One week after the end of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, Orna Rayn met with public officials from Kiryat Shmona, northern Israel’s hardest-hit town.
Suddenly an air raid siren blared.
“It was a false siren,” recalled Rayn. “But in a second all the trauma came back. We ran into a shelter. The cell phone [system] collapsed in a minute.”
It may have been a false alarm, but Rayn tells the story as a cautionary tale about the fragile cease-fire in place today and the fragile state of mind for Israelis in the northern part of the country.
As the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation’s representative in the Upper Galil, Rayn is the Bay Area’s point person at ground zero. In her post, she helps the federation partner with various institutions throughout northern Israel, with the aim of developing the region. But when the war broke out she, too, was driven from her home in Metula on the Lebanese border. Her family members scattered.
Rayn was in the Bay Area this week to tell her story and to remind the Jewish community that the hard work of rebuilding has barely begun. She met with various local groups, including JCF staffers, YAD (the federation’s Young Adult Division), participants from Tel Aviv One (a recent young adult trip to Israel) and others.
At a meeting on Monday, Aug. 28 with the federation’s Israel & Overseas Committee, Rayn shared her story.
She recounted how she had moved to the Upper Galil 10 years ago with the hope that someday Israelis, Lebanese and Syrians could live together in peace. But the last six weeks, she said, “was like being awakened from a dream. In a way, I lost my belief, my innocence. It’s sad to know the neighbors in front of you want to kill you.”
During the height of the war, the Israeli military took over the area, setting up artillery and staging areas across the region. Rayn relocated to her sister’s home farther south, but she kept in constant contact with those affected in the war zone.
“The (S.F.-based) federation was the first organization to be there,” she said, alluding to the $50,000 in emergency funds the federation rushed to the region in the first days of fighting. Nearly $1 million followed soon after.
Since then, the federation has raised $3.5 million in its Israel Emergency Campaign, with most of the money earmarked for transportation out of the north, furnishing ill-equipped shelters, protective gear for emergency workers and other necessities for residents.
But Rayn was quick to say that the need remains great. Over 2,000 homes in Kiryat Shmona were destroyed. Roads all over the north suffered damage from tanks and other heavy equipment. And of course, the human toll was incalculable.
As fundraising for the emergency campaign continues, Rayn is working with the federation and its partners in Israel to launch phase two of the recovery. Among their plans: funding trauma counseling through the Joint Distribution Committee, preparing children for their return to school this month and rebuilding relationships between Jewish and Arab communities in Israel.
To her friends at the federation, Rayn is a real hero. “She put herself on the front lines,” says Barbara Farber, Israel & Overseas Committee chair. “We want people to hear her story.”
For Rayn, it wasn’t about heroics. It was simply about sticking with the land and the people that mean so much to her.
“I had an important job to do,” she said, “and I couldn’t leave the north.”