Steve Conover: Welcome to the Friends of Israel Today. I'm Steve Conover. With me is our host and teacher Chris Katulka. With the Hanukkah season quickly approaching, you can surprise your Jewish friends with a Hanukkah gift box. It's shipped directly to their door. Every festive gift box is loaded with Israeli goods like honey, chocolate, tahini, and spices. You can savor Israeli flavors while showing support to your Jewish friends, order yours today at foi.org/giftbox.

Chris Katulka: Steve, I don't know if you remember, but last May nearly 4,300 rockets were launched from Gaza into Israel, and I'm very proud to say that Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry has had a hand in helping to protect and save Israeli lives through a nonprofit that we support called Operation Lifeshield. And today, we are going to have Rabbi Shmuel Bowman, who is the executive director of Operation Lifeshield with us to talk about the work that he's doing to save Israeli lives by building bomb shelters that provide safety for them during these very difficult times.

Steve Conover: It's an important interview and important subject, we hope you stay with us for the entire program. But first in the news, the Jerusalem Post is reporting US President Joe Biden has said he will not reverse Former President Donald Trump's recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital. However, he promised in his election campaign that he would reopen the consulate to the Palestinians in Jerusalem, which was merged into the US Embassy to Israel in 2018. When Trump implemented the 1995 Law, he moved the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Chris Katulka: Steve, this is my take, Biden's choice to open the Palestinian consulate in east Jerusalem actually sends a message. It sends a signal to the world that he and his administration actually believe that East Jerusalem is still a potential capital of a future Palestinian state. And it's quite interesting actually, because the 1995 Law that was implemented, called the Jerusalem Embassy Act, which Trump fulfilled by moving the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. It's actually against the law to do that, because the embassy was supposed to house all of these things and it was supposed to claim Jerusalem as the unified capital of Israel. That includes East Jerusalem and West Jerusalem, it's unified and it has been. So fortunately though, Israel is the one, by law, who has the final say on whether or not the consulate can be opened.

Chris Katulka: Rabbi Shmuel Bowman, great to have you all on the Friends of Israel Today, radio program. It's an honor. I've heard so much about you. I've even seen you at our conferences. But it's a joy to finally speak to you face to face.

Shmuel Bowman: Well, Chris, it's really, really great to be here.

Chris Katulka: We're going to be talking about a very important program that you run, a nonprofit that you run, Operation Lifeshield. But before we get to that, so our listeners can get an idea of who you are, I've heard you speak a bunch, like I said, at our conferences and I feel like the one thing that always piques my interest is you're a rabbi and I'm a reverend, so this is a reverend and a rabbi conversation, which I just love to pieces.

Shmuel Bowman: It's great. Yeah.

Chris Katulka: But I'm interested to know where you come from. What made you go, “you know what? I want to be a rabbi” and maybe even to how you got into Operation Lifeshield.

Shmuel Bowman: Okay. Well, I come from a family of rabbis.

Chris Katulka: Do you?

Shmuel Bowman: So, it wasn't foreign to me. My grandfather was a rabbi in Toronto, Canada, and originally he's from Poland, in Galicia. And so I grew up watching my grandfather. I'd watch him in synagogue. He was a pulpit rabbi. So he's up there giving sermons. He was a family rabbi, who was helping with counseling. He was doing chaplaincy work in the hospitals, in prisons.

Chris Katulka: Wow.

Shmuel Bowman: So I kind of grew up in that world, and knowing that his father was a rabbi, and his father beforehand, and so on, and so on. So we come from a long chain of rabbis. And so it was definitely something in my landscape and in my worldview, that that would be something that I might want to consider doing. I was very involved as a leader in the Jewish community, as a teenager, and a young adult, very much taking up leadership roles. To be a rabbi means being a teacher.

Chris Katulka: Yep.

Shmuel Bowman: And in some cases means being a leader. Now I've changed my role, and evolved it even further. So I'm an ordained Torah scribe. And-

Chris Katulka: I actually saw an interview that you did with Susan Michaels from the ICEJ. And I was stunned to see that you are a Torah scribe. I mean, I know we don't have much time, but can you share a little bit about that? That's amazing.

Shmuel Bowman: So that was a direction I've felt very passionate about doing for a long, long time. Studied it for about 20 years. And then about four years ago actually got semikhah, got ordained, as an ordained Torah scribe.

Chris Katulka: Wow.

Shmuel Bowman: What that means is that the Torah Laws that dictate how do you actually do Torah scribing-

Chris Katulka: Yes.

Shmuel Bowman: ... are laws that I can actually make decisions about, guide other rabbis on how to do it, and then literally come to Torah legal decisions on whether or not a Torah scroll is kosher.

Chris Katulka: Amazing.

Shmuel Bowman: In other words, fit for use.

Chris Katulka: Yes.

Shmuel Bowman: Mezuzah on the doorposts. Tefillin that we wrap. Those sorts of things, whether or not they are kosher, which means fit for use. And if there are problems, what to do about them. So I'm in a position where I can do that. So it's been a great journey.

Chris Katulka: We need to have you back on the radio program, just to talk about that.

Shmuel Bowman: My pleasure.

Chris Katulka: But as a rabbi, you are caring for your community in a spiritual way, and I'm seeing this link here where you're caring for your community, the Jewish community in a spiritual way. And now you've come to almost care for the Jewish community in both a spiritual way and a physical way-

Shmuel Bowman: Yep. Yep.

Chris Katulka: ... with Operation Lifeshield. Can you talk about that?

Shmuel Bowman: Well, Chris, you've nailed the question, and that's exactly it. There was a point when I wanted to bridge the health of the spirit and the health of the soul, with the physical health of the people. Because you want to know something? You can't have a conversation with somebody about God, if they're dead.

Chris Katulka: Yeah, exactly.

Shmuel Bowman: Okay. And so it's my work to keep people alive, so that we can have these conversations. But even if we didn't have these conversations, and even if the conversations were as mundane as the weather or sports, or what you had for dinner last night, that is galaxies more important than if somebody is dead.

Chris Katulka: Yeah.

Shmuel Bowman: And it pains me to put it in those terms, but those are real terms. And I have seen the results. I think it was a number of years ago during the Intifada, and a friend of mine who was working as a police officer invited me to come and see the scene of a terrorist attack. And it was on a bus that had been blown up in Jerusalem. And on the bus was the remains of two people who had been killed. And I'm not going to go into the details, they're rather graphic. But what struck me is that they were still frozen in a conversation. Two people who had been killed were literally speaking to one another while sitting on a bus and midway through a conversation.

You want to know something, Chris? I don't care if they're talking about God, I don't care if they were talking about the sports. I don't care if they're talking about where they were going for work. One thing is for sure, they are no longer talking.

Chris Katulka: That's right. It's an injustice. It's-

Shmuel Bowman: Right.

Chris Katulka: Yeah.

Shmuel Bowman: And so our job is to keep people alive. And my focus even further than that, is to make sure that children are protected, the elderly are protected, the disabled are protected, because those are the most vulnerable within the community.

Chris Katulka: And Operation Lifeshield does this in a very specific way. So, you're not just talking about, I mean, you're very specific.

Shmuel Bowman: Very specific.

Chris Katulka: I'm sure our audience is sitting here going, “so you're protecting people. How do you do that?”

Shmuel Bowman: Yeah. Yeah. In the most concrete and tangible way. Exactly.

Chris Katulka: I'm laughing, because you're all about to find out “what do you mean by concrete?”

Shmuel Bowman: Bomb shelters. Bomb shelters. Exactly. Very tangible, very concrete. Okay.

Chris Katulka: Yeah.

Shmuel Bowman: As a matter of fact, if you listen to Israeli radio during a barrage of rocket attacks, they're going to say one thing, because radio, like we're on right now, has a very limited amount of time. And so you want to get your message across like this, especially when you're under attack. You know what they say time and time again? "Get to a shelter. Get to a shelter." They don't say, think about your favorite image. They don't talk about now would be a time to get your financial affairs in order.

Chris Katulka: Yeah.

Shmuel Bowman: No they're saying, "Now. Get to a shelter."

Chris Katulka: Yeah.

Shmuel Bowman: And we're providing those shelters.

Chris Katulka: And we have the app on our phones over here in the United States. And I'll just, for our audience to know too, we had to rush through your life, but you're Toronto born, but you made Aliyah to Israel. So you live in Israel now. But we have this app on our phone that lets us know when rockets are coming over. And really, when you talk about a barrage and the fact that you have very little time, they're not lying. I mean, it's within moments.

Shmuel Bowman: I had a meeting with the mayor of the Sha'ar HaNegev region. This is the region that is besides Sderot. So it's right by the Gaza border. Literally, we're sitting having a cup of coffee talking about life, whatever. And within, like this, one second, the siren goes off, that's it. We got up. And we went down to the, in this case, it was the bunker, the bomb shelter of the municipality. I would say a space of 10 seconds passed.

Chris Katulka: Yeah.

Shmuel Bowman: And that's it. Next thing you know, the entire region is under heavy bombardment. And so we literally went from a cup of coffee conversation, like we're having right now, to like this. And I'm asking for the people who are listening right now, to think about what that means. What that means is, is that you could be in the middle of a conversation, you could be in the shower.

Chris Katulka: Yeah.

Shmuel Bowman: You could be doing something very mundane and within a split second, you've got to change everything, and do the most basic act of survival, and that's stay alive. And the most basic way of doing that is to be in a strong, secure space that's going to guarantee your survival. We're very appreciative to Iron Dome. It's an amazing thing. It's a game changer strategically. That's the missile interceptor system that knocks out the rockets coming in from Gaza. At the end of the day, it's still an 85% success rate.

Chris Katulka: Wow.

Shmuel Bowman: Which is great.

Chris Katulka: Yeah.

Shmuel Bowman: But I just landed from Israel. If the pilot leaving would've said, "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our flight to New York. We have an 85% chance."

Chris Katulka: People jump off the plane.

Shmuel Bowman: You're saying, "I'm taking the boat. I'm traveling by boat."

Chris Katulka: Yeah. “I'm not gambling.”

Shmuel Bowman: “I'm swimming.”

Chris Katulka: Yeah.

Shmuel Bowman: Okay. 85% is good, but it's okay. We fill in that gap of that 15%.

Chris Katulka: Yes.

Shmuel Bowman: Plus in all the areas where Iron Dome is not, and plus it brings comfort on a day-to-day basis. You're a parent, you're bringing your kid to kindergarten.

Chris Katulka: Yes.

Shmuel Bowman: As you glance at the bomb shelter, you say, "Okay, I can now relax, knowing that my child has a place to go to should the siren go off. And therefore I can now carry on with my day and go to work."

Chris Katulka: They feel a sense of safety. And I want to talk more about that. But we're going to take a quick break.

Shmuel Bowman: Okay.

Chris Katulka: And I want to invite our listeners right now, they can actually find out more about ways that they can partner and learn about Operation Lifeshield by going to OperationLifeshield.org. We're going to also provide ways for you to give, if you're interested in giving to provide a bomb shelter for Israelis who are living in areas that are under constant attack from rockets coming from Gaza, and maybe even-

Shmuel Bowman: The north. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Katulka: ... the north as well. We want to provide you opportunities to find ways that you can give and sponsor a bomb shelter with Operation Lifeshield. So be sure to stick around.

Chris Katulka: I hope you're enjoying our interview with Rabbi Shmuel Bowman. But I want to stop for a moment and just say, over the last year, we've witnessed ongoing strife for our Jewish friends as we've been hearing from Rabbi Shmuel Bowman. In a time where it's easy to spew hate, we as Christians, actually have an opportunity to offer our Jewish friends a gift of love. This Hanukkah, you can surprise your Jewish neighbors, teachers, coworkers, and friends by shipping a Hanukkah gift box to their door. Every festive gift box is loaded with Israeli goods like honey, chocolate, tahini, spices, and more. Celebrate this Hanukkah season and savor Israeli flavors with one of our hand packed and shipped Hanukkah gift boxes. The deadline to order is November 18th. So get your orders in today by going to FOI.org/giftbox. Again, that's FOI.org/giftbox.

Chris Katulka: Welcome back everybody. I'm with Rabbi Shmuel Bowman. Rabbi, before I continue, our executive director, Dr. Jim Showers, who I know is a personal friend of yours, came up to me and he said that right before you all came into the headquarters here at Friends of Israel, that you were in a conversation with your son.

Shmuel Bowman: Yeah.

Chris Katulka: Who is serving in the IDF, who is in the premier tank brigade on the border of Gaza right now. How's your son doing?

Shmuel Bowman: We just spoke with Gavriel moments ago. And he's going to be stationed there now for the next several hours. It's a hotspot. It's literally on the border. When I say on the border, we're not talking about a couple of miles away. We're talking about on the border.

Chris Katulka: Yeah.

Shmuel Bowman: He's actually on the site where a terrible tragedy took place very recently, where Shmuel B'ari was shot at close range by a Palestinian terrorist through the wall. And he suffered a shot straight to the head and died. My son is literally at that spot right now, because it is a flash point. Terrorists gather on Fridays at that spot, what they call protests. They're not protests. They're acts of terrorism. Okay. Protests are done within the guidelines of a legal mechanism to show that you disagree with something. Perfectly fine. Perfectly great.

Shmuel Bowman: These are acts of terrorism. They're launching grenades. They're shooting. They're trying to break through into Israel to create terrorist acts. And my son is standing there on the border in his Merkava 5 tank.

Chris Katulka: Yep.

Shmuel Bowman: I said to him, "Gavriel, I literally know families." I have chills telling you this. "I know families with children in communities around the area right now. You are literally protecting..”

Chris Katulka: That's amazing.

Shmuel Bowman: ... those families right now." And he's doing fine. He's in good spirits. He's got a positive outlook.

Chris Katulka: And you must have a sense of pride too, as a parent, knowing-

Shmuel Bowman: A sense of pride. We also need to know, I mean, my wife and I don't-

Chris Katulka: Get a phone call, you get worried.

Shmuel Bowman: Well, we also don't sleep-

Chris Katulka: Yeah.

Shmuel Bowman: ... like normal parents do, because how do you go to sleep knowing that your son is on the border.

Chris Katulka: Yeah.

Shmuel Bowman: In a very, very dangerous part of the world. But we know that God is covering him with protection. And our family being, we're God centric, Orthodox Jews.

Chris Katulka: Yes.

Shmuel Bowman: And so we know that, he's inside a tank, but he's also inside a tank praying.

Chris Katulka: That's amazing.

Shmuel Bowman: Yeah.

Chris Katulka: I want to continue this conversation about Operation Lifeshield, which is providing bomb shelters for families living in areas of Israel that are under constant attack, a barrage of attack from rockets coming from Gaza, and even the north, on the border of Lebanon. I was thinking about the fact that most homes today and buildings are coded by Israel to have bomb shelters in them, if I remember correctly. So you're actually providing a level of safety, not just that people could run to their home. But even when they're just out and about, doing their daily life. We were talking about the fact that there's one next to a tennis court.

Shmuel Bowman: Yeah.

Chris Katulka: That the Friends of Israel help provide. Here are people playing tennis with kids or whatever, they don't have time to run to their home. They need to get to somewhere quick.

Shmuel Bowman: You have a matter of seconds.

Chris Katulka: Yeah.

Shmuel Bowman: These two shelters that I just saw, literally a couple days ago, at the Israel Tennis and Education Center in Beersheba, which is in the Negev, in Southern Israel. They have about 30 seconds to get to a bomb shelter. Thirty seconds is not a lot of time. It takes a few seconds just to even figure out what you're listening to, what you're hearing. But this Tennis Center isn't some country club. This is a tennis center for children who are coming from economically challenged homes. Sometimes there's issues, maybe one of the parents is actually in jail.

And so these are kids coming from homes, you don't know if they're getting a hot meal, you don't know if anyone's helping them with their homework. And the tennis program is helping them create self esteem, giving them the skills, and the tools so that they can be stronger people, being able to get through school, get through society, and learning through tennis-

Chris Katulka: Yep.

Shmuel Bowman: ... the skills of responsibility. And as I mentioned, there are educational workshops. There's a hot meal. So imagine that the youngest of the tennis players, there's a special tennis court for them. It's a little smaller. The tennis nets are a little lower.

Chris Katulka: That's right.

Shmuel Bowman: And there's got like a sun roof, because it's sunny in Beersheba. This place was struck multiply back in May by many rockets. As a matter of fact, we have pictures of the holes in this sunroof, if you will, where rockets came in and exploded. And some of the rockets are still embedded in the roof. The FOI shelter is literally serving those kids.

Chris Katulka: Amazing.

Shmuel Bowman: It is literally beside that shelter. Didn't exist a week ago. These kids have seconds to get to a shelter. This means that they can continue doing the things, so that the challenges in their lives can be more accomplishable. What a crime it is, if you think about it, if a child cannot do those things to get those life skills, because they're being threatened by rocket attacks.

Chris Katulka: Yeah, of course.

Shmuel Bowman: So what FOI is doing is two things, they're not only saving and protecting lives, they're allowing children who are coming from these unfortunate circumstances to continue to better themselves. That's amazing.

Chris Katulka: That's right. The rocket shelter is almost just off to the side in order to provide the protection.

Shmuel Bowman: Yeah.

Chris Katulka: So that they can live their daily life, because why would a parent send their kids out there-

Shmuel Bowman: Right.

Chris Katulka: ... knowing that any moment something bad could happen. But knowing that there's a shelter nearby, or a place for the kids to run into provides a level of safety, knowing that, okay, we can still live a normal life.

Shmuel Bowman: Exactly, if you take it even one step further that parent, sometimes a single parent-

Chris Katulka: Yep.

Shmuel Bowman: ... is at a job that needs to bring in the money to pay the bills. Well, if they can't go to work because they need to keep their kids at home, because there isn't a shelter.

Chris Katulka: Yes.

Shmuel Bowman: That creates another economical downward spiral. So again, another thing that FOI is doing is making sure that families who are having these economic challenges are able to keep above it.

Chris Katulka: Yeah.

Shmuel Bowman: Because they're able to send their kid to a program and they can then go to work and bring in, be able to pay the bills.

Chris Katulka: Yeah.

Shmuel Bowman: The levels, the concentric circles, if you will, of help that FOI is doing just continues more and more and more. We can keep on going, but yeah.

Chris Katulka: As a Torah scribe, I think you and I have the same value of the scriptures, of what the scriptures teach. And my mind goes to Genesis 12:3, it's one of the reasons that Friends of Israel exists, is to bless Israel. "I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you."

Shmuel Bowman: Yeah.

Chris Katulka: We do not want to take lightly this covenant that God made with the Jewish people. And it gives us great joy to be able to give, and to bless Israel in this way, and in many ways. I want to talk about this unique relationship that Friends of Israel has with Operation Lifeshield.

Shmuel Bowman: Yes.

Chris Katulka: In total, we've given almost a half a million dollars to build 39 bomb shelters, and $125,000 came in 2021 as a result of the rockets that were launched just last May. 4,300 rockets came from Gaza, 14,000 are said to be in Gaza, 4,300 were used. Can you talk about that special relationship?

Shmuel Bowman: Probably the best way to describe that relationship is the following. I get a phone call. This has happened multiple times. I get a phone call from the security chief or the mayor of a town. And by the way, it's very important to understand. I don't decide where the critical locations in Israel are. Those decisions are made by the people on the ground, the security chiefs, the security officers, the mayors of the town. They're the ones who we've taken that information, and we learn from the people serving the needs of the citizens where the greatest needs are.

Imagine the following: I get a phone call from the mayor, "Shmuel, desperate, desperate, desperate. We need three shelters right away to go to X, Y, and Zed."

Chris Katulka: Yeah.

Shmuel Bowman: Sorry, Z.

Chris Katulka: Z.

Shmuel Bowman: I'm Canadian.

Chris Katulka: Yeah.

Shmuel Bowman: I'm like, "Okay, you got them." And I'm thinking, “okay, how am I paying for this?”

Chris Katulka: Yeah.

Shmuel Bowman: I'm not exaggerating, a minute later, I'll get a phone call from FOI.

Chris Katulka: Amazing.

Shmuel Bowman: "Hi, Shmuel, we have three shelters for you."

Chris Katulka: Amazing. Yes.

Shmuel Bowman: This has happened not once, and not twice, this has happened multiple times. And I think God is asking us, “Chris, Shmuel, you start the work.”

Chris Katulka: Yeah.

Shmuel Bowman: “Take the first steps.”

Chris Katulka: Yes.

Shmuel Bowman: “And I've got you covered.”

Chris Katulka: Be like Abraham, right?

Shmuel Bowman: Okay.

Chris Katulka: Take that step of faith. Right?

Shmuel Bowman: And we do. And that's what our partnership is about. We're doing this together. And I think that anybody who's supporting this work through the Friends of Israel, is literally walking that walk with us.

Chris Katulka: That's amazing.

Shmuel Bowman: Doing that together with us.

Chris Katulka: Well, I want to give our listeners an opportunity to be a part of what Shmuel is doing. Number one, you can go to OperationLifeshield.org to find out more about Operation Lifeshield.

Shmuel Bowman: Yes.

Chris Katulka: I want to encourage you to go there, OperationLiveshield.org. But I was just talking with Shmuel, and he said he would like you to give, if you're going to give, to build a bomb shelter-

Shmuel Bowman: I want to tell you how.

Chris Katulka: ... give through the Friends of Israel. Why don't you do it?

Shmuel Bowman: Do it through The Friends of Israel. The best way to partner with us, is to go to the FOI website and make your donation through Friends of Israel. That is the most effective and efficient way to partner with us in saving lives in Israel.

Chris Katulka: I want to encourage our listeners to go to FOIradio.org. And we're going to have a link there that you'll be able to go to and click and will direct you right to the Operation Lifeshield page for you to be able to give through Friends of Israel, will be the conduit of that blessing for you. Again, that's FOIradio.org. Rabbi Shmuel Bowman, great to have you, friend. Thank you so much for being a part of what we're doing here at Friends of Israel.

Shmuel Bowman: Wonderful being here, and God bless you and everybody who's participating with us today, and Shalom.

Chris Katulka: Shalom.

Steve Conover: Thank you for joining us today. One last quick reminder, if you want to order a Hanukkah gift box, you can go to foi.org/giftbox. It was sure nice having Shmuel Bowman with us today, Chris.

Chris Katulka: Yeah, it was fantastic. I hope our audience was blessed by what he's doing in Israel. And hey, listen, if you want to be a part, again, of what he is doing, you can actually partner with us, here at the Friends of Israel. Again, go to FOIradio.org. And there you can find ways to give specifically to Operation Lifeshield.

Steve Conover: Our host and teacher is Chris Katulka. Today's program was produced by Tom Gallione. Our theme music was composed and performed by Jeremy Strong. And I'm Steve Conover, executive producer. Our mailing address is FOI Radio PO Box 914, Bellmawr, New Jersey 08099. Again, that's FOI Radio PO Box 914 Bellmawr, New Jersey 08099. And one last quick reminder to visit us at foiradio.org. The Friends of Israel Today is a production of the Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry. We are a worldwide evangelical ministry, proclaiming biblical truth about Israel and the Messiah, while bringing physical and spiritual comfort to the Jewish people.