I recently received an email from Shelley Neese, a dear friend who also happens to be the President of  The Jerusalem Connection and the author of The Copper Scroll Project. Shelley has spent an awful lot of time living in Israel and seeing it as an insider. A few years ago, while on an extended visit, Shelley and her family came to visit. It was the first and only Fourth of July my Israeli-born kids had ever celebrated. Watching her kids splash around in the pool with my kids made me ache for the family experiences I had left behind. In a strange and perhaps dysfunctional way, Shelley is family.

So when Shelley wrote, asking me how we were doing, I knew a one-word answer would not suffice.

“Israel is suffering,” I said. “I went to the supermarket and saw a lady standing in the aisle, crying. And everyone knew why she was crying.”

What I couldn’t admit, not even to Shelley, was that the lady crying in the aisle was me.

I spent far too many years as a chef who spent his spare time hanging out with bikers. Chefs are volcanic and I was infamous for my temper. On a really heavy night, dishes flew across the kitchen smashing against walls. Chefs are supposed to get angry and be passionate.

But the one thing a chef cannot do, what a biker especially cannot do, is cry.

But I have been crying a lot lately as I am first and foremost a Jew. And Jews cry. 

Maybe I spend too much time on the internet, prowling social media. Every other post on Facebook is from a family who just discovered their daughter was murdered, their son was killed, or their father is gone. And now we are beginning to see death notices of IDF soldiers fallen in battle.

Yes, that is bad. But every other post on Twitter is a condemnation of Israel, and that is worse. It sucks the hope right from my heart. In a world where hordes of self-righteous young people scream in favor of Hamas, I am left drowning in a sea of self-incrimination for leaving such a world as a legacy to my children. Thank God, the IDF is strong. In two months, Hamas will be no more.

But the screaming hordes will remain and grow. It is not a movement of reason. White-bread adolescents who speak no Arabic march screaming “Intifada” and “Jihad”. This is madness that cannot be cured. I will protect my family with my body if need be but I know that eventually, the hordes will find us even in our corner of the Golan. 

Many of my Jewish friends in the US refuse to attend pro-Israel rallies. They are afraid. In the middle of the night, vandals are marking Jewish houses in Berlin with six-pointed stars. The wolves are at the door.  October 7th was this generation’s Kristallnacht. It is already too late for discussion or social action. The Brown Shirts have taken over the streets. 

White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre was asked if the administration was concerned about rising antisemitism. She answered that they were concerned about Islamophobia. In the world of social justice warriors, Jews are not an oppressed minority. We are considered to be occupiers in our own land and occupiers must be killed in the most brutal manner.

Even António Guterres, the UN secretary general, stated that since we were illegal occupiers, the slaughter of 1,400 Jews by Hamas was understandable, if not justified. 

Shelley wrote that she was frustrated and felt useless, only able to communicate by internet with her Israeli friends as they sat in the shelter. Her children were her hope, acting as fearless advocates for Israel. Maybe they still remembered better times spent in a pool in the Golan with their Israeli “family”.

It was good to hear from Shelley. I have been learning a lot of things in the past two weeks. I have been given a glimpse of the madness that led up to the Holocaust. I have seen the unbalanced fervor that accompanies misguided passion. I finally understand what it means to embody the entirety of the tragedies that plagued Jewish history. 

But Shelley showed me what it is for a Christian to be a Watchman on the Wall. For the first time in history, the Jews are not alone. We do not have to face the screaming hordes on our own. Shelley and her family have my back. Tommy and Hayovel have my back. John Enarson and Steve Wearp have my back.

As I sit and think of all of the many Watchmen on my list, I begin to cry again, but this time in joy.

God willing, when this is all over, I will need a bigger grill to feed my much-expanded extended family. And I will be able to explain to my children what this means for them.