*The Family Tribe of Israel | Maya Tevet Dayan | 6 Minutes on Friday | July 10, 2026*
This week I came across a video someone had shared in a private Facebook group: nineteen grown grandchildren surprising their grandparents for Shabbat dinner. The first two walk in carrying a pot of food. The door is unlocked, and they call out to Grandma. She comes downstairs holding a yellow mug and immediately hugs them, delighted to see them. One granddaughter came for Shabbat. But then another granddaughter walks in, and another, and then a grandson. That's the moment Grandpa comes home, and Grandma is convinced he's in on the surprise. But the enormous smile spreading across his face makes it clear almost immediately that he had no idea either.
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Meanwhile, the front door stays open, and more grandchildren keep streaming in. Slowly. Carrying pots, serving dishes, everything needed for the meal. At one point, you can almost see the realization dawn on Grandma. She begins to understand that something much bigger is happening. "No!" she cries in astonishment. Grandchildren in everyday clothes, grandchildren in uniform, grandchildren wearing kippot and grandchildren without them. Granddaughters in skirts and in pants. Younger grandchildren, some still practically children. On an ordinary Friday, when they weren't expecting anything special, their home suddenly fills with the people they love most in the world. Then one granddaughter arrives who apparently hasn't visited in a very long time, and that's when Grandma completely falls apart. "No, no!" she cries, holding her in a long embrace.
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Well, that's the point in the video where I started crying. Actually, every time I watched it on repeat this week, that's where I started crying. What is happening to me? Why am I crying over a family I don't even know, one I've never seen before? I started reading the comments beneath the video, and someone had written those exact same words: What is happening to me? Why am I crying over a family I don't even know? Other comments said, “Me too”. “I'm crying”. “I wish I had grandparents like that”.
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The truth is, I did have grandparents like that, and joyful gatherings with all the grandchildren. To this day, we try to hold a yearly reunion of all the grandchildren and great-grandchildren, ending with one enormous family photograph of all of us, gathered in one living room after traveling from all over the world. And still I cried. Not for what is missing, but for what all of us have.
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All of this happened during the same week that I spoke before dozens of scholars from around the world at the University of Haifa's conference on contemporary antisemitism. I told them about the antisemitism I encountered in American academia, and I read from my book, *The Wandering Jewess*, which was born out of everything that antisemitism turned me into.
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Among other things, I told them how difficult it had been, after October 7, to explain to my students why I was grieving so deeply. It was hard for me to explain, and hard for them to understand. They asked whether someone in my family had been murdered or kidnapped. Whether we lived near Gaza. Whether something had happened to our home. They asked whether someone in my family had been called up to serve and injured. And when I answered "no" to every one of those questions, they looked at me again and asked, "Then why are you grieving so much?"
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There was skepticism in their eyes. They simply didn't understand, so they didn't quite believe me. They thought it was something I was saying, not something I was actually feeling. So I asked them, "Do you remember how people felt after 9/11?" They told me they hadn't even been born yet. "Then how did your families feel?" I asked. They said they had no idea. Their parents hadn't let them watch the television coverage of the planes hitting the Twin Towers because the images were too disturbing. "Did anyone you knew get hurt?" I asked. Again they said no, explaining that they had grown up on the West Coast, while the attacks happened on the East Coast. "It had nothing to do with us," they said.
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And that sentence, It had nothing to do with us, helped me finally put into words something I hadn't been able to explain before. Because for us, it does. We are connected to this, and to everything else that happens to any one of us. I am connected to another Israeli I happen to meet in Zara. I am connected to a Jew I've never met, but whom I would never hesitate to ask for help if I needed it. The connection runs so deep that I know it goes both ways. The bond I feel toward that person is the same bond they feel towards me.
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When I explained it this way, I used words they would recognize. I described us as an Indigenous tribe that has somehow survived into the present day. A tribe bound by blood, even when there is no direct family relationship. A tiny tribe in which everyone feels it when someone else is hurt. And that, they understood. Not because we are like them, but precisely because we are so different.
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That was also the moment when one of my students handed me the lunch she had packed for herself at home and said, "If you're grieving, it's important that you eat”. When the others saw her do it, they quietly reached into their own backpacks, took out their lunches, and offered them to me too.
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It moved me deeply because these days it is difficult, almost impossible, to explain to the world what Jews feel. It is harder than usual to help someone feel us through empathy, in their own heart. And often it's hard even for us to explain to ourselves what this thing is that we feel for one another, always with such overwhelming intensity - love, anger, grief, revulsion, responsibility. Everything is so deeply emotional.
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This week I spoke about all of this with scholars of antisemitism from around the world, and even those who were not Jewish nodded in understanding. Then I watched nineteen grandchildren surprise their grandparents, and invite others to do the same. There’s a reason such things touch us deep in our hearts. Who knows? Maybe surprised grandparents will become a viral trend among this people of ours, a people that is a tribe, that is a family.
Wishing all of us a shabbat shalom,
*Maya Tevet Dayan*