Summer time will officially start in Israel this coming Friday at 2:00 a.m. The clock will move forward to 3:00 a.m. and we will all lose yet another hour.

Which is adorable. The country can’t agree on a budget, a coalition, or whether that one guy on the neighborhood WhatsApp group is a prophet or just hasn’t slept since 2009, but when it comes to moving a tiny plastic wheel on the concept of time itself, suddenly we’re Switzerland. Clean. Precise. A national ceremony. Everyone obediently sacrifices one hour of sleep like it’s a polite offering to the gods of “normal life.”

And sure, the general rule is that summer time begins on the Friday before the last Sunday in March.   We’ve got rules. Systems. Order. Somewhere in a government office a person is clicking “Approve” on a calendar setting and thinking, Yes. I have brought stability.

Meanwhile, the war is in its fourth week with no real end in sight. Kids are still home. Events are still limited. Missiles are still randomly raining down. Nobody’s asking the clock for help, but also, why not? We’re already pretending we control reality.

So here’s my modest request, on Thursday night, early Friday morning, when the clock is supposed to go forward one hour: can we just… keep going? Not in a motivational way. Not in the “new beginnings” way. In the blunt, petty, practical way. Just spin that thing until we reach a time where “going to the grocery store” isn’t a strategic operation that includes checking alerts, calculating the distance to the nearest shelter, and texting your sister, “If I’m offline, it’s not drama, it’s just me inside the stairwell.”

The official start of summertime is supposed to feel like a little lift. Lighter evenings. People pretending they’ll “get outside more.” That optimistic week where you remember there are actually parks and cafes and beaches, and then you remember you’re currently living inside a push notification.

Also, the sleep thing. We lose one hour of sleep.   As if we’re sleeping. As if the nation is tucked in, moisturized, phone on Do Not Disturb, drifting gently into eight uninterrupted hours. We’re basically donating an hour from a savings account that’s already overdrawn. Like, sure, take it. Add it to the national collection of “things we don’t have right now.” Sleep. Calm. Predictability. A week where nobody says “situation assessment” out loud.

There’s something darkly funny about a system that insists on correctness while everything else is chaos. The clocks will change whether or not your kid has done anything resembling a lesson in a month. The clocks will change whether or not anyone feels safe enough to sit in a movie theater. The clocks will change even if you’re still keeping shoes by the door “just in case,” which is a sentence you never thought you’d say in a normal adult life.

And summer time is scheduled to end on Sunday, October 25, 2026.   That’s the part that really makes me laugh in a way that isn’t laughter. Scheduled. Like we’re planning brunch. Like the country is placing a neat little calendar invite: “Return to standard time (tentative).” I want that confidence. I want to speak about the future the way the clock speaks about the future. The clock doesn’t do “if.” The clock doesn’t do “depending.” The clock doesn’t do “subject to security developments.” The clock just shows up and says, “Hi. We’re moving ahead. Hope you kept up.”

Let’s not waste the opportunity. We’ve already accepted that time is a suggestion. Let’s take a bigger swing.

Forward to a random Tuesday where kids are back in school and complaining about math homework like it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to anyone, which would be so comforting I might cry in the car. Forward to a night where you can go to a wedding without scanning the sky and the exits like you’re a bouncer. Forward to the kind of boring where your biggest problem is that the air conditioner is dripping on the balcony and the landlord says he’ll send someone “next week,” meaning never.

Just a normal life would be good. Not perfect. Not peaceful in the grand historical sense. Just normal. The kind of normal where summertime is just summertime, and losing an hour of sleep is the most annoying thing you deal with all week.

So yeah. Set your clocks. Or don’t. They’ll set themselves anyway, like everything else we can’t quite control. But if we’re going to move forward, even by force, it would be nice if the rest of life came with it.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)