Entry One
It’s 4:30 in the morning, well before awake time, and here I am, awake. Once again, I underestimated the process of adjusting to the nine time zones between Israel and Denver. Despite fatigue on a cellular level, I can’t sleep any more. So, it is time to start journaling, as my therapist daughter taught me, to process all that I will experience this week. Yesterday was day one of the 2025 Colorado JCRC Public Officials Mission. I arrived a day early for business meetings to find Tel Aviv just as I had left it last year, busy and shiny with even more new towers. Getting to Israel continues to be a challenge. My final itinerary was the third I had booked, after my U.S. and U.K. carriers canceled reservations. The folks who got me here are some of Israel’s newest allies, the United Arab Emirates, thanks to the Abraham Accords. Emirates is one of the few non-Israeli carriers that still services Ben Gurion Airport after a Houthi missile hit a parking lot there last weekend. I connected in Dubai, which is an entire other story, a mash up of an exclusive 24-hour shopping mall & the world’s second busiest airport (Picture an endless parade of fashionable people wearing neck pillows over Versace).
Deplaning in Tel Aviv, it is still obvious that things are not back to normal here, but rather society has adjusted to a new normal. What is the same is that everyone tries to deplane simultaneously, unlike the orderly row-by-row square dance to which Americans are accustomed. Israelis approach getting off a plane similarly to their approach to life – aggressively. What you find after squeezing off the jet is that the airport is quieter than anyone would like; all the more important that we have a bus load of Coloradans exploring all things Israel this week. Reminiscent of a year ago, hostage posters still line the walkways on the way to the main terminal.
After showering I took on a day of coffee-fueled appointments, meeting people who have been confined to small Zoom call frames up until now, entrepreneurs who are building the next great thing in AI and energy tech, all of whom are parents, sometimes with kids the same age, doing similar things to mine. The difference is that these kids are being called up to reserve duty in the Israel Defense Forces yet again, back to Gaza to command a platoon of tunnel fighters or entering a gap year of national service.
I got around the city using the Gett app to hail cabs and string my five Hebrew words together to get where I needed to go. One new thing to me is the Tel Aviv subway, which is clean and modern, making my hometown decrepit Boston T even more of a comparison embarrassment.
My ride was interrupted by everyone calmly exiting the station due to a suspicious package, a reality in a city that has suffered the Intifadas that American University protesters shout about.
At a Peres Center reception for Iron Nation, a VC fund focused on bringing capital to Israel as foreign VC funds pulled back after October 7th, I met a founder with a 3-D printed cornea entering clinical trials. What drew me to Aryeh was that at a tech event reception for investors, government officials and founders, (where I was overdressed in that I didn’t wear sneakers), he was in an IDF uniform with a loaded M4 rifle over his shoulder. Despite 300+ days of reserve duty since October 7th, Aryeh is willing his company forward.
The reception featured the photojournalism of Ziv Koren, who documented October 7th with a brutal honesty not seen in American media. I was taken by so many images, but none more than the terribly beautiful constellation pattern made by a fragmentation grenade on the ceiling of a violated Be’eri home. When I commented on it to Aryeh, he told me he didn’t need to look at the photos, he was there. I need to see the photos, I wasn’t there. That is why we are here this week, to see it all.
This afternoon, we greet old and new Colorado friends and begin our journey around this incredible land of hope and tragedy.
Entry Two
Late nights and early mornings are blending the days. Our busload of legislators, community members, and dedicated JEWISHcolorado staff have now all had a couple days together. Already, the name badges are becoming unnecessary as new faces become familiar. We started the exploration of Israel to understand the latest of the latest state of affairs.
The Colorado Jewish Community Relations Council’s (JCRC) Public Officials Mission is a curated mixture of lectures and experiences designed to give participants at least a basic understanding of the geopolitical, cultural, and religious complexities of Israel. It is also a precious gesture of current friendship as well as the promise of a long-lasting deep partnership.
JCRC has facilitated this trip for about 20 years, building connections with dozens of public officials that move on to all walks of Colorado life. Friendship is developed for its own virtue but is also relied upon in times of need. After October 7th, our JCRC’s greatest challenges to fight back anti-Israel and anti-Jewish policy were won employing allies developed on trips like this one.
We had the honor to meet with Gen. Benny Gantz to get his take on Israel’s security situation. He put in context the news of the day, including new agreements between our country and the Saudis and Houthis. Of all his remarks, I was most moved by his expression of gratitude. He thanked us for coming when so many will not. We have been reminded how unusual our visit is, given the empty airport, parking lots, and hotel lobbies. I second the sentiment. This trip reminds Israelis that we are with them while also creating precious allies. I am also inspired by the sense of adventure of our public officials who joined us here. Mark Twain said “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of [people] and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.”
Our guests are not vegetating in one little corner of the earth. We brought them to the other side of the earth in an admittedly unscalable strategy to push back on the narrow-mindedness so common in public discourse about Israel. Tonight, they joined us, dancing defiantly in a Tel Aviv bomb shelter filled with families and children. We enjoyed food from around the Jewish world in the Carmel Market and took in the nightlife. This experience opens new minds to what Israel is and isn’t, a portable last gift all will bring home to Colorado.
Entry Three
I first noticed the bumper-style stickers traveling to Jerusalem on Monday. Faces of people, all ages, men and women, mostly smiling back at you. The stickers cover every surface of the station walls. All in Hebrew, I had no idea what the stickers said, but I later learned they are one more way that Israelis have chosen to remember those killed on or since the day Hamas invaded Israel, burning, raping and murdering some 1,200 people and taking 251 Israelis hostages.
Aside from these stickers, a train ride gives no clue to this trauma. The train from Tel Aviv Ha’Hagana Station is pristine. Clean cars and gleaming stations are modern, perhaps more so than anything in the U.S. As you wait on the 21st century platform, you can’t help but wonder who all these people are on the stickers taken hostage in a massacre reminiscent of the 1st century.
Last night, crowds celebrated the release of Israeli American hostage Edan Alexander, who is a few years younger than my own kids. Edan’s mom, Adi, said on Israeli Channel 12, “I saw the picture, he’s handsome, standing on his feet. That’s what’s important… He’s a little pale, thin, but a tall boy. This is my boy.” Adi’s strength of motherhood inspires, given Edan was starved and shackled, confined to a tunnel cage. The suffering of Edan and his family is unimaginable. Gratitude on the safe return of Edan is something we hear over and over.
We have also heard frustration that 58 hostages still remain in Gaza who, dead or alive, do not enjoy a U.S. passport. What is to become of them? As an American, I can’t help but be happy for the return of one of our own. I also understand that each of the hostages are one of our own.
Today we visited Hostage Square, and I was struck by the differences there since my last visit in January 2024. The horrible mock tunnel is still there to walk through, as is the terrible running clock counting 585 days since hostages were taken on October 7th. Sadly, our legislators were not able to meet with hostage families. Few are readily on hand now given the oppressively long prison sentence the hostage ordeal has been for families and hostages alike.
After Hostage Square we had the incredible opportunity to enjoy a traditional Ethiopian lunch and learn from Ashager Araro, of Instagram fame. She told the harrowing story of her family’s escape from Ethiopia through Operation Solomon in the 1980s. Inspired and charmed, Ashager’s Auntie even got everyone dancing.
Our long day wrapped up at the home of chef Gadi Elias, who has been feeding and telling stories to our public officials for years. Last night was no different. With the decimation of the tourism industry since October 7th, Gadi has been as resilient as the rest of Israel. He transformed his business serving renowned barbecue to tour groups to feeding more than 100,000 meals to soldiers protecting his region in the shadow of the Golan Heights. He even delivered brisket to his old Golani Brigade infantry unit in Rafah.
As we enjoyed the hospitality of Gadi and his family, a few of his IDF friends stopped by and told their stories. Men in their 50s who returned to service, putting themselves back into army green. Everyone here is doing their part. Our part is to bear witness.
Entry Four
Israeli breakfast is the best part of Zionism. Enjoying self-determination in our ancestral land tastes better starting each day with a pro-level breakfast. I have not been everywhere, so I can’t be definitive, but no one does breakfast like the Israelis. The most important meal of the day (except for all the others) is performance art on this trip, with each hotel taking a bow delivering an even better spread than the day before.
Eggs in familiar and unknown forms and carb creations are there for discovery. Why not have cheesecake for breakfast, cheese is good for you!
Each day starts early on the Public Officials Mission. Waking up next to the Sea of Galilee was no different. A few of our guests took the opportunity to be baptized in the waters of the Jordan River in the footsteps of Jesus.
Traveling with our legislators creates a rare opportunity to see Israel through their fresh eyes, sharing all its complexity and exposing them to the deep end of the Jewish cultural pool. This challenges JCRC community members to represent our people well, explaining parts of our life that are basic to who we are. It also means learning about their Christian traditions and sharing their excitement in experiencing once-in-a-lifetime rituals. Our visit to Capernaum and Magdala Archeological Park allowed all of us to explore the shared history between Christians and Jews. We visited the excavation exposing the ancient synagogue where the family of Jesus is believed to have prayed and seeing the oldest known use of the Star of David imagery.
From our shared history going back 2,000 years, we moved on to face the harsh reality of history being made today. Our visit to the Lebanon border for a security update with Lt. Col Sarit Zahavi exposed the viciousness of Hezbollah’s attack starting on October 8, 2023. From a very close but safe distance, we surveyed a now-deserted hillside just south of the Letani River where every home had been destroyed. Each home became a crater, the result of the IDF destroying the Hezbollah munitions that had been stored inside. We also observed what Hezbollah anti-tank missiles do to homes, destroying the interior but often leaving the structure itself intact.
Our visit also exposed Sarit, like so many Israelis we met, to be a mixture of fierceness and vulnerability in equal proportions. Sarit’s husband and son fought in Lebanon, as did she. Defending her community on the border is her duty and she is weighed by responsibility and guilt. She blames IDF failures for a “lack of imagination” for the enemy’s capabilities, but “no lack of information” on their plans. Intelligence gathering had intercepted the plan and discounted it.
Sarit’s lesson for policymakers is to foster a low-grade amnesia among constituents to allow them to recovery from a trauma and in her case, return to her northern Israel home with a violated sense of safety. On the other hand, the policymaker can’t forget the incident, so the learning will not allow the trauma to be repeated.
We wrapped up our day with a long bus ride to Jerusalem, arriving on the Mount of Olives to see the sunset paint the sky behind the Temple Mount. Another day done and a big one to come, taking breakfast up a notch.
Entry Five
Our first day in Jerusalem started with a heavy morning at Yad Vashem, Israel’s official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, and ended with uplifting Shabbat prayers at the Kotel, Western Wall. Both are powerful experiences of tragedy, resiliency, and triumph. Each visit includes deep discussions of history and its connections to modern Israel. Both are key parts of the story of Israel, but neither solely define it. As with everything we do, there is so much to understand.
This day is one where the Jewish community members, who make up about a quarter of the bus, play an especially big role in our mission. Both experiences are expertly explained by our guide, Hadara, as well as our Yad Vashem docent.
They expertly provide history and stories of the maximum depths of human existence and the heights which we can achieve. One of our roles as community members is to share how those stories touch our lives, histories, and families, creating uniquely Colorado connections to the abstract historical record. These experiences are so overwhelming in emotion that we naturally gravitate to each other to process it. Exiting the children’s memorial that honors the 1.5 million lost, we embrace and cry together. Explaining the significance of putting a prayer in the Kotel for my parents, we share our love of family and tradition. A perfect Friday in Jerusalem can only end with Shabbat together. Despite an amazing dinner ahead of us at the Orient Hotel, which we did not have to prepare, we went to the Mache Yehuda market anyway.
My Dad likes to describe how his five-foot-tall mother approached shopping at the kosher market with “sharp elbows,” aggressively shoving her way to the best brisket. I wish she could have been my company at the market as we were shoved by every age, shape, and size Israeli preparing for Shabbat. You don’t really walk the market in Israel, you kind of crowd surf it. Although I have rarely been hungry on this trip, I really enjoyed a second lunch of falafel, since everything tastes better in the Shuk.
Shabbat dinner felt like the traditional finish line of the week, with the promise of a slower day to come. It was an opportunity to reflect on all that we had seen and contemplate what was next. As will all good Shabbat dinners, we enjoyed the company of friends, new and old. Some of the new friends included three young lone soldiers from Colorado who volunteered to serve and recently started IDF service. They shared their stories and inspired us all. Benny Gantz told us that soldiers run toward trouble when most everyone else runs away. These boys came to Israel to answer a call to service that most of us can’t hear or simply ignore. I am as touched by their contribution as I am envious of them. Answering that call to makes them an integral part of all this beauty and promise, each is all Coloradan Israeli.
Entry Six
Seeing the sunset on the Temple Mount is spectacular. Looking back at the Mount of Olives at sunrise isn’t bad either. I have had the privilege to visit Israel several times over the years, yet I have never had the opportunity to visit the Temple Mount. I was intimidated by the perceived security risk and concerned about potentially violating a space of Muslim prayer.
We were advised to not bring along any religious items and not to pray in a non-Muslim manner to maintain the tenuous status quo. I expected to be blown away by the splendor of the Dome of the Rock and the incredible size of the Al-Aqsa Mosque which accommodates thousands of worshippers during Ramadan. Both are as advertised. I was surprised to see the many remnants of the Second Temple on display. There is incredible beauty in the Western Wall for all it means to us, but clearly, it is not designed for the beauty we see in it. We walked among the remnants of massive ornate columns that once decorated the Temple, some still showing off what is left of their gold paint. The massive scale and grandeur of the Second Temple is hard to comprehend, particularly how it must have dominated the city and people’s hearts.
Leaving Jerusalem behind left two stops ahead of us – one to see how the Gaza envelope is recovering and another to see old friends in Ramat HaNegev. Incredibly, Sderot appears to have returned to its normal state of living in a very abnormal way. This is the city where 15 seconds is all you get from a siren to find shelter from rocket fire, given that Gaza is basically next door. On October 7th, the Sderot police station was taken over, many heroes died in the battle to retake it. We paid respects at the memorial that now occupies the site, although you don’t have to look hard to find bullet scars on the surrounding buildings.
For a people that have had to build so many memorials, Israelis put that unfortunate skill to work remembering those people murdered while traveling the roads of the Gaza envelope on October 7th.
The Burnt Vehicle Compound houses 1,560 vehicles, each with a story of life lost. There is a pile of burnt vehicles and rows of others riddled with bullet holes. Originally this was a place for investigators to learn the fate of the lost and locate all remains for traditional burial. Now it is a place where you can feel the brutality of a day dominated by numbers, numbers of people murdered, raped, and taken hostage. Party vans, hatchbacks, ambulances, and farm vehicles each tell a story. Now silent Hamas machine gun pickup trucks no longer threaten us but also tell a story.
Israel is buzzing about Eurovision, with a second-place finish for Yuval Raphael with her song of survival and resilience. We learned her story and had the opportunity to walk into the bomb shelter where she survived, hiding under the bodies of Nova Music Festival victims. As I hear from Jews who visit concentration camps, many are struck by the irony of being about to walk out of such a place when so many Jews could not. I couldn’t help but feel the same stepping out of that bomb shelter.
A visit to this region now isn’t complete without paying our respects to the site of the Nova Music Festival massacre. Since my last visit, the site has been improved to accommodate what must be a huge number of visitors. It feels more permanent and less impromptu to me. Tears come easily here, seeing tributes to the faces of so many who loved life right up until it ended. We said Kaddish together. We were then led in prayer by Luke, a community member who is also an ordained pastor. The Kaddish is warm, given its familiarity from so many of life’s sad and happy moments. Luke’s words are less familiar. His non-Jewish voice is broken by the pain of suffering that happened in that dirt, anger at the murderers and a hope for healing.
The two sentiments, one Jewish and one not, leave me feeling held by my people but also seen by the new friends our community desperately needs. We left Nova to visit Michal Uziyahu, Mayor of Eshkol Regional Council, hard hit by the events of October 7th. Of the 32 Eshkol communities, 22 have already seen residents return. Michal is also a former Colorado Shlicha, where she made so many friends. She is as tough as ever, but also as kind. She still sees her community as 95% heaven, although on October 7th they endured the other 5%. Yet again our participants were thanked for coming, letting Israelis know they are not alone.
Our final day wrapped with a discussion for all to share their learnings. We heard enormous gratitude for staff, sponsors, and legislators. We heard humbleness learned at Yad Vashem for the helplessness of parents to protect their children. We heard marveling at the patriotism, shared service and vitality all around us. We heard a respect for the Israeli people moving forward when there is no other choice. We heard shared purpose to repair the world as those called to public service do. We also enjoyed the friendly banter of political opposites who, short of this trip, have little to no opportunity to become friends.
We were asked why public officials are invited on a trip like this. Why do they have the good fortune to experience a place as stimulating and exciting as Israel? My answer was simple. Our JCRC invests, plans, and labors to make the Public Officials Mission to Israel happen because we are building two types of friendship. Of course we want to build Jewish community allies, something the mission has been overwhelmingly successful at for over 20 years. We also want to build bipartisan friendships here in Colorado because a well-functioning democracy is essential to all Americans, but particularly its Jewish community who suffer so deeply when dysfunction breeds hate. Being a friend to the Jewish community is as difficult today as ever before. In her documentary, Screams Before Silence, Sheryl Sandberg asks a non-Jewish friend if “she would hide her,” a chilling request that any Jew would understand. We explicitly ask on this mission for friendship when it comes at a non-zero political price. Courage is required to be our friend, even in modern day Colorado. Today we have a busload of new friends we can count on to add to all those created on this trip over two decades.
Am Yisrael Chai
Matt Most has been involved with the JCRC since 2015, serving as chair from 2022-2024 and its interim director for much of 2024.
