Rachel Periker arrived at Kibbutz Be’eri planning to stay just one year. Nearly four decades later, she has transformed the spiritual landscape of this historically secular community. 

A nurse by training and daughter of a traditional Yemenite family steeped in faith, Rachel established Be’eri’s first synagogue in 2006 after a difficult year of skepticism and opposition. Named Ahavat Yisrael, the synagogue became far more than a place for High Holiday prayers, evolving into a vibrant center of Jewish life. Since October 7th, it has served as a spiritual sanctuary for soldiers, families, and a traumatized community seeking meaning and connection. 

Rabbi Aron White spoke with Rachel about her journey of faith, the challenges of bringing Judaism to a secular kibbutz, and the miracles she has witnessed in Be’eri’s synagogue.

Tell us a bit about yourself and when you arrived in Be’eri, as background to the story of the synagogue.

My whole life I lived in Ramat Gan. That’s where I’m from. I’m a graduate of Hadassah Ein Kerem, a nurse by profession. I worked for several years at Hadassah and then almost twenty years at Tel Hashomer.

I got married young. When I was twenty, I gave birth to a wonderful daughter, and when she was ten months old – two years later – I got divorced. I lived in Jerusalem for a while, and after almost fourteen years I returned to Ramat Gan.

I met my husband in Tel Aviv. He’s Swiss and had come to Israel many years earlier. After we got married, we lived in Ramat Gan for a year and then moved to Kibbutz Be’eri. The plan was to stay for one year. If it didn’t work out or I didn’t enjoy it, we’d go back to the city.

But I realized my husband wasn’t really interested in living in the city, and I’ve now been in Be’eri for 38 years. We have two children together.

As for what I do today – two years after I arrived in Be’eri, I established a nursing home in the kibbutz and managed it for twenty years. I’ve been retired for many years now, but I still work. I serve on national medical committees in Jerusalem, Ramla, and Be’er Sheva, and I continue doing that to this day.

Did you grow up in a religious or traditional home? Was Judaism part of your life before Be’eri?

Of course. I grew up in a traditional Sephardi home, what people call “Shabbat-religious,” religious like Bnei Akiva, that sort of thing. I went to a religious elementary school and high school, the Haroeh school. I always had a connection. From childhood I grew up steeped in faith.

My family background is also significant. My great-grandfather was a posek, a judge. My grandparents in Yemen were mystics, and my great-grandfather also practiced medicine. They were very special people.

I think there’s something – at least on a spiritual level – something in me connected to Kabbalah and things like that. But that’s for another conversation.

Kibbutzim are often stereotyped as completely secular places with no connection to religion. What was the reality you found when you arrived in Be’eri?

Not exactly. I’ll tell you this: a kibbutz is a closed society, and someone coming from the outside experiences something very different. Speaking only from my own experience – it was very new for me. For years I thought I would go back to the city. But for some reason the community accepted me very quickly. I didn’t have to go through a difficult initiation. Within a year I became a full member.

The kibbutz lifestyle wasn’t simple, not at all. When I arrived, I continued working at Tel Hashomer, but they really wanted me to work at the clinic in Be’eri as a nurse. I realized that wasn’t the right path for me. So instead I divided my time three ways: one-third with children, one-third at the hospital, and the remaining third I took on establishing a nursing home in the kibbutz.

That was the first time in my life I had set up a nursing home, and to do it in a kibbutz was incredibly challenging.

I met people who were traditional. Most of the traditional families were people who had come from outside – those who married kibbutz members. Their homes, roots, and memories remained elsewhere.

 

How did the synagogue come about? What sparked it?

Look, people attribute the synagogue to me, but I say this very seriously – it was not my idea. My idea was to establish the nursing home. But shortly after I set it up, two men from Kibbutz Be’eri approached me. Neither of them was born in the kibbutz. One arrived as a child and grew up there, and the other came with his wife, who was a nurse at the clinic.

They asked me if I could help lead the process. I raised an eyebrow and said: “A synagogue? In Kibbutz Be’eri? A very secular kibbutz? Why?!”

They gave me two reasons. First, so that anyone who wanted to pray on Yom Kippur could do so inside the kibbutz instead of looking elsewhere, as they had done for years. Second, so their children could have a bar mitzvah and an aliyah to the Torah in the kibbutz itself.

I told them those were very compelling reasons, but I wanted to know who else was involved. They said they had spoken with forty kibbutz members and that a secretariat meeting was already scheduled.

I was working at Tel Hashomer at the time, and I asked them to schedule the meeting as late as possible so I could attend. I arrived – and only the two of them were there. None of the forty people who promised to come.

That year was extremely challenging. Many people had tried to establish a synagogue in the past, unsuccessfully. There were harsh reactions: fears that black-clad religious people would enter the kibbutz, change its lifestyle, and “make our children religious.”

I’ll say something personal: from a young age, I learned from my grandmother to speak directly with G-d. I said to Him: “They asked me to lead this process. I don’t really understand all of it, but please guide me and put Your words in my mouth during the meetings.”

Two principles guided me. First: I would never agree to establish a synagogue out of conflict or coercion. Only by full consent. Second: I learned to listen. The wisdom in such a process is listening, not talking. The less I spoke, the more successful it became.

People knew me as the nursing home director. I knew all the families. I didn’t argue – I embraced, planted love, and said: “I understand what you’re saying – but there are others who think differently.” It was a truly difficult year.

Interestingly, the nursing home followed the same pattern. Both the nursing home and the synagogue were built in the center of the kibbutz, facing each other – one physical, one spiritual.

We went to a vote. It passed – not by a huge majority, but it passed. The kibbutz gave us half of a portable structure and said: “You can have the building, but no funding, and we won’t be involved.”

The three of us divided roles. I said: “What I know how to do best is clean the synagogue.” I didn’t understand fundraising or prayer. One man handled fundraising, another handled prayer books and supplies. We learned everything as we went.

What year was this?

We began in 2004, and in 2006 we opened the synagogue.

We brought in two Torah scrolls – one 140 years old from Yemen, and another 40 years old, written in Israel. The Torah dedication was breathtaking. In the middle of Kibbutz Be’eri, the scribe stood with a microphone and proclaimed “Shema Yisrael.” I stood there overwhelmed with emotion.

The next day, the kibbutz secretary called me and said: “The celebration was wonderful – but we’re locking the synagogue.”

They said we needed bylaws specifying what is allowed and forbidden. It took an entire year to write them. That’s why the opening was delayed until 2006.

And after it opened – did it fulfill its original purpose?

We defined two goals: aliyot to the Torah and High Holiday prayers. But what happened afterward was beyond anything we imagined.

Brit milah ceremonies, weddings, memorials. Every year about a hundred second-grade children from the regional council come to learn what Judaism is, what a synagogue is. It became something completely different.

Sadly, one of the two young men who recruited me passed away suddenly. The other left the kibbutz abruptly. I was left alone.

I asked G-d: what does this mean? Without intending to, I became something like a “firefighter,” rushing from crisis to crisis. I later received awards for it – even internationally – and I still don’t fully understand how I got there.

My father had established a synagogue in Ramat Gan but passed away before inaugurating it. Maybe life brought me to Be’eri to close that circle – I don’t know.

Since October 7th, what has happened in the synagogue is something I never imagined. We named it Ahavat Yisrael twenty years ago – and after October 7th I truly understood what that name means. Soldiers – religious and secular, young and old – come constantly. Not just to pray, but to sit together, talk, and learn. Am Yisrael at its best.

There are more bar mitzvahs, weddings, circumcisions, and Torah readings for soldiers returning from Gaza. On Yom Kippur there’s no room – we pray outside. Even before October 7th, about two hundred kibbutz members, many not religious at all, attended Ne’ilah.

And now we are building a new synagogue – larger, stronger. A full circle has closed.

“Moving” feels like too small a word for this story.

There are so many stories. So many miracles.

People come, stand by the ark, pray – and later call me saying everything they asked for came true.

One soldier carved a simple wooden Torah pointer under a eucalyptus tree before entering Gaza. I asked him to dedicate it. When the new Torah enters the new synagogue, we’ll read from it using that pointer – not a silver one, but this simple one. It connects me deeply to the soldiers and to October 7th.

Thank you so much for sharing all of this. It’s truly special.