At 64, Daniela Adar, a grandmother of five from the Upper Galilee town of Yesud HaMa’aleh, never expected to find herself back in the classroom. Now halfway through an intensive tour-guide course, she credits that decision to her experiences during the war that began on Oct. 7, 2023.
Taking her museum’s stories to families displaced from their homes showed her how much those stories could mean to people uncertain about their future. She wanted to keep telling them, and to learn more.
The decision grew out of talks with desperate mothers in hotel foyers, conversations with evacuated seniors over half-finished baskets and encounters with children who listened fearfully for sirens instead of playing.
Before Oct. 7, Adar welcomed thousands of visitors a year to the Dubrovin Farm heritage site in Yesud HaMa’aleh, where she is the manager. The war that started in the Gaza Envelope soon spread to the north as Hezbollah’s deadly rockets rained down on communities. With visitors unable to reach the heritage site, Adar packed up its stories and took them to displaced families.
Initially, she simply wanted to keep the museum’s work going while its doors were closed to visitors. But the encounters began to change her, giving her a sense of purpose at a time when her own future, like theirs, was uncertain.
“I realized how deeply I connect with people, and how they connect with me,” she said. “As the war continued, and I started to discover sides of myself that I never knew existed, I decided to train as a tour guide, to learn how to tell the story of the Jewish people, not only well, but accurately and with passion.”
In the first days of the war, Adar busied herself with jobs around the museum. She organized agricultural implements in the courtyard and tidied exhibition rooms, tackling tasks that had waited while groups filled the site.
The museum had just finished shooting a new film. Its premiere was supposed to take place in October 2023.
The war changed everything. Overnight, visitors from Israel and abroad stopped coming. Yesud HaMa’aleh was not evacuated, but many surrounding communities were.
“None of us thought that this would go on for such a long time,” said Adar.
As the weeks passed, unpaid leave began to seem inevitable. She struggled with the prospect. She continued checking on the museum, looking after what was there and asking herself what she could still do to keep it running.
By April 2024, the film had been edited and was ready to screen. There was still nobody to watch it.
Missiles and drones threatened the Upper Galilee. People needed to remain near protected spaces. Bringing visitors back was out of the question.
Adar worried about what would happen to everything they had built at the museum.
Taking the museum on the road
An initiative by the Society for Preservation of Israel Heritage Sites (SPIHS), co-funded by Jewish National Fund-USA (JNF-USA), offered a way to continue. Through the Growth and Resilience Program, museums and heritage sites in the north and south could take their stories, along with workshops or activities, beyond the museum walls to evacuated communities.
Adar prepared a program called “Museum in a Suitcase” and started making phone calls.
The first was to a hotel at Ginosar, near the Sea of Galilee. She asked to be put through to the evacuees’ community coordinator.
The person on the other end of the line wanted to know which community: Misgav Am, Manara, Margaliot, Kiryat Shmona or Kibbutz Yiftah? And was she offering something for adults or children?
The questions gave her a first glimpse of the complexities of the mass evacuation and the difficulties facing those living in the hotels.
“I suddenly understood that this was not as simple as leading cheerful groups at the museum,” she said. “This was an entirely different ball game.”
She arranged a visit with evacuees from Kibbutz Yiftah, requested a hall, a projector and a screen, and received approval for the activity.
About 40 people were waiting in the hotel foyer when she arrived. They had been away from home for months and were bored, anxious and frustrated.
“I was very nervous but also very excited,” she recalled.
Adar sensed how much the participants yearned for some sense of routine. They were staying in a hotel, usually associated with holidays and relaxation, but there was little of either in the daily lives they described to her.
Drawing on her gift for storytelling, Adar spoke about the immigrants from Poland who established Yesud HaMa’aleh in 1883, despite knowing very little about farming, and the hardships they endured, including malaria. She shared the story of the Dubrovin family, whose journey from Christianity to Judaism eventually brought them to the Land of Israel.
Then she screened the museum’s new film for the first time.
Afterward, people approached her, deeply moved. Others needed to hear these stories and see the film, they told her.
“They said it gave them hope that things would eventually be better,” Adar recalled.
The community spread the word. Invitations came from other hotels, and her visits multiplied.
More than storytelling
People started opening up and confiding in her. Parents described living with their children in one small room, with no privacy and no idea how long they would remain there. They worried about schooling, friendships and whether their families would ever feel safe returning home. They spoke about being unable to answer their children’s questions when they were struggling with the same uncertainties themselves.
They shared their fears and frustrations, their hopes and aspirations. Adar listened.
“I almost forgot what I had originally come to do,” she said. “I put on a different hat.”
She began to understand what her visits could offer beyond the museum program. She kept coming back to the same communities, picking up conversations where they had left off.
“The truth is that I fell in love with this new role,” she admitted.
Adar added basket-weaving workshops for evacuated seniors, using natural materials. A basket took several sessions to complete, giving her time to get to know the people around the table.
“What mattered more than the activity itself was them telling me about their family, their grandchildren,” she said. “They knew I’d be there each week to listen.”
Returning home
As families began returning home after more than a year of evacuation, Adar kept visiting. She knew what awaited them.
Roads were damaged. Trees and vegetation had dried out. Houses still needed repairs. Neighbors hadn’t returned. Families were struggling with financial problems, trauma and loss.
Parents in Kiryat Shmona told her the streets were empty and businesses closed early. They worried about letting their children play outside.
For some families, a few tables with crafts, games and activities were enough to give them a reason to leave the house.
“I was simply a reason for them to leave their homes and come together,” Adar said. “I allowed whole communities to get together, for the parents to interact and for the kids to play.”
Showing up under fire
Even after the communities returned, the security threats continued. Conflicts with Iran meant days spent in or near bomb shelters. Once more, life came to a halt.
Adar continued showing up, even under fire.
One morning stands out in her mind. She was driving up to Misgav Am for an activity with kindergarten children inside a bomb shelter. Along the winding road up the Naftali Ridge, she passed blackened trees and scorched earth.
Outside, it was quiet and tense. Inside, children chattered excitedly with friends they had not seen for weeks. They played and took part in heritage activities. For one hour, Adar had brought them a sense of normalcy.
On her drive back through Kiryat Shmona, sirens sounded and missiles fell. Adar pulled over and entered a roadside shelter just in time.
Despite her sons’ fears about these journeys and their pleas for her to stop, Adar kept thinking of the people waiting for her. For some, her visits were among the few familiar, predictable moments in weeks of uncertainty.
“I never realized how brave I really was until that period,” she said.
She continued visiting communities, sometimes making dangerous journeys twice a day.
“Without a doubt, it was healing and strengthening me, too,” she said.
The work helped her cope with her own fear and uncertainty. There was always another visit to arrange, an activity to bring or someone who needed her to listen.
It also made her want to learn more. People responded to the stories she told, returned for more and brought others along. She wanted to answer their questions more fully and share the history beyond her museum.
Last year, she made it happen.
“I am halfway through the challenging tour-guide course, broadening my knowledge so that I can share that story with others,” she said.
Adar has not forgotten what the evacuees told her: Hearing about the lives of the pioneers who came to this region before them gave them hope for their own futures. They understood that they were part of a chain that began with brave Jews before them, and their children will remain part of the chain of those who come after them.
She intends to keep telling their stories.
