Berkeley author Ayelet Waldman was arrested in Israel on Friday afternoon after she and a group of American and Israeli rabbis and peace activists attempted to cross into the Gaza Strip to deliver food aid.
Waldman’s husband, the novelist Michael Chabon, posted a video on Instagram of her walking down a road near the Erez Crossing, at the northern border between Israel and Gaza, with a bag of rice and a white flag in her hands. In the video, she attempts to evade an Israeli police officer, who repeatedly blocks her path.
“They knew that they wouldn’t be permitted to enter,” Chabon wrote about the protesters. “But they wanted the world, the people of Gaza, and their fellow Jews in Israel to see that this is Judaism. Not war. Not violence. Not brutality.”
Around 30 people, including 11 American rabbis, participated in the protest, which was organized by Rabbis for Ceasefire, a U.S.-based group of rabbis and rabbinical students. In addition to Waldman, six other people were arrested, according to the group. All were released by Friday evening.
“She’s feeling okay,” Chabon posted about Waldman, 59, after her release, along with the hashtag #phew. Chabon, who is the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay” and “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union,” did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Waldman was born in Jerusalem, and her father was one of the founders of Kibbutz Kissufim, which was overrun by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7.
For years, both Waldman and Chabon have publicly criticized the Israeli government over its treatment of Palestinians. They co-edited a 2017 anthology of essays timed to the 50th anniversary of the occupation of the West Bank, titled “Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation.”
Moriel Rothman-Zecher, an Israeli American writer and the associate editor of that anthology, told J. on Friday that the protest at the Erez Crossing “embodies precisely the sort of Jewish ethical, moral, spiritual and cultural leadership desperately needed in this moment.”
He added, “Solidarity with the people of Gaza and of Palestine is urgently needed, and is a moving and profound way to express what it means to be Jewish and committed to actual freedom for all.”
Waldman has published several novels and works of non-fiction, including the 2017 memoir “A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life.” She and Chabon co-created the 2019 Netflix true crime miniseries “Unbelievable” and are adapting “Kavalier & Clay” for television. Before her writing career, Waldman was a federal public defender and an adjunct professor at the UC Berkeley School of Law, according to her website.
In a March 30 essay in the New Yorker, she wrote about how she has used quilting as a distraction from the horrors of Oct. 7 and the ensuing war between Israel and Hamas.
“When I stitched, my brain stopped whirring,” she wrote. “My urge to scroll through videos of the attack ebbed. It wasn’t that quilting distracted me from the massacre or from the ongoing catastrophe in Gaza. I still watched news reports. I listened to audio coverage. I wept. But my rage and despair came at intervals, not unremittingly. I was able to tolerate and to a certain degree control the surges of horror, outrage, and fear — not to suppress them but, rather, to ride them like a surfer rides a swell.”
Rabbi Alyssa Wise, co-founder of Rabbis for Ceasefire, said Friday in an interview with the Al Arabiya news channel at the Erez Crossing that she and the other Americans had traveled to Israel out of a sense of desperation over the war.
“The reason we came all the way across the world is because the crisis is at a scale that’s unimaginable, and we can’t simply stay where we are and not try to do what we can, however we can, to bring attention to this crisis and to stop this crisis,” she said. Wise was one of the American rabbis who was arrested.
In a series of posts on X, Rabbis for Ceasefire accused the Israeli government of “using starvation as a weapon of war.” More than 500,000 Palestinians face imminent famine due to the war, according to a U.N. report released this week.
Rabbis for Ceasefire coordinated its protest with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency. Activists attempted to drive a truck containing half a ton of rice and flour into Gaza, but police stopped them before they reached the border, the New York Times reported.
The group staged its protest during Passover, which began this week, and connected it to the holiday’s themes of liberation and feeding the hungry.
“Passover reminds us of our sacred responsibility to work for the freedom of all people,” the group wrote on X. “We are here calling for a permanent ceasefire, the full exchange of prisoners, the opening of all border crossings to allow in humanitarian aid, and an end to the subjugation of Palestinians.”
Two activists could be seen in photographs holding a sign with a line from the haggadah in Hebrew and English: “Let all who are hungry come and eat.”