Portraits of Dedication

During my recent time in Israel, I had the privilege of meeting some extraordinary people doing some extraordinary things. Let me share with you two portraits, two glimpses of lives being poured out for something larger than themselves.

Noam in Aviad

The first is of a man named Noam. Noam and his wife, Tehila, and their two daughters, live on a new mountaintop just outside of Chevron, an extension of Kiryas Arba. They are one of fifteen families who have settled on top of this mountain in a new Yishuv, or settlement, called Aviad.

Aviad has no paved roads. It sits on a mountaintop surrounded by Arab towns, in an area that belongs to no one. Why do they do it? These fifteen families came and settled there in response to the relentless Arab building that seeks to take over much of Yehuda and Shomron, the Jewish heartland. As an effort to establish and sustain a Jewish presence in the land where our people have always lived, young families like Noam and Tehila have dedicated themselves to cultivating this ground.

The view is breathtaking on every side as you drive up the gravel path. There is no running water. It is trucked up in large containers by the Kiryas Arba municipality. There is no electricity from the grid. Power comes from solar panels. There is no air conditioning, no store to buy anything, nothing that resembles convenience. And yet, in this close-knit community of caravans, the atmosphere is warm and beautiful.

Tehila is a nurse who works in Yerushalayim. Noam has just finished his years studying in Kollel in the hesder yeshiva Shavei Chevron, and now devotes himself to teaching in a mechina, a pre army academy, where he will go on to inspire the next generation. Together they are raising their two daughters alongside their neighbors and friends, investing in the future of Eretz Yisrael. Their life is not simple. But they are pioneers. They are idealists. They are people building the next generation out of sheer dedication.

They showed us the most precious room in the entire community, the shul. There, on the top of the mountain, a beautiful tent opens up to reveal rows of benches, shelves of siddurim, well worn books of Jewish texts and Talmuds, the marks of a living Torah community, and two beautiful Sifrei Torah.

One of the most fascinating pieces of furniture in this sparse little shul, is a kisei shel Eliyahu, the chair on which a baby boy is placed at his bris. I asked why they would have such a thing ready in so modest a shul. Noam pointed out that two babies have already had their bris there on Shabbos in the past year and a half so they already were circumcised in the community on Shabbos.

In the coming months, another ten families will join. The vision is to grow Aviad to well over a thousand families. It is a beautiful community, and simply one more way that people are giving their lives to the Land of Israel.

Tomer in a farm

Now to another portrait. I spent time this week in the yishuv of Itamar, a large community of two hundred and fifty families, perched on a beautiful mountaintop just outside Shechem, overlooking the Tirtzah Valley on one side and, on the other, Har Gerizim and Har Eival on the approach to Shechem.

There we encountered a new kind of enterprise called Chavos, the farms, echoing the biblical Chavos Yair that appears in the Torah. They are setting up farms for a reason. As the Arabs continue to build and claim land illegally, the no man’s land is quietly taken over by nothing more than construction, simply building and thereby possessing. Jewish building is heavily restricted, monitored by NGOs and even satellite cameras, while Arab building continues without pause. As a way to halt this, and to expand the territory that Jews hold in their biblical heartland where our people have lived for thousands of years, the yishuv has begun establishing farms. These are established by individuals who go out to unclaimed land and turn barren mountains into cultivated, flourishing farms.

We visited the largest such farm, Givot Olam, an unbelievable place: chicken coops, vineyards, produce of every kind, all of it raised from a barren mountaintop over seventeen years ago.

Then we visited a more recently started farm, led by Tomer and his wife. Just a few years ago they set out to a barren mountaintop and began to dig, to prepare, to weed the land and clear the stones so they could plant. Now, on that beautiful terraced mountainside where nothing had grown but thistles, ten varieties of grape flourish, and a beautiful wine label called Tom, meaning purity and innocence, has been brought to life.

This wine has won prizes for its quality across Israel, grown from ground which was a bed of rocks and thorns just over a decade ago. And as this farm has succeeded, Tomer and his wife feel their work there is complete. So they have gone down the hill to the next barren stretch of land, to claim more, to cultivate it, to bring it to life. Once again they go without electricity, without a house, sleeping on the ground among the thorns as they clear the next fields. Even after tasting comfort and success, that was never the point. The point is the land.

One of the wines they gave us to taste was called Levanon. The reason is striking. While he was producing it, in 2024, Tomer was called up to Lebanon for reserve duty. There, in Lebanon, he found himself thinking that even so far from home he was really fighting for the Beis Hamikdash, protecting the very center of Jewish life from that distant frontier. And indeed, in Tanach, the Beis Hamikdash itself is called Levanon, made from the cedars of Lebanon. So he named his wine Levanon, as if to say that every small step a Jew takes anywhere in the world to reclaim his identity, his history, and his pride in being a Jew in the place he is meant to be a Jew, is itself a rebuilding of the Mikdash. Wherever you are, it is Levanon.

With incredible innocence, with humility, and with a quiet beauty, they live a life of blessing they witness every single day. They decided to plant flowers in one area to renew the soil, and discovered that between them, figs, grapes, and dates began to bud on their own, as if the land itself were welcoming them back. When Tomer cleared an area of rocks away, he found an old winepress from the second Temple era, over 2000 years ago. This was long before the Arab conquest or the advent of Islam. By clearing those barren hills, he returns to the ancient vineyards of our Jewish ancestors who also tilled this same earth for vineyards.

In fact, it is not just poetic, it is prophetic. As the prophet Jeremiah said over 2500 years ago:

These are just two special individuals I got to meet. Their lives are filled with hardships but they are happier and more mission-driven than most people I know living in luxury. These are some faces of the incredible generation