It's Saturday night and I'm writing this from our mamad. Shalom Shachne is in Los Angeles, visiting his Mom and brothers, and Ilana is on a school trip to Poland.
Thursday night, after Israel carried out targeted attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities and leaders (feel free to PM me if you need any convincing that reducing Iran's nuclear capabilities is anything but a huge chesed to the world), Israel sent out an alert to everyone's phones. It was a different alert sound than normal; while I jump from the regular tone, this one made me jump practically out of my skin, partially because I had no idea what the tone meant, but it clearly was nothing good given how it sounded and the fact they it was sent at three in the morning. I grabbed Percy and headed to the mamad. It took quite a while to figure it out, but it was basically a warning by the country that it had done these attacks and Iran might respond ASAP.
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| In my opinion, the best comment out of the many rawther-snarky memes and videos that came out after this: "This warning could have been an email" |
Thursday evening, before anything started, Penina and Menashe had said that if things started getting sticky with Iran they would come for Shabbos, but late in the afternoon on Friday, after Penina's online classes ended at two. They have no mamad in their apartment and no miklat (communal shelter) in either their building or their neighborhood (the recommended safe spaces are underground parking garages). After they had to twice sprint to a nearby hotel and hang out with the rest of the neighborhood in the underground stairwells Thursday night, I was lamenting that they hadn't come earlier. Now, who knew if travel was safe? All buses had been canceled.
And then the news that 100 drones had been sent towards Israel and prepare to batten down the hatches when they arrived, around 11 Friday morning. Two different friends had invited me to come stay with them over Shabbos so it wouldn't be here alone with Percy. I had planned to stay home until late in the afternoon and then head over to Julie's house (closer than Michal's). With news of 100 drones, however, I decided to head over as soon as I could get myself together: I changed into Shabbat clothes that were comfortable enough to sleep in, packed six liters of water (which had been sold out in the mercaz that morning, so, basically, I was bringing the ultimate hostess gift), 3 dozen cookies out of the eight dozen chesed cookies I had made Thursday evening, most of which had not been delivered yet, 1/2 a watermelon, Percy and his travel house.....Basically, by the time I was done packing I could barely get down the stairs! Thankfully, Aliza (the flower girl at Penina and Menashe's wedding) came to help me get to their house. Gd bless the 12 year-olds!!!
It was very calming to be with others and even more calming that Israel was able to shoot down the drones. Then: decision time. Should I just stay there until Shabbat was over? Go home and hope to be able to come back in the afternoon? B''H the decision became clear (go home and stay there) once Penina and Menashe were able to book a taxi here. I was expecting price gouging (and would have been fine to pay it), but the price was only about $10 over normal (don't worry, we gave the guy a healthy tip).
It was such a relief knowing that they would have a mamad available and that we were together. We cooked more (I had planned to go to Michal's for Friday night so hadn't made anything for dinner) and I made another 8 dozen chocolate chip cookies for a group of soldiers that had ended up in our city and without food for Shabbat. Someone from our neighborhood who took over the cookies (and lots of other things from lots of other people) sent this video. Never tell a Jewish mother (or father!) that people might be hungry, and especially not over Shabbos!
https://youtube.com/shorts/
Friday night, just as we were finishing lighting Shabbos candles, the first siren happened. And then the whole night was this.....
https://youtube.com/shorts/
HUGE thanks to the Rabinowitz family for the interlinear tehilim they gave Penina as a bat mitzvah gift a decade ago. While we've had a number of sirens on Shabbat/Holidays (when we don't use phones), this was the first all-nighter we've had when we got the giant reminder that IT'S ALL HASHEM. For the first time ever, I finished the entire Sefer Tehilim in one day, and got tremendous comfort from it.
Evidently today was some kind of holiday in Iran and and it was quiet during the day. My friend Sharon and her adult son walked over for lunch (they are up the stairs and over one building so they said they felt safe that they could either get back home or get to us if a siren started). Her husband is also away in the US and we had planned "Feminocentric Shabbos Lunch" with a single mom who lives nearby, but not 90 seconds-to-get-to-shelter nearby, so we weren't surprised that she didn't show up (we set lunch to start at 12-12:15 so assumed they weren't coming as soon as it was 12:15).
And so the day passed. And here we are again, in the mamad with huge booms overhead.
Before signing off, I'd like to share a beautiful prayer that my dear friend Kelly wrote while texting with me:
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