Aliya Fastman and Shaendl Davis, sisters from Berkeley who moved to Israel in 2010 and 2015, respectively, were startled awake on Oct. 19 in Fastman’s Tel Aviv home by the sound of Israel’s Iron Dome defense system intercepting a Hamas rocket.
The booms woke up her children, ages 2 and 5, who’ve been having a hard time falling asleep, Fastman told J. by phone just before midnight in Israel.
The sisters, who run a Tel Aviv cooking-class business called Citrus and Salt, have turned their cooking studio into a “citizen‘s kitchen,” a volunteer-supported meal distribution hub. They have provided 400 to 700 warm meals a day to Israel Defense Forces soldiers and Israeli families who have fled their homes along the Gaza and Lebanese borders following the Hamas attack on Oct. 7 when terrorists killed more than 1,400 people and took more than 220 hostages. The next day, Israel declared war on Hamas.
With help from a third chef, Alon Sharaby, and a team of more than 200 volunteers, they prepared more than 5,200 meals between Oct. 9 and Oct. 19.
Fastman and Davis exemplify the groundswell of Israelis who have raced to support their fellow civilians and soldiers as the country is mourning, traumatized and in the midst of war.
“I think a lot of people just want to be able to do something and can’t psychologically cope with the horror of everything,” said Fastman, 35. “They just come and want to move stuff or cut stuff or be in community with each other. It’s a little bit of a Band-Aid on a gushing wound, but you’re grateful for it. So we are just trying to move together one day at a time to help as many people as we can.”
Fastman, a graduate of UC Santa Cruz who later served in the IDF, earned her master’s degree from Tel Aviv University in conflict resolution and mediation. Last week, her mother, Rabbi Sara Shendelman, a Renewal rabbi at Berkeley synagogue Chochmat HaLev, launched a GoFundMe campaign for Citrus and Salt to keep the kitchen running at top speed. All donations go toward cooking supplies, ingredients, logistics and operational costs.
Citrus and Salt has prepared Israeli comfort food such as schnitzel, pasta and sabich — an eggplant pita sandwich that was a special request from a reservist — and Shabbat meals for people who have come directly to its Tel Aviv storefront and through a network of drivers who take meals to army bases or meet up with a liaison if there is a closed military zone.
“I think Israel is at its best when we come together,” Fastman said.
Several miles north in Herzliya, Baila Sherbin, a Los Altos native who made aliyah 10 years ago, is also bringing comfort and supplies to IDF soldiers on the front line.
I think Israel is at its best when we come together.
Sherbin, who is 29, sent a message to a WhatsApp group full of people with loved ones serving in the IDF, offering to collect supplies and bring them to the Tze’elim army base in southern Israel. Messages from strangers flooded her phone, asking her to deliver care packages for specific soldiers on the base.
One soldier, a machine gunner, was in desperate need of specialized protective gloves, said Sherbin, who graduated from Kehillah Jewish High School in Palo Alto in 2012.
“His hands were getting burned with the machine gun, and he really needed a pair of these gloves,” she said. She searched for the gloves but they were sold out everywhere she looked. She ended up buying noncombat-grade gloves instead and then she found someone in Los Angeles flying to Israel this week who can deliver them.
Another soldier requested tzitzit, the fringes attached to the corners of prayer shawls or clothing.
“I was texting loads of other people, and within like an hour, we had a bag of 30 pairs of tzitzit ready to go down south,” Sherbin said. Then a soldier in Jerusalem asked for a ride down to the base.
“I kind of just drove around Jerusalem collecting various packages and a soldier and a friend,” Sherbin said. “And then we made our way down south, which was a two-hour drive.”
On the base, she delivered the supplies and care packages. Sherbin herself has many friends serving in the IDF. While at the Tze’elim base, she saw E., a reservist who was a grade above her at Kehillah Jewish High School in Palo Alto. (J. is not identifying the solider for security reasons.)
“When you know the person behind the uniform, it’s scary. It’s scary to know that they’re going to walk into something,” Sherbin said.
On Friday, Sherbin and a friend baked 60 challahs and prepared Shabbat meals for 11 families who have been displaced by the war and are temporarily staying in Jerusalem.
“They’re leaving their homes for security reasons, I don’t even know who these people are. They could be from the south, they could be from the north. But either way, they can’t be in their homes,” Sherbin said. “I feel grateful that I can do something very, very small to support them so that they know that they’re thought of and they’re cared for.”
Back in the Bay Area, Gershon Diner, a Palo Alto software engineer from Israel, helped fund and coordinate the logistics for a chartered private flight full of supplies, reservists and volunteers from Los Angeles to Israel.
The Oct. 15 flight, carrying more than 150 reservists, dozens of volunteers and 13 tons of combat equipment, was co-funded by local Bay Area donors including the grassroots group of Israeli expatriates UnXeptable and by the New York- based nonprofit Israel Friends.
“The equipment will certainly save the lives of many soldiers and will serve as an example for the following missions!” Diner wrote in a Facebook post on Oct. 14. “What started almost like a mission impossible, when we couldn’t find a single plane on the planet that agreed to fly to Israel, to a war zone, and when renting a plane became 3 times expensive, I’m proud we did it!”
J-Ventures, a fund created by Jewish venture capitalists in the Silicon Valley, raised “several million” dollars in the first week after Oct. 7 to support soldiers and civilians and donated 33,000 body-armor vests, as well as medical supplies, according to Oded Hermoni, J-Ventures’ managing partner and co-founder.
Sherbin isn’t surprised that Israelis are doing whatever they can to help.
“I think so many people feel helpless — like what else can we do?” she said. “Just do good deeds. Just do a mitzvah.”