Welcome to Answers with A.D., the place where you can share your woes and wows, and Aaron David will write back with advice, solicited or not!

Have a machaneh crush you’re scared to talk to? Your garin can’t seem to commit to where to live? Wish it were still 1909 so you could join the second aliyah? Trying to figure out if Workshop or Shana is best for you? Want to start a new ken and don’t know how?

The fantastic madrich of Deganya, A.D. Gordon, has agreed to temporarily rise from the grave, just to help YOU, Tnuat Habonim Dror, solve all your most pressing dilemmas. So don’t be shy - write in anonymously using this google form, and your queries will be answered by A.D. himself in the next edition of the Iton!

By Ghadir Hani, Peace Activist from Akko

On the dreadful morning of October 7th, I immediately thought of you, Vivian. Have they gotten into Kibbutz Be'eri? After all, your house was always open wide. You always said, “I don't lock the door, so that everyone can come in.”

I texted you that I hoped the main door was locked. I was sorry I couldn't help. I invited you to Acre, to my house, as soon as there was a lull. You told me that you were alright but could hear noise outside the safe room window. You promised me that if needed, you would come.

The minutes went by, and the next messages I sent no longer received a response. I pictured you hunkered down in the safe room, in the house where I slept so many times. I trusted you, because we all trusted you, because we could always be certain that you would be alright. Because that’s what you gave us — faith and hope in the idea that it was up to us, that we choose our own reality.

For thirty-eight days, we clung to the hope that you’re over there in Gaza, not far from us. We knew you would survive the inferno. We knew you would tell us about how, even in the dark tunnels, you continued to smile and support those who were with you.

“You cannot drive out evil with darkness,” you always said. “Evil is driven out with more and more light.”

By Zo Katz, Bogeret of HDOZ and Member of HDUK Mazkirut 5784

What happens when you combine 2 Brits, 1 Australian and 1 Israeli Shaliach for a Yeud seminar in London? You get one keen HDUK mazkirut for 5784!
 
The last few months of forming this dream team mazkirut all came together when we were joined by Coral for our first mazkirut seminar together, and it has left us feeling inspired for leading HDUK to be bigger and better than ever! I would love to share with you some of my take-aways from the seminar and the direction of HDUK.
 
The magic of the movement is bringing together people from across the world with common ideology, care for the movement and demand at the centre of the relationships we create with one another. As a long-time member of HDOZ I could have never imagined flying halfway across the world to take responsibility over the movement in another country, but here I am. This seminar really highlighted to me how special it is to be a part of a movement where you can instantly care for another country’s chaverimot and ideological path as much as the movement in the country you grew up in.

Speech to the Workshop-Shnat Kvutza from Shorashim Rakaz Adam Kausman

Kvutzat Chasa - Workshnat 73.

In the last radiant moments of the long Israeli summer, you landed. Just after Rosh Hashana, when the evenings were still warm and the sky bright blue until long after dinner time. You were 25, we were 5, and it seemed the long Israeli summer might never end.

Soon, the days grew shorter. At first, slowly, and then very quickly, all at once. The night took hold earlier, and sweaters emerged from your suitcases for the first time. The summer that, for a while, seemed like it would never end, faded into the background. 

On October the 7th 2023, we were plunged into darkness. You all were luckily safe here on Kibbutz Ein Hashofet. But in the kibbutzim and towns of the Gaza Envelope, something truly dark was playing out. The worst single day for Jewish death since the Holocaust. The details are so depraved, so horrifying that the mere description of some events still plays in my mind 49 days later like a movie that I can’t turn off no matter how hard I try. The darkness was blinding and all-encompassing. We blinked fast through thick tears, our pupils struggling to adapt to the new conditions.

In those early days after the 7th, we all struggled to find our way in the dark. We, your madrichot and rakazot, knew that things would change for your program. I know you knew it too. But we were still stumbling in the dark, all of us, trying to latch on to something, anything, that would tell us we were safe and that the dark would dissipate at some point. Those were the days that it was too early to really hope, to really believe, that the dark would ever subside. Still, I often feel like we are in those days. But now, our eyes have adjusted to the dark, even just a little bit.