The Iranian missile threat ended at 4:20 a.m., but not before the heavens shook from a blast. I climbed the three flights to my apartment, hoping to get some sleep, but that never happened. It was the twenty-third time in the past seven days that residents of central Jerusalem received a missile alert, warning us to prepare to enter a miklat, the communal bomb shelter, or a mamad, the safe room in an apartment that has one. I had been sheltering in my building’s miklat since 4:01 a.m., sharing 19 minutes of anxious, quiet moments with my neighbors—a young couple and their three kids, all under five, and a middle-aged Sabra woman. We had been through it enough times to know each other’s needs during these miklat moments. We kept the lights off so the children could sleep.

I was living in Oakland, California, on October 7 when I learned of the Hamas terrorist attacks. Images of murder, kidnapping, rape, missiles fired, and Israelis huddling in their shelters seared into me as if by a branding iron. A need to be there, going through this war alongside my Jewish brothers and sisters, pulsed through me. I’ve been trying to understand what had possessed me ever since. It doesn’t make sense to want to be in a country at war where missiles rain down on the people, and lives are lost.

Sirens interrupted Shabbat services twice on February 28, when all this began. Instead of deterring us, those wailings united our minyan in prayer. We finished our davening in an underground parking garage miklat across the street, where our elevated chants seemed to hover over us. We danced with joyous defiance. The realities of war, sirens, missiles lit up my senses. The rhythm of my heart was like that pulse I first felt on October 7. Warm and cold waves rippled through my body. I heard everyone’s prayers as if they were my own.

But a kiddush in this........

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