Dear Friends,

In the name of Or Hadash families, members and staff, we all thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your support. We just received over 150 emails and a few dozen phone calls. I’m writing this letter to all of you since I am not able to address each one of you personally. In this miserable situation, one of the few good things is knowing that Or Hadash has so many friends and people that care for us overseas.

When the sirens warned all the Haifa residents to go to their bomb shelters, Deborah, the children and myself ran early this morning to Or Hadash. Since our community shelter is a very good one, most of the children in our preschool came this morning (the rest fled the city with their parents).

The media reported that in the last 4 days 700 Katyusha rockets and another 600 bombs were sent to over 30 cities in Israel. 12 soldiers are already dead and the number of casualties among citizens is even greater.

About 2 hours ago a series of bombs landed in Haifa, killing residents who were near the train station. One of our members (the brother of a very popular Israeli singer) was on the road, near the location the Katyusha rockets landed and his car was shaking the whole way here. Except for that, we don’t have any casualties to report.

Friday night was a big surprise for me, since our sanctuary was almost full for the Kabalat Shabbat service. But, yesterday was a lousy Shabbat. It could be a very nice one, since we had 4 Bar/Bat Mitzvah ceremonies, but the truth is most of the guests did not arrive. We usually have 60-100 people attending each ceremony. Yesterday we barely had 15-20 (the parents, grandparents and some uncles and cousins). Even though I tried to do the best I could, the three boys and the girl (Bar/Bat Mitzvah), felt that nobody came to their joyous occasion and they will never have another Bar/Bat Mitzvah in their life. I assume that only 20%-25% of the people who were invited actually came. I don’t remember such a Shabbat since the terrible days of the second intifada.

Yesterday was a very confusing day, since no rockets fell in Haifa, but the citizens were very stressed as a result of the situation. Today it was clear that the relatively quiet Saturday we had was nothing but an illusion, as a series of bombs, without any warning hit Haifa. We heard them loud and clear and immediately went to the bomb shelter. Today we brought an amplifying system to our bomb shelter and the children are currently in the bomb shelter.

As you probably gather, our morning was not an ordinary one. I had the pleasure to take my guitar and tried to play songs to calm the little children of the preschool, but it wasn’t so easy since many parents were listening to the news on the radio, and you could feel the tension in a room filled with almost 100 people. Even though we made some renovations in our shelter and now it looks much nicer, still we were not prepared and it wasn’t very comfortable to feed the children, change their dippers, go to the restroom, over the past 6 long hours in the shelter. It was also not a pleasant experience to see all of the staff members running with the children to the shelter as we heard the first bombings. And even now as I am writing to you, I can hear the noises of helicopters and planes flying over Haifa and over Or Hadash.

I apologize if you tried to reach me on my cell phone since many times their were problems with the network and it was hard to get in touch with us.

Thank you again for your support and your prayers, and I sincerely hope that next time I write you, will be to tell you that the war is over.

B’Shalom (at least B’Tikvat Shalom),

Rabbi Dr. Edgar Nof