Buffalo Grove resident Lenna Silberman Scott, left, said she is proud of her son Drew for volunteering to serve with the Israeli Defense Forces.
Courtesy of Lenna Silberman Scott
Shortly before the onset of the Jewish High Holidays, 22-year-old Stevenson High School graduate Drew Silberman tucked a prayer book into his backpack, hoping he would be able to use it.
A reservist with the Israeli Defense Forces who had hoped for time off during the holidays, Silberman was in Herzliya, an Israeli town that had been the target of Hezbollah rocket fire, preparing to join his unit in Lebanon.
There are thousands of Israeli refugees in the north “who haven’t been able to return to their homes in a year,” he said. “It seems like this is the mission that’s going to get that done.”
As the Jewish High Holidays converge with the anniversary of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, thoughts of events in Israel are never far from the hearts and minds of suburban Jews.
In Buffalo Grove, Silberman’s mother lives with a mix of anxiety and pride about her son’s service.
“He is helping keep the people who are currently living in Israel safe and, yet, in order to do that, he has to put his own life at risk,” Lenna Silberman Scott said.
Senior Rabbi Lisa Sari Bellows speaks during a service at Congregation Beth Am in Buffalo Grove on Sunday. Remembrance of the events of Oct. 7 are themes for her Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services.
Daily Herald file photo/2018
The anniversary of Oct. 7, when 1,200 people were killed in Israel and more than 240 hostages were captured, will be commemorated in the suburbs. The Chabad Jewish Center of Arlington Heights will host a memorial service on Sunday.
The Chabad center’s rabbi and co-director, Yaakov Kotlarsky, noted the most repeated phrase in the Torah are the words meaning “do not be afraid.”
“So our enemies are trying to instill fear in us,” he said. “If we are just afraid, we are allowing our enemies to win. When our enemies come to attack us, we have to double down with being more proud of our Judaism.”
Lisa Sari Bellows, senior rabbi of Congregation Beth Am in Buffalo Grove, talked about “what we do with a broken heart” on Rosh Hashanah a few days ago.
On Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, she will talk about “the importance to our people of hope and recognizing that joy comes in the morning, even if we don’t feel it today.”
On Oct. 7, there will be a remembrance and service of healing.
Rabbi Yaakov Kotlarsky of Chabad Jewish Center in Arlington Heights demonstrates the sounding of the shofar, a Rosh Hashanah tradition. The congregation will hold an Oct. 7 remembrance Sunday.
Brian Hill/bhill@dailyherald.com
She said the effects of Oct. 7 have reverberated throughout her congregation. One congregant is moving to Israel to be closer to his children and grandchildren. There is a member whose cousin remains a hostage.
Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering has made special mention of the hostages before she begins her mayor’s report.
She was “honored and saddened” to attend a family shiva in memory of hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was found dead in Gaza.
“Hersh’s family is part of all of our family,” she said.
Goldberg-Polin’s death has also weighed on Congressman Brad Schneider.
“Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s family is from this area. I have known his aunt for a long time,” he said. “My kids went to school with his cousins.”
In his role as Congressman, Schneider has been deeply involved in the events unfolding in the Middle East.
Schneider, who co-chairs the Abraham Accords Caucus, was personally affected when posters of the hostages were torn down from a wall outside of his office in the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, D.C., as well as when protesters gathered outside his home.
Silberman, who plans to study government at Reichman University in Herzliya, said he could not have imagined the war would still be raging a year after the Hamas attacks.
“It seems like the government is making choices in order to draw the war out,” he said.
He said the government is creating plans “that we don’t have enough soldiers for,” such as staying in the Philadelphi Corridor, a strip of land in Gaza along the border with Egypt. And that means continually calling up reservists.
He said a deal in Gaza is probably the best choice for Israel going forward, one that would bring the remaining hostages home and would also include “a plan in Gaza for the future.”
Silberman’s mom she said she would like to see peace and the end of deaths on both sides.
“No mother should ever have to worry about their child dying,” she said. “I don’t care if you’re Palestinian or Jewish or anything else, no mother should have to deal with that.”