Odelia Eliav is the mother of Adiel, a paratrooper who was moderately wounded in Lebanon and is now hospitalized at Rambam Medical Center in Haifa. From there, she began sharing updates unlike any others.
At first, she simply kept people posted about the injury, the surgery and the recovery. But by the next day, I saw a different kind of update from her: a list of thank-yous, one after another.
“Thank you for the conversation with Ayala, the social worker, a remarkable woman.
“Thank you that the children came from Jerusalem to visit.
“Thank you that Adiel was able to drink.
“Thank you that Adiel was able to sit up.
“Thank you for the flowers and food sent by Ehud’s workplace.
“Thank you for the room they gave us here at Chabad House. Thank you for the IDF Disabled Veterans Organization.
“Thank you that I am learning to accept help.
“Thank you that Adiel is not connected to machines.”
It continued the next morning:
“Thank you for a shower that brought me back to myself. Thank you for the friends who are sending love and encouragement.
“Thank you that our neighbor Smadar sent the children plenty of delicious food.
“Thank you that I am here and not at Mount Herzl cemetery.
“Thank you that the bathroom is so close and convenient.
“Thank you that Adiel was able to eat some of Tehilla’s pancake.”
Over the course of the week, thousands of women were exposed to these words of gratitude.
Odelia told me that her mother has been keeping a personal gratitude journal for years, and that is where the idea came from.
She has been receiving extraordinary responses, the kind that shift the way people see their own lives.
“The way we speak is sacred. I begin every morning with a list of thank-yous, because we determine what story we are telling ourselves. There is always so much to be grateful for.”
Just before publishing this piece, I took one more look at her latest update:
“Thank you that I was able to pray.
“Thank you that I cried and fell apart, and then got up again.
“Thank you that I went to the beach in Haifa. It was magical.
“Thank you that I have the wisdom to say thank you.”
So, thank you, Odelia.
Wishing Adiel a complete recovery.
Israel’s surprisinghappiness gap
This year as well, Israel ranked 8th out of 140 countries in the 2026 World Happiness Report.
Compare that with another country at war, Ukraine, which ranked 111th.
It is a striking statistic, especially when it comes to young people. Israelis under 25 were ranked the happiest age group in the country and the third happiest worldwide.
In the US, by contrast, happiness among the same age group fell to 60th place.
Former Prisoner of Zion Natan Sharansky and historian Gil Troy offer three explanations, all of which we can see around us.
The first is birthrate. Faced with the murder of more than 1,800 Israelis on and after Oct. 7, the response has not been only grief but also life: a baby boom — not after the war, but during it. While birthrates across the West continue to fall, Israelis still have a deep faith in life, in continuity, in the future.
The second explanation is tradition. Ninety-six percent of Jewish Israelis took part in the oldest ritual in the Western world: the Passover seder.
Jews do not merely remember their history. They live it. Through prayers, songs, food and customs, they carry it forward from generation to generation, seeing themselves as if they personally had gone out of Egypt.
The third explanation is optimism: hope, and the ability to look ahead.
Various studies point to an epidemic of gloom among young Americans, who have lost their sense of national pride and purpose. Israelis, by contrast, still feel they are moving forward together. Sharansky and Troy point to the “Shoreshim” (Roots) initiative, through which thousands come to comfort bereaved families they have never even met, and to the choice that many families make to commemorate their loved ones through acts that benefit society.
Sharansky recognizes here the same spirit he felt in Siberia, in prison, under communism. There too, he says, it was the prisoners who held on to identity, meaning and history who stood the strongest against their captors. They were the ones who survived.
The message to the West is clear: strengthen community, patriotism and tradition. Learn from the small Jewish state.
Finding an anchorin the shelter
Hi Sivan, in our building in Kiryat Shemona, we decided that whenever there is a siren and we go down to the shelter, we will learn one halachah together in preparation for Pesach.”
That is what Chen Lilienthal of Kiryat Shemona wrote to me.
Since then, I have been following what is happening in her building on Solomonovich Street in that northern city. Chen, her husband Avi and their six children chose to move there several years ago.
“The security situation since Oct. 7 has only strengthened that decision. We understood how historic and meaningful it is that we moved here, with the hope of seeing a real change in thinking about northern Israel.”
Six families live in the building. The Schwartz family started the initiative, and everyone joined in. “There were days with three or four sirens. But there were also days with 15, and on those days we made serious progress in our torah study. Every siren gives us another halachah.
“It has become something positive, something that adds meaning, something we look forward to. All the neighbors enjoy it.
“The children have become experts, and over Pesach they really knew what to do, because ‘that’s what we learned in the bomb shelter.’”
I checked in to see how they were doing a few weeks ago. They had since completed the laws of Pesach and moved on to the laws of the Counting of the Omer.
They could have told themselves that their lives are in chaos right now, that this is not the time, that the children are not really learning anything anyway. It would have been easier to sit in the shelter scrolling through news updates and posts on WhatsApp. But they decided to create an anchor, a point of stability, through Torah learning in a time of challenge, and to educate their children that way.
And soon, they hope, they will have many new neighbors.
“Personally, I am full of hope and optimism,” Chen says. “Not only are we not moving from here, demand is at an all-time high. Many large families are looking for homes in the city. There is tremendous interest.”
Five thoughts for Jerusalem Day
1. The 28th of Iyar, Friday, May 15, is Yom Yerushalayim, Jerusalem Day, marking 59 years since the liberation of Jerusalem in the Six Day War.
In 1967, the 19-year-old Jewish state faced an existential crisis. Would it continue to exist or would it be destroyed? Ultimately, the answer was that we would endure, thank G-d.
2. The Jewish state not only survived, but grew to three times its size. Tiny Israel captured the Golan Heights, the Sinai, the West Bank, and, of course, Jerusalem. We returned to the areas where our matriarchs and patriarchs lived and where our prophets communicated their divine messages.
3. An older couple from New York once told me that before the outbreak of the Six Day War, they advised their relatives to leave Israel and seek refuge with them, but that after the war, most of their children made aliyah. The tide of history had turned, for the better.
4. All these extraordinary achievements were the result of a war that lasted only six days! The Arabs refer to this war as the “June War” in order to conceal the shame of their devastating defeat. Six Arab armies, including those of Iraq and Saudi Arabia, were routed within less than a week.
5. At the time, the joy in the Jewish world was unprecedented. Unfortunately, today’s newspapers may take a different perspective, but these are the words that appeared in the left-leaning Ha’aretz newspaper after the liberation of Jerusalem:
“There are no words to adequately express the feelings of exhilaration in our hearts today. Even the concept of our Holy Temple seems to be more tangible than ever before.”
Translated by Yehoshua Siskin and Janine Muller Sherr