Ten Americans and a Brit who came to Israel last week to volunteer ended their visit with an emotional Thanksgiving dinner in the home of American immigrants in Jerusalem.
Talk around the table, laden with traditional Thanksgiving fare, focused on the impact of their experiences in the various phases of their stay.
Fern Sandler recounted how her short visit with a severely wounded Israel Defense Forces soldier in the Rehabilitation Center for War Casualties at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital affected both her and the soldier.
Each volunteer’s name tag featured a photo and short description of a soldier killed in the war, or a civilian victim of the Oct.7, 2023, atrocities, on the back. As Fern stood next to the wounded soldier’s bed, her name tag swung around, and he recognized his commander, who was killed in the same battle in which he had been wounded.
“He just broke down when he saw that picture,” Fern related. “Then he told me that despite his own injuries, he was the one who retrieved his commander’s body before the whole building collapsed.”
Brandon Salsberry from Dallas told JNS it was worth leaving his wife and two small children at home for Thanksgiving so he could be in Israel to express his support during the war. His wife understood his need to bear witness to both the tragedies and the spirit of the Israeli people, he said.
“Ending the trip by singing ‘Hatikva’ at the Kotel was the most emotional moment for me,” he recalled.
At Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak, a 10-minute drive from the Gaza border, Jamie Parrish from Maryland found her most profound experience of the trip as she was cleaning up the gardens surrounding houses abandoned since Oct.7.
“I realized that these leaves had probably been on the ground since that day. It’s been so long since anyone had taken care of the garden,” she said.
Parrish brought her mother, Stephanie Kresky, along to volunteer. Kresky, on her first visit to Israel, said she had been “completely overwhelmed by the wonderful people” she met.
Helping in the rebuilding of Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak, giving blood at a Magen David Adom center, visiting the site of the Nova Festival near Kibbutz Re’im, meeting and cooking dinner for groups of soldiers and visiting injured soldiers at Hadassah Hospital were all part of the group’s itinerary, organized by JNF-USA, that has brought 4,000 volunteers to Israel since Oct.7.
British volunteer Richard Woolf, 66, from London, explained to JNS why he had decided to volunteer.
“Oct. 7 was the worst day of my life, and it just got worse after that. I just knew that I had to do something,” he said.
“One Sunday I went to a pro-Israel rally in Hyde Park and listened to the mother of one of the hostages. When she was asked what we could do, she said just one word: ‘Come!’ That was it,” he said.
On the back of Woolf’s name tag was the picture of Yedidya Bloch, 31, who was wounded in Lebanon on Oct. 24, 2024, and succumbed to his wounds five days later.
In a breaking voice, Woolf told JNS, “During the whole trip, I just couldn’t bear to look at that picture.”
Woolf shared part of his travel log with JNS. After spending time with soldiers of the Nachshon Unit, that had lost three people in the previous week, he wrote: “A lasting thought: I’ve heard so much about how Hamas ideology etc. can’t be destroyed—their destructive hate doesn’t have a chance against the spirit and ingenuity of the IDF.”