At the time of writing, my family and I have been in our safe room 86 times in the last 19 days – according to the Home Front Command app.

Eighty-five of those were because of ballistic missiles – often with cluster heads – fired in our direction. One was a drone infiltration, where there was no early warning – just a siren and the instinct to run.

There have been other moments too: early warnings that didn’t lead to sirens, distant explosions that arrive without explanation, seconds where you have to decide whether to trust the system or your instincts. The rhythm of life becomes shaped by alerts, by sounds, by the space between uncertainty and action.

I am writing this not just as someone living through it, but as the Executive Director of FZY, a Zionist youth movement. My role is about leadership, education, and helping young people build a relationship with Israel that is real, meaningful, and resilient.

And so, like many others here, I am not observing this from a distance. I am living it – while also carrying the responsibility of helping others make sense of it.

And yet, within all of this, I keep coming back to the same, deeply uncomfortable thought: I am lucky.

I am lucky because I have a safe room in my home. Many don’t. For them, every siren means leaving their home – sometimes their building – to find safety.

I am lucky because of where I live. Modi’in has seen its share of sirens, but it has not taken the brunt of the attacks. Others – particularly in the north – are living with far more frequent and less predictable threats, often from multiple fronts.

I am lucky because of the systems around me. The early warning alerts that jolt you into action before the siren sounds. The defensive systems that intercept so many of the missiles before they reach their targets. It is easy to forget how recent some of these systems are – and how different this experience would be without them.

I am lucky because, somehow, life continues.

Shops are open. Parks are not empty. There is movement, routine, community. My children – who have been out of school for weeks – are learning on Zoom, seeing friends in different ways, adapting with a resilience that is both inspiring, and if I’m honest, unsettling to fully comprehend.

And this is where the tension sits most sharply for me as a leader.

Because part of my role is to help young people build a relationship with Israel that is rooted in pride, responsibility, and belonging. To help them feel that Israel is theirs – that they have a stake in its future.

But what does that mean when this is the reality we are living through?

What does it mean to speak about Zionism, not as an abstract ideology, but as a lived experience that includes running to a safe room in the middle of the night? That includes interrupted sleep, underlying anxiety, and a constant low-level calculation of risk?

And how do we hold both truths at once?

Because both are true.

It is true that this is hard. That it is disorienting. That it is not something that can – or should – be fully normalised.

And it is also true that there is something extraordinary in the way life continues. In the way communities hold each other. In the way children adapt. In the way a society under pressure still finds ways to function, to connect, to live.

If you had told me, growing up in the UK, that one day I would describe myself as “lucky” while counting how many times I had run to a safe room because of incoming ballistic missiles, I would have thought that was absurd.

Saying that I am lucky because it has “only” been 86 times. Because others have had more. Because others are facing worse.

That is not how luck is meant to work. And yet, in this context, it is the only way it makes sense. As a leader, I don’t have a clean way to resolve that tension. I don’t have a message that makes it all sit neatly.

But what I do feel is a growing sense of responsibility.

A responsibility not to offer young people certainty where there isn’t any – but to give them the tools to sit with uncertainty without becoming detached or cynical.

A responsibility not to present Israel as a simple story – but to help them build a relationship that is strong enough to hold pride, discomfort, connection, and questioning all at once.

And perhaps most importantly, a responsibility to model that this complexity does not weaken commitment – it deepens it.

Because what young people need right now is not slogans or easy answers. They need honesty. They need space to ask difficult questions. They need permission to feel both connected and conflicted, without being made to feel that one cancels out the other.

They need leaders who are not just telling them what to think – but showing them how to think, how to feel, and how to stay engaged even when it would be easier to switch off.

Because the truth is, this will leave a mark.

On us. On our children. On the young people we are responsible for.

Even if we cannot yet see how.

And still, alongside all of this, I can say something else that feels just as true:

I feel lucky. I feel happy. I feel fulfilled.

Not because of the situation we are in, but because of the life we are building within it. Because of the responsibility. Because of the people. Because of the belief that even in moments like this, what we are doing – and what we are building – matters.

Our luck is relative.

And the fact that I can say that, while living through this, is completely, undeniably, crazy.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)