Israel’s 68,000 evacuees celebrate Jewish new year apart — and wonder when they will return home

(JTA) — At this point, Gabi Hasin had grown used to fleeing his home ahead of missile fire from Lebanon. A resident of the northern border city of Kiryat Shemona, Hasin has spent the past year on the move, relocating seven times to keep himself and his family out of harm’s way.

So when he packed his bags and moved south again over the past couple weeks — this time from the northern city of Tiberias to Jerusalem — it was the least of his problems. He’s taking sleeping pills for the first time in his life. Last month, his daughter was hospitalized with panic attacks because she was due to get married on the day thousands of Hezbollah operatives’ pagers exploded simultaneously in Lebanon.

Now, for the first time in decades, he and his 10 siblings will not be together for Rosh Hashanah, which begins Wednesday evening. Every year, they all gather at their late parents’ home in Kiryat Shemona for the holiday, setting up a large makeshift tent to accommodate dozens of children and grandchildren.

Instead, the 11 siblings are scattered across six cities. Hasin will be with his in-laws in Jerusalem.

“It’s very depressing,” he said. “I don’t care about what’s going on in Jerusalem, Tiberias or anywhere else. My only concern is Kiryat Shemona. It’s a town, but it feels like a village and is the most family-oriented place there is. Everyone knows everyone there. When I walk down the street, I can’t stop saying hello.”

A year away from home

Hasin is one of more than 68,000 Israelis, mostly from the north, who have lived as evacuees for nearly a year since Hamas’ attack on Israel last Oct. 7. Hezbollah began attacking Israel soon afterward, and that conflict has escalated into another front in the war, as Israel has pummeled Hezbollah leaders and infrastructure in Lebanon and the terror group and its sponsor, Iran, have shot hundreds of missiles at Israel.

Many residents of the north hope that when the war is over, they will be able to again live in their houses and apartments. But for many who have been displaced over the past year, their only wish is to celebrate the holidays at home — a near-impossibility at a time when the conflict is only escalating.

“I stay up all night thinking about the future, wondering what will happen, how we’ll return to Kiryat Shmona, and if my kids will ever come back. We would have been home ages ago if they [government] had done earlier what they’re doing the last two weeks in Lebanon,” said Hasin.

No matter what happens in the war, Kiryat Shemona may not be able to return to the way things were. According to a poll conducted in June, 43% of the city’s approximately 30,000 residents are considering not returning to their homes, while 13% have already decided they will not go back​.

Other residents of the north are facing tough judgment calls ahead of the holiday. Shani Tzililm has spent much of the past week sheltering with her four kids in their home in the Haifa suburb of Kiryat Bialik from rockets fired by Iran and Hezbollah. Their city has not yet been evacuated. But this week, she won’t be celebrating Rosh Hashanah with her mother in the nearby city of Akko — because it’s 10 miles further north, and even more unsafe.

Factoring in safety

Her mother’s home in the ancient mixed Arab-Jewish city lacks a safe room, and the nearest bomb shelter is in a school several minutes away. Tzililm’s apartment building, at least, has a bomb shelter, though during a barrage of successive sirens on Sunday, she fell and tumbled down the stairs with her three-year-old in her arms.

“I prefer to sit at home where I feel safer. But who knows anymore what’s safe?” Tzililm said. “I can’t cope with it anymore. My 8 year old is full of anxiety, she cries all day. I’m scared to death myself. How much longer can we live like this? I pray every day for this war to end. I don’t care how, it needs to be over.”

Daniel Ohana, a municipal coordinator for the thousands of evacuees living in hotels throughout Tel Aviv, said that his team conducted hotel visits ahead of the holiday to ensure that evacuees had everything they needed.

“It’s difficult. We’ve moved a whole city — which has a certain culture and pace of life — to another city with an entirely different culture,” Ohana said. “But we’re trying to do everything we can to make sure we preserve a sense of community and family. Little gestures like pre-holiday toasts.”

He emphasized that the work wasn’t only a one-way effort; evacuees from Kiryat Shemona were also volunteering to help by packing food parcels for needy Tel Aviv families.

In Haifa’s Rambam Medical Center, Rosh Hashanah preparations were underway at the Sammy Ofer Fortified Underground Emergency Hospital — the world’s largest underground medical facility, built to remain functional during a rocket barrage.

Now, the subterranean hospital has sprung into action: 600 patients were transferred there last week amid rocket fire, though around 200 ambulatory patients will be moved back to the regular hospital for the holiday, hospital spokesperson David Ratner told JTA on Monday.

Rabbi Shmuel Turkov, director of Lev Chabad in Haifa, was organizing prayers and meals in cooperation with Rambam’s onsite rabbi. “People are concerned about how they will celebrate the holiday in the hospital. We’re making sure they will hear the shofar, and have a proper festive meal with all the simanim,” he said, referring to Rosh Hashanah foods symbolizing wishes for the new year.

The widening war is affecting people throughout the country. Several nonprofits ramped up their activity this week to meet the sharp rise in demand for aid, addressing the new waves of needy people affected by the war, or what celebrity chef Jamie Geller referred to as the “new poor.” Geller is working with emergency relief organization Yad Ezra V’Shulamit.

“We have so many new poor this holiday season. They were givers last year and now need to be on the receiving end of charitable donations and food rations,” Geller said.

The organization had been asked by the Home Front Command to feed an extra 16,000 families impacted by the war, bringing the total up to 66,000 holiday food baskets.

“There are wartorn widows and orphans who not only have to prepare for the first holiday season without their loved ones, they also have to be concerned about putting food on the table,” she said.

Moshe Cohen, CEO of the nonprofit Chasdei Naomi, highlighted that the food baskets his organization would give out this year included extra staples and holiday-specific items because Rosh Hashanah immediately precedes Shabbat, extending the festival into a three-day holiday, a rarity in Israel. He also expressed gratitude for the many foreign volunteers, primarily from the US, who arrived to assist with packaging the increased number of food parcels.

Meanwhile, in Kiryat Bialik, Tzililm, who earns minimum wage as a kindergarten assistant, received holiday food vouchers from the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews. This year, the group increased its annual holiday aid campaign allowance to $10 million, also extending its support beyond its usual roster of needy families to include those impacted by the war, including residents of border towns and displaced families, hostage families, survivors of the Oct. 7 attack and IDF reservists in financial need.

But Tzililm said she wasn’t even sure she had the strength to cook the food she had been given.

“I’ll be honest with you, I’m just not in the mood to make the holiday this year,” she said.

In Jaffa, single mother Karina Zilbersher’s Rosh Hashanah plans were upended over the weekend when her only son, Liam, a soldier in the Israeli Air Defense Command, was deployed alongside approximately 10,000 other soldiers.

With the growing threat of ballistic missiles and large-caliber rocket launches from Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies, soldiers in Liam’s unit, responsible for operating David’s Sling, an Israeli air-defense system, will be on duty throughout the holidays.

“They’re the most needed soldiers right now, and I get that, but it’s still so frustrating,” she said. “I have no other family in Israel. He’s all I have, and they took him.”