How Volunteering in Israel Changed My Perspective

Avoid lemon trees. Lemon trees have thorns. Very difficult. You don't want to do lemon tree picking. But it was, it was about a dozen of us that were. That we're picking. We picked 8,000 pounds of avocados, a lot of avocados. I'm surprised how many avocados grow in Israel. It was a big farm, you know, acres and acres of avocado trees, and we picked like, as I said, about 8,000 pounds of avocados. Venture capitalist, a farmer. Yeah, we weren't able to clear a single road. You know, the, the agricultural impact is going to be very, very significant. People, you know, people aren't. Aren't able to work. Right. So whether it's the person that's been called up or workers from Gaza that had been coming in to help. Not to help, but work, which obviously is not happening right now, or the spouses of, or the partners of the sons or daughters or parents of people that have been impacted. So every industry been impacted. So, you know, the opportunity that I had to do, you know, a very, very tiny part of it, you know, was really important to me to be able to volunteer. Packing stuff for soldiers, making sandwiches, you know, whatever it is you can do to help. There's, there's a tremendous amount of opportunities. And then I had a chance to go south. I spent the day, you know, visiting one of the kibbutzim that had been attacked, going to the Nova Festival site, and then we ended the day doing a barbecue for soldiers on a bas, which was really nice. It was, you know, the takeaway for me was the resilience and the unity of the country. It was really, really impactful. Everybody is, you know, super united in the country and, you know, needs to get this done, needs to bring hostages. Yeah, it's been really tough.