Blue State Blues: Thanksgiving and the Restoration of Kibbutz Nirim

I sat in Adele Raemer’s living room on Kibbutz Nirim, contemplating what she had just told me, looking out the back window, which somehow the Hamas terrorists had not chosen to enter on October 7, 2023.

They had approached instead from the front, where the challenge of breaking through a steel shutter had kept them busy for the few minutes it took for them to change their minds.

Raemer, who came to Israel from the Bronx in late 1973 in the wake of another shocking war that began with a surprise attack, had just explained to me that she intended to repair her home, and rebuild her kibbutz, because, as she said, “I don’t think there’s any place better or safer for Jews to live than in Israel.”

I thought about that, and about the four pages of notebook paper she had filled with the names of people that she knew, personally, who had been murdered on October 7th.

What did she mean, I asked, when she said that she felt safer, as a Jew, in Israel, when she had only just lived through the worst mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust? I did not doubt that she felt that way, but was there not a contradiction? How could she reconcile those two things?

She thought for a moment, and replied: “We have an army. They’re my army. They failed on October 7th, but they’re going to have to explain to me why they failed, and what they learned.”

I wrote in my notes: “A sense of ownership.”

A feeling of safety, ultimately, does not rely on guarantees that there will be no danger, but rather a feeling that one can defend oneself — and, more broadly, that one controls one’s own destiny.

That is why Raemer is returning to the kibbutz, and why she and others are rebuilding and restoring their homes instead of abandoning them. (She added a note of caution: it is much harder to do for those whose homes were actually invaded by terrorists; that memory never leaves.)

Outside, a group of volunteers — female soldiers, all new immigrants — arrived to assist, cheerfully offering to rearrange Raemer’s furniture, in anticipation of a fresh coat of paint on the walls inside her home.

Adele does not have to return. Israel is a small country, but there are many other places to live — places more than two kilometers away from Gaza.,

So why live there?

The answer: precisely for the same reason that David Ben-Gurion sent the kibbutz founders there, 77 years ago, in the first place: to make sure there was nowhere in the Land of Israel that Jews could not live, to strengthen their connection to the land by living it and working it, building a bond to Israel and to each other.

It was what we in America might have called the pioneering spirit, when we were still allowed to admire such virtues, instead of being encouraged to view those who settled the frontier with contempt and disdain.

It is the same spirit that motivated the Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock, and who endured a year of suffering, before finally harvesting the fruits of their labor and giving thanks to God, together with the Native Americans who helped them.

The Pilgrims were not safe, in any sense of the word. They had enjoyed the help of Squanto and other locals, but that would not always be the case, in New England and elsewhere.

They had not come to the New World because it was more comfortable, or because it was rich in natural resources, but because whatever failures they suffered would have been theirs alone.

That, ultimately, is what freedom means: not just political liberty, but a sense of self-ownership.

I asked Adele if she was planning to observe Thanksgiving in Israel. She shrugged as if to say: that would be nice, but there are no plans. Not with so much to rebuild. Not with 101 hostages still captive in Gaza.

A thought: with the Lebanon ceasefire, this is the second year in a row Israel has enjoyed a truce over Thanksgiving.

There may not yet be peace. But at least there is still hope — the hope that moved the Pilgrims, and that brings Adele Raemer back to Nirim.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.