When was the last time you did something for the first time?
When was the last time you did something for someone else?
These two questions guided Yael Yanai, a volunteer from the Mateh Asher group, through one of the most profound years of her life, a year that began in the ruins of war and continues among the hills of recovery.
From Gvulot to Gaza’s edge
In mid-October 2023, the month she calls “accursed”, Yael drove south for what was meant to be a single weekend of volunteering at Kibbutz Gvulot. The area had become a closed military zone, but she stayed, two months in total, living among 40 veteran members who had refused to evacuate, the IDF’s ZAKA unit, and hundreds of soldiers passing through on their way into and out of Gaza.
“Everything was fresh, bleeding, raw. Pain overflowed the banks.”
The older generation, she recalls, never cried in front of her, even when recounting horrors “that no person should hear and live.” Yet one small act of kindness broke through.
During a pizza night for 150 people, Yael learned that one of the veteran women, the grandmother of a hostage who never returned alive, didn’t eat tomatoes. So, she made her a white pizza, just for her.
“This magnificent woman, who had resolved to remain upright in the face of absolute evil, collapsed before an act of kindness. The gesture overwhelmed her.”
In that moment, Yael understood that compassion itself is a form of strength.
“Our rebirth and our revenge,” the woman told her, “will be laughing children walking barefoot again along the kibbutz paths.”
When the kibbutz members finally came home from exile, the volunteers were invited to a thank-you evening. “To see that dining hall full again – families, children, dogs, babies… it was freaking life.”
Northward: a new beginning in Adamit
A year later, Yael found herself heading north, this time to Kibbutz Adamit, high on the Sulam ridge in the Mateh Asher Regional Council.
Driving up the winding road to 476 meters above sea level, she wondered what it must feel like to be separated from a mountain so present in one’s life. On her first visit, she met residents who had returned after displacement, “good people, northerners, people of fellowship who have returned from loss.”
“Until October ’23 there were only young people here,” one said. “How come there are suddenly so many old folks?”
No one needed to say “Take us under your wing.” It happened naturally.
“If goodwill were water, a river flowed there.”
There was much work to do, restoring rhythm, trust, and belonging after two years of instability. But Yael saw something else emerging: an opportunity to rebuild life, upright and reconciled.
“What began as a gun to the temple can, in new eyes, be seen as a kind of opportunity to make peace with reality and stand before it actively.”
The small, human details
Within a week, Yael found herself added to more than 15 WhatsApp groups — a humorous, messy tapestry of daily life.
“In one they urgently need white cheese for a cake; in another, someone confesses they went to the pool with Havaianas size 39 and came back with 36…”
These small exchanges about food, repairs, lost sandals, and borrowed pruners are, for her, the heartbeat of renewal.
“So much movement. And adrenaline. And curiosity. And inspiration. And generosity. And imagination. And action. These are my better moments as a human being.”
The work continues
Today, Yael and her fellow volunteer Tami accompany the ‘Adults & Enjoying’ Club at Kibbutz Adamit, helping members shape a new, hopeful chapter.
In the photos:
- Re-establishing a nursery for native plants to restore the natural landscape.
- Working with pruners and hoes in Hanita and Rosh HaNikra, alongside young service-year volunteers and local teens, restoring woodlands and community spaces for those who have returned home.
From Yael’s story
“I understood that our redemption truly lies in going out toward the other, in extending a hand, in stepping toward what steps toward us. Yes, it’s for them, but yes, it’s also for us.”
