BLOOD! Had I made a mistake in coming? I didn’t know if I could bear seeing that

Photo: Flash90

I

had a limited time in Israel to do volunteer work and I wanted it to be something meaningful. But when I told my grown children that I’d volunteered to clean houses that were invaded by terrorists on October 7, their reaction was along the lines of, “Mommy… are you kidding? Can’t you just pick fruit or make sandwiches or pack care boxes like other bubbies your age?”

Yet doing something for the families who had been displaced appealed to me. A good friend, Miriam, had told me about the project to clean houses on kibbutzim. It helped kibbutzniks to return to a spotlessly cleaned home. It brought relief and was a small kindness for these pained, heroic communities.

So there I was, on a very early Tuesday morning, on my way down south with Miriam and two other volunteers. The car was filled with lively, animated Hebrew conversation, but I was just trying to concentrate on where we were going. For the past few months, the massacre had dominated my news feed, from horrific pictures to devastating eyewitness accounts. My heart was pounding.