Together

I am a member of the Allentown (Lehigh Valley) group. We are embarking on the Momentum journey with four women from our partner region of Yoav.

Our regions have been doing programs together for years. Yael from Yoav shared that her son Geva, going into 8th grade, had hopes that Gwen, the mother of his American pen-pal from back in second grade, would be in our little delegation. Knowing it was a longshot, Yael got out the old letters to check the names … and it was true, Gwen was on the bus! Were tears shed by more than only Gwen when she looked in this time capsule of a book at the letters of her then-7-year-old son Thomas? Yes!!! And we laughed together, and we loved the synchronicity.

Emotions took a turn on our way to Tel Aviv though, when our group stopped at “Tom & Tomer Hill” in Yoav, a memorial for 73 young Israeli soldiers who died in a 1997 helicopter collision. The father of a soldier named Tomer Kedar decided to expand a botanical garden which he and his son had worked on together. The expansion is in Tomer’s memory and that of another soldier from Yoav who died in that crash. We saw the images of all 73 young men, mostly 18 to 20 years old. What do 14 moms do? Yes, we cried, while earlier we had laughed. And in this process, the very beginning of our journey, we are getting to know each other.

Jennifer Lader
Allentown (Lehigh Valley), PA