Our family name is Lamm. So when our photographer asked us to stand in a field of grazing sheep for our family photos, how could we say no?
We climbed Givat HaEitam, the Eitam Hill, on a golden morning in January. The light was soft and the air smelled like wild herbs. My kids noses were just a bit red from the winter mountain air. Behind us, a flock of sheep wandered across the slope, bells clinking, completely unbothered by a family trying to get the kids to look at the camera at the same time.
Those were not props. They were real sheep with real shepherds, and the shepherds were our photographer’s own sons.
Our photographer lives right there on the hill. Her husband is an engineer by day. By night, he puts on a jacket, picks up a flashlight and walks the perimeter as a volunteer guard for the little community. Her boys spend their afternoons out with the flock. Can you imagine a childhood like that?
Life on Eitam is simple and it is sweet. The families live in caravans, small mobile homes set up in neat rows along the ridge. There is a little coffee cart where you can grab a hot chocolate and chat with whoever happens to walk by. There is a stone oven that turns out pizza with blistered, smoky crusts. Kids ride bikes on dirt paths. Neighbors know each other’s names, and everyone knows whose turn it is to stand watch tonight.
Nobody here is waiting for life to start. They are living it, fully and joyfully, on a hilltop in the heart of Judea.
Here is the part that surprised me. Eitam sits just one valley over from Efrat, a thriving town of more than 10,000 people. Efrat is built on a chain of hills, and Eitam is the biggest one still open. The land is Jewish-owned, and it is Efrat’s room to grow.
That makes this quiet hilltop one of the most fought-over pieces of land in Israel today. Arab villagers have already crept onto parts of it. Two summers ago, arsonists set fire to 27 acres of wheat on the Eitam fields, months of work gone overnight.
The families on Eitam know that one day Efrat will build homes, schools and parks here. Until then, their job is to hold the land. They do it by living on it. Every caravan, every shepherd’s walk, every night on guard says the same thing: this hill is not empty, and it will not be given away.
Standing among those sheep, I could not stop thinking about how ancient this scene is. A few miles away lie the fields of Bethlehem, where a young shepherd named David watched his father’s flock on these very same hills. For centuries after the exile, the hills of Judea sat quiet, with no Jewish shepherds and no Jewish children. The prophet Jeremiah saw that emptiness, and he promised it would not last:
Sheep passing under the hands of one who counts them. I watched it happen. Two boys on the Eitam Hill, counting their flock at sunset, in the towns of Judah. Jeremiah’s promise is not a metaphor. It has an address.
Now winter is coming to the hill. The nights are long and bitterly cold, and the men who guard Eitam stand out in the wind until dawn.
That is why Israel365 friends opened a Pina Chama on Givat HaEitam. The name is Hebrew for “warm corner,” and that is exactly what it is: a heated little room a few steps from the guard post, with a chair to sink into, a hot plate of food and a pot of coffee that is always on. A guard comes in stiff from four hours on the ridge, his hands so cold he can barely hold the cup. Twenty minutes later, the color is back in his face. He zips up his coat and heads back out to finish the night.
But a warm corner only stays warm if someone keeps it stocked. An empty coffee tin on a snowy night means a cold, hungry guard with nowhere to turn. So every cup of coffee, every bowl of soup and every night the heater runs is sponsored by friends of Israel around the world. You can sponsor one too.
Can you imagine what just $50 can do? It sponsors an entire night on the hill. Every time that door swings open, from dusk until the sun comes up, there is hot coffee, a warm meal and a friendly face waiting. One gift, and a whole night of warmth for the men who keep this hill safe.
I keep coming back to that family photo. My kids are smiling in the sunshine, and behind them the sheep are grazing in peace. They are grazing in peace because our photographer’s husband was awake the night before. He walked that hill in the dark and the cold so that his boys, and mine, could stand in that field the next morning without a worry in the world. Nobody thanked him. Nobody even saw him.
Tonight he will do it again. Somewhere around 3 a.m., with his fingers numb and his thermos long empty, he will push open the door of the Pina Chama. Will the coffee be hot? Will there be a warm meal waiting for him? Will he know that someone, somewhere, is standing with him?
That answer is not up to him. It is up to us.
The families of Eitam are holding this hill for every one of us who loves this land. Please sponsor a cup of coffee, a night or a month, and let them know they are not standing out there alone.
Sponsor a Cup of Coffee on Eitam >>>
