Two Weeks of War

Its hard for me to believe that its been two weeks since our beautiful-and-tough-as-nails country lost even more of its innocence. And I cannot fathom that there are still over 200 BABIES, children, elderly, women- and men who are being held hostage by Hamas.  The Tel Aviv Museum of Art put together an outside exhibit in their honor: one long table (because we're all one) set for Shabbat with 203 empty seats, including baby bottles and sippy cups for the smallest hostages. For those people (I'm sure none of whom are on this list) who are going around the United States tearing down flyers with photos of the hostages on them: are you even human?

From my little corner of the holy land: Feels like we're in "wait-and-see"-ville. Even more refugees are streaming in, now from the North of the country as well as the South. Shabbat was super noisy (I couldn't sleep part of Friday night due to the endless "booms", although I try to always think of the noise as the Iron Dome defending us, rather than of the incoming missiles we need to be protected from), but things were quieter during the day and, thankfully, no sirens. 

There's a special television station and a radio station that cater to the Shabbat-observant public during high-tension times. They have regular programming up until Shabbat candle lighting time, and then go silent except in the case of a siren or security alert. We decided not to tune in, though, because the stations broadcast sirens for the whole country, and the stress of hearing every siren in the entire country was not desired (to say the least). We hear the local siren from our house (although I much prefer the pre-Shabbat music it plays late Friday afternoon and the siren that announces candle lighting at the start of Shabbat) and we also have the app from the Home Front Command on each of our phones, which gives location-based warnings as well (although it doesn't always agree with the local siren. On Friday there was a BOOM that literally shook our house and caused a flurry of texts on neighborhood groups asking why something seemed to have exploded over our very heads yet there wasn't a siren. Turns out that it was a missile that was heading to a neighboring moshav and it was, indeed, intercepted over our city. Home Front Command sent a message when it happened, telling us to head for the shelter, but they didn't make the alarm on the app go off so we all missed it [makes me assume there are different alert levels that they can send out].

I'm hard at work trying to fill my little bit of the world with more kindness (today there is a call for an "Global Day of Loving-Kindness": Fabulous! Other folks can keep their "Day of Rage" [preferably far away from me and my country, thank you]).  

May this be my worst fault, but I don't think I have ever made circle-shaped cookies (drop cookies? Is that what they're called?). So Saturday night, in a "chesed challenge" to myself and because a huge part of our family's "LovingKindnessBakingTeam" had gone back to New York, I spent my time after cleaning up from Shabbat learning how to make cookies :) (Rachel from Ofakim is my hero. Then again, she's everyone's hero [and, no, ABC News, they are not "militants", they are "TERRORISTS"]. 

I'm on my second batch now and have made 100 cookies (whee--I'm a cookie expert!). The first batch is going to a bat mitzvah a group of Ilana's friends are making for a girl displaced from the South. Some of the second are going to a family from our shul whose father was called up for the reserves. My buddy "Bella", who is eight, told me all about her Dad being away yesterday 😢. I made dinner for them tonight. We'll see what "chesed needs" pop up for the rest: last week we gave cookies to soldiers, first responders from MADA (Magen David Adom) and Hatzala, police officers and displaced families. I don't worry about finding places for these.

Today, Sunday, things had been calm for a few days so I was planning to walk to the mercaz and do a big shopping trip with my "bubby cart" (no shame here in using them--everyone does!). Thankfully I decided to go later than I had planned because I would have been out when a siren went off.....Penina and Menashe had just walked out of their apartment when it went off, so, whew, they went back in. Ilana was at school, where, after the initial craziness of "a lot of girls screaming" on their way to the safe rooms, they said tehillim and sang together until they could come out. Meanwhile, Chana, back in New York, had forgotten to turn off her Home Front Command app, and got woken up at 6 in the morning by the worst kind of alarm.....