Fear is getting to me. Running into shelters is getting to me. Not seeing my children and grandchildren for weeks on end is getting to me. Piles of dishes in the sink mirror the piles of laundry on the living room sofa, adding to the malaise. Quickly grabbed shawarma wraps and loosely scrambled eggs with an occasional tangerine before bed make up much of the current diet. Crisp green salads, rich with arugula and other crunchy veggies? Everything wilts in the fridge due to fatigue. Emotional and physical weariness that is revealed on the scales’ rising numbers along with frequent power-naps which are grabbed in desperation. Nothing in our day-to-day lives feels familiar. Routine is gone. I know that Passover is coming and my dishes are still in the storage room, the usually joyous spiritual and physical preparations beyond my grasp. 

I try to limit my social media interaction. Not just because of overt villains like Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson but, far worse, Jewish classmates from high school who, still yearning for acceptance, make bee-lines to distance themselves from both their co-religionists and the only Jewish state on the planet. Ignorant/arrogant and loud pundit-wanna-bes lure their minions over Facebook feeds which (yawn) decry Donald Trump’s recklessness and Bibi’s manipulation skills. Our realities are so contrary: theory, privilege and feel-good projection as opposed to facts, historical reality and physical survival.  It is enough to make me weep.

Somewhere in my psyche, I remember the still unopened Passover haggadah and eerily intuit the plague of darkness, a yearning for redemption. 

During the last Iranian conflict, the big question was whether or not to sleep in a bra, lest the middle of the night forays to the bomb shelter would leave us looking less than kempt. This chapter, however, reveals not only a dearth of brassieres but a truly lackadaisical attitude toward sleepwear. Torn sweatpants, decades-old t-shirts covered by snorkel jackets on colder mornings, and glued-together flip-flops lend a careless tone to our frequent day-and-night get-togethers.

This past Shabbat, I went to shul with my husband at 6:45 a.m., hoping to get in some much needed prayer, a quick l’chaim at kiddush and home to sleep.  On impulse, we invited another couple home with us to share in our personal kiddush which is more of a brunch.  (All invitations today include an understanding of what bomb protection is available, ie, a reinforced safe room in the apartment/house or a miklat, building bomb shelter.  Our friends are in their late 70s/early 80s respectively but very spry, which made the invitation doable.  Our bomb shelter is 47 steps down into the building’s basement.)

It felt so wonderful, so normative, so familiar, breaking bread with others.  The conversation flowed as our friends shared tales of an almost 60 year marriage, wedded-histories that brought them to Israel just months before the Yom Kippur War, their illustrious family legacies that included stalwart rabbis and Zionists from before the turn of the 20th century.

Two stories they shared reinvigorated my spirit on Shabbat morning.  One was of a granddaughter who had taken a well-earned break with two friends to go hiking in the North, just before the advent of these new hostilities. The girl had, unfortunately, fallen and evidently broken her wrist. She had to get to Ziv hospital in Tzfat, which was close, but too far to walk with an injured hand. The girls waited at a nearby bus station for the short ride to the medical center but the bus was overpacked and, consequently, skipped  their stop.  One of the girls called her mom who, in turn, called the main bus company. A few minutes later, another equally crammed bus came by, people’s faces pressed to the windows. The driver stopped, exited the door and shouted, “Where’s the girl with the hand?” Space was made for her behind his seat and he detoured directly to the front door of Ziv. This is Israel. My Israel.

We revealed that one day last week, we actually found refuge in four different shelters throughout the day as our work demanded some travel. And in turn, they shared a tale about a married grandson who lived in a building with, like ours, an underground shelter. The grandson’s wife is in miluim (Army reserves), and he is home with a 9-month old and a toddler. When the grandson’s mother demanded that he come to her house in another city where there is a safe-room in a modern apartment and no need to go down four flights of stairs each time the sirens wail, he simply answered, “There is an elderly man and a disabled woman in our building and I bring them to the shelter.  If I leave, they can’t get down.  I’ve committed to their safety.”

“But,” his mother protested, “How do you do this with an infant and a baby?”  He explained that he has moved the children’s beds and a cot for him to the shelters and the three of them sleep there each night.  This way, the babies are not awakened by jarring noises and a need to run. The neighbors merely enter this sleeping space and everyone is safe, relatively content.     

I didn’t know if I could do a podcast last week on the morning of my scheduled taping. With so much work for my actual business incomplete, an inability to focus for long periods of time, and a completely disorganized home, I wrote to the producer that I might not be able to prepare for a show. Nevertheless, I managed to hook-up the microphone in the early a.m. and share some musings and Torah thoughts for the week ahead. Just before Shabbat, my California friend and listener, Todd, dropped me a note which read, “Am thinking about you and praying for the safety of you and your family.  Thank you for continuing your program during these times.” I wept at the kindness, the holy sentiment, an attempt at understanding even when it is all too hard to understand. Few have reached out.   

Whether it is the splitting of the Sea of Reeds or a bus driver making a two-kilometer detour, the magnitude of blessings that have been bestowed upon the nation of Israel is sometimes too blurred by reality for us to isolate and celebrate. This is the nature of our existence.  Perhaps tonight, however, between sirens and supper, my husband and I will haul the Passover dishes and pots up the 47 stairs and, with gratitude, remember that we are among the remnants of the mere 20% who were redeemed from evaporating into history, gone forever from the jaws of Egypt.

Am Yisroel Chai? You betcha. Proudly, defiantly and awash with humility, the people of Israel live.  

Reprinted with permission of San Diego Jewish Journal, April 2026

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)