Haviva Ner-David's Blog

Yesterday was just what I needed for my ailing spirit. A group from our Palestinian-Jewish Israeli partnership chapter of עומדים ביחד نقف معًا, Standing Together, went to the Galilee Hospital in Nahariyah, in northern Israel, to hand out flowers, and notes saying “Protecting Solidarity” in...

For the first days after our horrific Shabbat-Simchat Torah here in Israel, I could not find my words. Anything I could say about how this waking nightmare has affected me was trivial compared to the pain of the victims and their families. And I was...

While Jewish towns and cities filled with sukkah huts this week, Arab towns and cities filled with mourning tents. Monday, I visited the mourning tent of Nura Dlaika in Basmat Taboun, fifteen minutes from my home in Hannaton. Her two sons, Walid, 15, and Adam,...

This is a busy time of year for a mikveh rabbi. I run Shmaya: A Mikveh for Mind, Body, and Soul, on Kibbutz Hannaton, where I create and officiate individualized mikveh ceremonies, and meet with groups from across Israel and around the world, to share...

Most chilling was watching Arab youths carrying the caskets, each with a line stating what the victim was doing when they were killed

Although the Galilee is not immune to the growing messianic Jewish-supremacist trend in the country, many of us here have felt removed from its reality. Given all the Meretz, Hadash-Ta’al, Yesh Atid, Ra’am, and לך (telling Bibi to GO) signs I saw hanging in my...

Sitting in synagogue during Torah reading two weeks ago, I was troubled. Here in Israel, we read about the spies being sent into Canaan (what those outside Israel read this past Shabbat) to scout out the land for attack, for conquer, for kibush (in Hebrew)....

I was not surprised when I received a message from a Reform rabbi in Milan, Sylvia Rothschild, asking if she could send a family my way. They are her congregants and are visiting Israel for the summer. The father is Jewish, and the mother is...

Posting bigoted rhetoric from the safety of America, a self-appointed anti-colonialist with no grasp of our lived reality hurts Palestinians and Israelis

I don’t write often about my work at Shmaya: A Mikveh for Mind, Body, and Soul, on Kibbutz Hannaton, because of the intimate nature of the work. But I am going to tell you about the conversion I officiated earlier this week of a woman...