Momentum’s Journey of Growth mission may have ended with a raucous and fun party in a Nes Ziona event hall, but this was merely the culmination of an intense and emotional week-long trip to Israel.
Some 280 women from 15 countries (including Israel) and six continents came with open hearts and minds, each of them touched by the momentous, tectonic shifts affecting Jews across the globe as antisemitism’s recrudescence gathers pace.
Each of the participants—hailing from countries as far afield as Venezuela, India, South Africa and Australia—had many things in common. All of them are mothers with at least one child under the age of 18, providing the various groups, which were divided according to their native language, with a range of different life experiences.
They all shared a deep commitment to their families, their communities, Judaism and Israel, with some—due to the security situation—having had to cancel and rebook tickets more than once or having had to find circuitous routes to even travel to Israel.
“These women are culturally diverse,” said Momentum’s trip and education leader Adrienne Gold Davis. “They have displayed a mother’s fortitude; some are barely coping [with everything that’s going on], but they felt the pull [of Israel] and they didn’t cancel their flights. They came to bear witness and be the lights of hope.”
It was clear from talking to some of these women that the Momentum mission has had a profound and lasting impact on them. Momentum was one of the first organizations to offer trips post-Oct. 7, 2023, in partnership with the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism.
At the end of the trip, they were still processing what they had heard and witnessed, but there seemed to be a steely determination to take back as many of the strong feelings of bonding and unity as they could to their families and communities, becoming the “change agents” that Gold Davis described.
Alexandra Cohen from Venezuela said she had waited two years to attend the Momentum trip, and said it was well worth it, in spite of the incoming rocket alert sirens in Jerusalem following the firing of a ballistic missile from Yemen.
“One of the strongest impressions this trip left me with is that despite everything, you, the Israeli people, continue your lives, even though the war is so very close. I always knew the people were strong, but after Oct. 7, I had to come see it with my own eyes,” she said,
In the eight or so years since her last trip, she noticed a softening of what to outsiders can seem like a brusque Israeli manner. “In the past, when I’ve met Israelis here, they’ve been quite tough; now my impression was that they were welcoming and so grateful we were here.”
At the Nova Music Festival site, Cohen and the other Spanish speakers met Rafaela Treistman, a survivor, who was born in Brazil, as was her boyfriend, Ranani Glazer, killed in front of her eyes.
“Rafaela recounted this horrible, terrible story, and all the time, this beautiful Brazilian girl has a smile on her face. I could barely see through my tears, and I asked her, ‘How? How are you still able to smile through this?’ She pointed to a picture of her boyfriend on her t-shirt and said, ‘Because I have to continue my life. I have to show the world what happened.’ I think we have to, too. That’s now our mission in this world, because I think about how easily that could have been me.”
Cohen added, “I think I’m going to go back to Venezuela with a soul of freedom, with a soul of pride, proud of being Jewish, of our country, of being resilient. And no matter what, to continue our story, because definitely the best thing in the world is that I’m Jewish. So, for me, my heart is full.”
From the relatively benign situation in Venezuela at the moment (although an anti-Zionist law on the books could change that), Justine Pearl said there was a sense of calm in Israel, which she has not experienced in her hometown of Melbourne for nearly two years.
“It’s very heavy being a Jew right now in Australia. It’s very hard to maintain hope and it’s very scary,” she explained.
Like many others, Pearl was booked on trips to Israel post-Oct. 7 that didn’t take place, but she was determined to come on this one. Partly, it was inspired by listening to Rachel Goldberg-Polin, the mother of murdered hostage Hersh, who traveled to Australia earlier this year.
“Although I worked for the organization that invited her out, I didn’t get to speak to her as I wanted to respect the privacy she had requested. But her words touched me, so much so that I had some of them tattooed on the inside of my arm, to remind me of what we have to hold on to.”
She was also trying to process the duality of how life in Israel, despite the heaviness, is imbued with a sense of hope.
There has been a cost to her, as there has to many others, for proudly proclaiming her Judaism and her support for Israel. She had spent much of her professional life working in a more left-wing industry, and found that the peers who followed her on Instagram suddenly unfollowed her–because it was a socially acceptable thing to do.
“People felt no shame in unfollowing the only Jewish person they knew. I moved with my family from South Africa 22 years ago, and for 20 years of that time, I never felt unsafe for a second in Australia. And now, if I go to the city, I tuck my Magen David underneath my clothes.”
Pearl, whose children go to a public school that is not Jewish, although a majority of the students are, said it was clear she needs to go home and further bolster her kids’ already strong Jewish identity. “It’s become obvious to me they need to know more, including speaking Hebrew.”
“Before I came, I felt like I needed to come to bear witness,” she maintained, adding that there needs to be a paradigm shift in how the Jewish experience in Israel is taught and described. “We shouldn’t see our timeline as shifting from one war to the next; we’re both Jewish and successful in spite of this. Understanding this has helped me realize that rather than coming to bear witness, I’m answering a Lech Lecha-type call for something else.”
One aspect about Momentum that is often missed is that it isn’t only an organization for women in the Diaspora. There is also a strong presence within Israel.
Shira Tal Kogan, who lives on Kibbutz Mahanayim close to Rosh Pina, and despite being on her first Momentum trip was a group leader for Israeli women from the Galilee, was impressed and moved by the presence of so many women from across the globe who chose to come to Israel to express solidarity with its people—especially its mothers.
She recalled one interaction with a fellow participant from Canada, who told her how important it was for Jews to live in Israel, because by doing so, it made the presence of Jews in the Diaspora possible.
Tal Kogan was also surprised that while in a Jerusalem bomb shelter taking cover from an incoming Houthi ballistic missile, the women started singing and dancing, with the experience making them stronger. Paradoxically, to what she had anticipated, non-Israeli participants said the visits to Re’im and the site of the Nova Music Festival massacre had a similar effect.
“I thought, why are they showing them these really heavy sites? They’re a memorial for terrible things that happened, and there are so many good things to see. However, one of the girls said to me, ‘We need to see this, because we need to understand that someone like you who has a son who will go in the army in 10 years, and by his fighting, I can continue to live in the Diaspora.’ It wasn’t something I had thought about before, and it was very important for me to understand this reframing.”
Following the visit to the Nova Music Festival site, South African Pam Buchalter spoke meaningfully about the myriad challenges of identity, of belonging, and how messages are transmitted to a younger generation.
“I feel guilty,” she said, matter-of-factly. “I feel guilty that my beautiful children live in peace because Israel is this. The beautiful children I saw in pictures now at Nova will never get to live their potential. And that fact rocks me all the time. I keep laying that on my children in terms of this is the gift you were given. You better take this potential and whatever you do or don’t believe in, you’ve been given the gift of life.”