Yisrael Chai.
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