Amidst the War - Life

We had been in the US for the college graduation of our youngest son Elan, returning home to Israel in turn, first me and then Janet a few days later. I arrived early Wednesday morning, June 11. The fury of war followed some 30 hours later. Israel’s direct engagement with Iran – the head of the octopus – had begun, and with it the terrifying resumption of wave after wave of Iranian ballistic missiles launched in the direction of Israel’s cities and towns. Janet’s return will wait, though there is some comfort in the knowledge that she is safely out of range.

During a brief respite the next day, my son Aaron, daughter-in-law Zoe and nearly 2-year-old grandson David joined me in Tel Aviv. Their older building in Jerusalem’s beautiful Beit HaKerem neighborhood, like so many others across the country, lacks a bomb-shelter and their apartment is without a safe room. With the wail of the siren, they have to gather up their boy and their gear, descend 4 flights of stairs and rush down the street to a public shelter up the road – a lot to do in 90 seconds. My building in Tel Aviv has a shelter of its own, shared with six other apartments, neighbors with whom we’d grown increasingly close in the 20 months since October 7.

The alarms came frequently, largely at night. Unlike the Houthi attacks over the preceding months, they came not as single missiles – keeping us in the shelter for perhaps 10 minutes – but rather in waves – the duration of our stay, each time, a matter of speculation. Night after night. We frequently heard, and now and then felt the booms as small numbers of missiles evaded Israel’s vaunted missile defense shield. Social media brought near instantaneous news. With time, we learned a great deal more about the dead, the injured and the missing. And inevitably, stories about people we know.

My nephew’s brother’s family lives on the 44^th floor of a building in Tel Aviv that took a direct hit. He and his wife grabbed their 4 children, including an infant daughter and descended 31 flights of stairs only to find their escape blocked. The staircase on the 13^th floor was gone, destroyed completely in the strike – like a scene out of The Towering Inferno (a 1970s disaster movie starring Paul Newman and Steve McQueen). Thankfully, they along with many many others were rescued, and are safely with family, but they were told not to expect to return home for a least a year.

So it went. Day after day. Night after night. Like Russian Roulette. The shelter would protect us from shock waves and falling debris, but not from a direct hit in the immediate vicinity. Sunday night there was just such a strike in a neighborhood not very far from ours – perhaps half-a-mile. From the interior of our underground shelter, behind the steel door and within the thick concrete walls, we felt it – and when I returned to the apartment bits of plaster on the end table next to my bed revealed small, unsettling new cracks in the ceiling above. From a strike a half mile away.

On Monday, periodic knocks at the door preceded sad goodbyes as one-by-one, the neighbors were leaving. I reached out to my network and explored any availability through Airbnb and similar services. There weren’t many options. Late in the day Monday we packed up and headed to the home of close family friends in a suburb of Jerusalem who opened their hearts and welcomed us like family. There were fewer alarms there – perhaps only two or three a day.

Our friends have children and grandchildren of their own, living in Tel Aviv, and were trying desperately to convince them to come, one daughters apartment extensively damaged from the same impact that had shaken ours. Though they insisted there was room enough for all of us, knowing that our displacement could be prolonged , our search for a more open ended alternative continued. And late in the day Thursday – success. Friends in Sde Boker found someone willing to rent us a small house with a mamad (a safe room) – with an option to stay as long as we like. Sde Boker, literally in the middle of the Negev Desert, has been one of the quietest places in the country and hadn’t had an alarm in nearly 4 days.

Yesterday morning, before we got underway, I returned to Tel Aviv to pick up a few things we would need from our apartment. Friday mornings in our neighborhood (along Bograshov) is among the best times of the week. The avenue bustles with people preparing for Shabbat or heading to the beach. It is a favorite time for me to take David to sit on my lap at a local café and people watch to his heart’s delight over sweet pastries, fresh from the oven. Not so yesterday morning.

There were people about, but they were few and far between. Some cafes were open and the smells of fresh baked chalot wafted through the air. This is their livelihood. And they have chosen to stay. Just blocks from the sea, there have been no tourists for well over 600 days and now almost no people at all. I made my way from one to another to a third, buying challah for Shabbat dinner, and this and that for the family and as a thank you to our current hosts. There is kind of knowing glance exchanged between customer and shopkeeper – it’s a kinship thing, that morning warming and tearing at our hearts at one and the same moment.

Back at the apartment, a knock on the door. It is our Yemenite neighbor from upstairs. She and her husband, both in their 70s, are the last ones in the building. We catch up on life and family during the past days and then she tells me that a shirt from her laundry had fallen from the drying rack outside their window and landed on an air conditioning unit outside our apartment on the backside of the building. We looked out the window and I saw it immediately, but it was in a place I would not be able to reach. I went downstairs and found her husband behind the building considering his options. He had a broom stick pole in his hand and was clearly thinking about scaling the building to retrieve the shirt. It was obvious to me that the wind would inevitably resolve the matter, but he was determined – and when he began to put a garbage can in place so that he could begin the climb, I was compelled to intervene. Who knows what stresses and pressures led to his stubborn determination to retrieve that shirt – but there was no dissuading him. So – in the midst of the war, while preparing to relocate the family once more, with the clock ticking to the next round of sirens, it was me, climbing the exterior wall of our apartment building, pole in hand. The rescue was a success. Tears of joy streamed down the faces of my neighbors as I handed them their beloved shirt. Alright – that last thing didn’t happen, but I did get a smile, a handshake and a hug.

The streets were largely devoid of traffic, and I quicky made my way through the city. It was impossible not to notice the destruction in the places that had been hit, and I’m fairly certain I saw my nephew’s brother’s building. Like a scene from the apocalypse.

Back at our friends, we were quickly packed and ready and following more warm embraces and expressions of our enormous gratitude, we got underway to Sde Boker. In less than two hours we arrived – the village long having become a home away from home for me from my years working for Ben-Gurion University. I literally have dozens of friends there – but of course, with Shabbat quickly approaching, they would have to wait. Stores close at 2:00 and I got to the closest one at 1:55. It was a chaotic and frenetic shop – interrupted twice when I awkwardly bumped into people I knew… Then, the tap on the shoulder from one of the workers. It was time to go. I wasn’t finished. We wouldn’t have what we needed for Shabbat. I rushed back to the house, which while perfect for us, was not ready for our use. It had been unoccupied for some weeks. One last option. I hurried back out to the nearest gas station, which has a small store. Too small. To my regret, there was nothing there that met our needs. As I walked slowly back to the car – the alarm sounded.

The kids quickly moved into the safe room at the house. And I returned to the store at the gas station – joining the small staff and 3 other customers in the interior safe room there – where we waited out the alert together. Thankfully, no impact in our area, but there had been a strike in Haifa - at a mosque.

When I got back to the house – there was a look of both fatigue and tension on every face. Then, a brainstorm. It was time for a vacation! There was availability at the beautiful Kedma Hotel outside Kibbutz Sde Boker perhaps 5 minutes away. So, rack-rates be damned, we booked two nights, packed up again and headed to a little paradise up the road. Shimshon the dog, of course, would not be joining us, but the house is close enough for me to easily drive back and forth to keep him walked and fed.

A vacation in the middle of a war? It would never have occurred to me. The hotel is full of families. I wonder if they had reserved their stays long ago and are here by happenstance – or whether, like us, it was more spur of the moment. The people here can afford the option, something far too many of our countryman simply cannot do. But here they are, splashing in the pool, scrolling through their phones under a shade tree. Living.

We arranged for an early dinner as David had missed his nap and would soon be ready for bed. We gathered challah and a little wine. Aaron blessed his son – and I, both he and Zoe. Then Aaron made kiddush and we began to enjoy the beautiful bounty of the Friday night buffet.

The kids dug in, but I found myself waiting. It was like a scene out of another movie, Fiddler on the Roof. In every direction, families of every description and background were standing together, mothers chanting the blessings as they lit candles and father’s making kiddush. The murmur of different melodies and contrasting timing seemed to blend together in magnificent celebration of Jewish life and family.

Here. In the middle of the desert. On vacation. In the midst of war. The only thing out of place as Shabbat descended – the ubiquitous cell phones at the sides of observant Jews.

Am Yisrael Chai. Shabbat Shalom.