In this Instagram video you can not only hear the sound of the pre-warning (in case you're REALLY curious), but you can see someone become friends with the sound! Inspirational!!
I usually bake 8-9 dozen cookies on Thursday, most of which go to soldiers, with some for families experiencing a medical crisis.
This week we had the usual cookies with more for other soldiers along with a tray of chicken lo mein and one of quinoa brown rice pilaf with lentils (Israel has one of the highest number of vegans in the world so it's safe to assume that there will be some vegan soldiers among the group that gets this food)
Over 100,000 Israelis were out of the country when the war started . About half of them are now back in Israel. Ben Gurion airport is "partially reopened" and, according to the "Israel Good News" Whatsapp group, "24,000 Israelis have returned on over 133 repatriation flights--with 44 more incoming flights yesterday, carrying about 8,000. Another 22,8000 Israelis returned through land crossings with Egypt and Jordan".
Cool story: two of our friends' kids (ages 19 and 25) went skiing in Montenegro to celebrate the younger sister's upcoming entrance into the Army. The got "warred" in and finally made it home, a week late. Our friends went to pick them up and had an azaka right when they entered the airport. They followed other people to "one of several" mamadim deep within the airport to find...their kids already in the same mamad :)
Comedian Yohay Sponder did a great bit about "rescuing" people from places with no war and bringing them to a war zone: "So there are rescue flights from countries with no war. We rescued people with zero danger, and rescued them TO the war. That's the rescue. How are you rescued to the risk? You 'risckue!'"
https://www.facebook.com/reel/2097857254307981 if you want to see the whole thing (language warning, which is rare for this comedian)
Leaving Israel is very challenging as few flights are leaving and airlines are only letting on 1/3 of the passengers of a full flight. As in the summer's war with Iran, some people are choosing to leave through Egypt. Here are Chaim v'Chesed's tips for flying through Egypt:
Without offering any recommendation, we can report the following practical realities:
The journey is arduous.
These itineraries are long, complex, and often grueling. Nevertheless, many have completed them successfully, and for now, this remains the most viable mass option
72 hours before the war started, Ilana made a ticket to go to New York to spend her one week break between semesters. She was supposed to leave last Sunday, i.e. one day after the war started.
She's been (mostly) a brick about
a) not going on her vacation
b) not going on her vacation because there's a war
El Al offered her a ticket to leave this week (although it's unclear if she really would have been able to leave as only 100 passengers are allowed on each flight and some people, despite having tickets, were refused boarding).
The main reason she couldn't go, though, is that passengers are required to sign that they won't return to Israel for 30 days and her next semester of college starts Sunday (most colleges here do not start Fall semester until "after the chagim (holidays)", so Fall semester this year didn't start until mid-October. Ilana just finished finals last Friday, the day before the war started....)
Our next adventure in travel will (please Gd) getting Chana here for Pesach in 3 weeks. She was booked on a low-cost carrier to Bucharest and then Israel, and has now changed to flying El Al from Bucharest to Israel. Hopefully by the time her flight comes around, things will be (more) back to normal.
Usually we get pre-warnings of incoming missiles. I have a love/hate relationship with pre-warnings. They used to reliably be about ten minutes before we got a siren. Lately (looking at you, Iran) they have been about 3-4 minutes before, if they come at all (looking at you, Hezbollah in Lebanon. Too close to have advanced warning). We've also had a LOT of pre-warnings without having an actual siren lately. Like over Shabbat we had eight pre-warnings and only 1 siren (not that I'm complaining).
Except am I going to complain a little. The sound the Homefront Command app makes for a pre-alert is LOUD. Like CRAZY LOUD (even if your phone is on silent #MeAllTheTime). And unbelievably startling. One moment you're just on your phone playing Wordle (hi, Anne) and the next your phone is doing an Amber Alert along with a machine gun rattle added in. Imagine that eight times a day.....Some people (umm, maybe even me) have been known (only once. Maybe twice) to even toss their phone in the air because they get so startled at the sound of the hatra'a pre-alert (usually, I just go "AAAAHHH" which, if people around me aren't stressed enough, usually gets them up to speed).
(Ha--ironically, we just got a pre-alert as I'm writing this [can't make this stuff up. Did not turn into a siren for us]) If you'd like to hear what a pre-alert sounds like, watch this BBC clip: https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/cx2lg4y96kpo and WOW, how calm does that guy stay?! Inspirational!!! (although I don't hear the machine gun rattle at the end of his pre-alert, I'm tired of scrolling and listening to pre-alerts on video to find the "perfect" one to share)
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| as I was writing this post....🙄 |
Thankfully, Shabbat felt pretty normal. We had eight pre-warnings, but only one turned into a siren (Tel Aviv and other areas were not so fortunate). We had friends over for dinner with their friend Janet/Chemda from Boston (who was visiting Israel and got "warred" in. It's like snowed in but more dangerous). My family and Janet's go way back (like she even babysat for me a few times!) and it was nice to hear some stories about my grandparents, who were good friends with her parents.
Woke up this morning to a 5:45 a.m. siren. Heckuva way to wake up. Like the loudest alarm you can imagine, but this one has the subtle undertone of "better get up because if you stay in bed you might die".
Couldn't fall back asleep after the all-clear and eventually got up and did my usual (which hasn't been very "usual" lately) stretching/body weight training session. Just as I was about to leave for a run: pre-alert. Got the all clear and decided to still go. A week off with zero physical activity and endless comfort food is enough! I stayed on a route where there were unlocked buildings the entire way, so I had a place to duck into if necessary.
I had 25 minutes before shul started. Made it 3.5 km and arrived just as services were starting so I could amen Shalom Shachne's kaddish for my mother, a''h, whose Hebrew birthday would have been today.
Thanks for the emails and Whatsapp messages. I apologize if I haven' responded (yet!). I appreciate the good thoughts, wishes and prayers
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| Starting my run. It's always uphill both ways around here. |
On Monday, a missile made a direct hit in our city (blog post here). This missile hit a synagogue and the neighborhood shelter underneath it. 9 people were killed, many related to each other: an adult mother and daughter (the daughter, in her 40s, volunteered as an EMT. I can't imagine what it was like for members of her team to be searching for her/finding her body in the rubble. Three of her children were wounded, but not critically).
Three teenage siblings were killed in their house near the impact site. Their father, a rabbi, said at their funerals, “Our patriarch Abraham bound one son, I bound three,” he said. “I bound my son Yaakov, my daughter Avigail and my daughter Sara. Gd wanted to take these holy souls.” The family is sitting Shiva a hotel in Jerusalem as their house was destroyed....
Another family had an incoming missile siren during the funeral....
This is a good article about the people who were killed: https://www.timesofisrael.com/four-of-the-9-victims-of-iranian-missile-strike-on-beit-shemesh-named-by-authorities/
This is what a friend's living room, about 1/2 mile from the impact looked like after:
A good reminder that, although people died while in the shelter, many people were saved in the same shelter
https://www.lemaanachai.org/en/project/emergency-campaign-beit-shemesh-hit-by-rockets/
Despite it all (and there was a fair bit of "all"), a beautiful Purim!
Although there was a siren in the middle of the night, Shalom Shachne and I were able to get up and out to the neitz (sunrise) minyan.
Came home and made a nice breakfast of eggs in shakshuka sauce with feta and fresh herbs, Israeli salad, pancakes and fruit. The joke on Sunday was should people bother to make 40 mishloach manot food packages to give out or were we all doing about three this year?
We decided not to walk around to give to people. If people showed up at our door then we were happy to give our packages out. 20 ended up being just right.
This year, we gave out sparkly grape juice and dark chocolate bars along with donation cards to the organization Kedma which supports families who have a member serving in the reserves. They give out restaurant gift vouchers (double dipping because the restaurants are usually owned by reservists as well) and pay for therapy for children.
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| Scooby, Shaggy, Velma, Daphne, Fred and the villain who "would have gotten away with it if it weren't for you meddling kids" |
We went for our seudah/festive meal at our friends' house (coordinated with other friends who live two doors away that some of us at the first house would be going to the other mamad if a siren went off, since there were too many people to fit in the hosts' mamad). This was a nice touch of normalcy during my year of mourning for my mother, since Purim is one of the rare exceptions when I can go to a group event.
Before we left, I had an interesting phone call from Magen David Adom (MADA):
"Hello, you called for an ambulance?"
"An AMBULANCE?! No! Sorry! We're all fine! I'm so sorry for the confusion--Happy Purim"
When MADA called again later, I picked up the phone and said, "I'm so sorry for the confusion but we don't need an ambulance. Happy Purim" and the woman calling launched into a long spiel about....donating blood. Seems the first person had received the wrong info about why they were calling me and really they were calling to ask if I would make an appointment to donate blood *that night*
There are two holidays that the vast majority of nominally "secular" Jewish Israelis celebrate: Yom Kippur (60-70% of Israelis fast!) and Yom Kippur's spiritual flip side: Purim. If nothing else I write gives you a sense of the seriousness of the situation here, the fact that MADA was doing an emergency blood drive PURIM NIGHT, when a wide swath of the country has spent all day partying might do it.
So I ended my day donating blood (which I had wanted to do the day before but appointments were "sold out" before I could make one. People spoke of standing in line for two hours to donate)
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| Velma donates blood |
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Has there ever been a Purim like this one, aside from the very first Purim??? (Okay, 1991, when the Gulf War ENDED on Purim and Israelis were able to throw off their gas masks and emerge from their sealed rooms is right up there)
Many shuls are closed (if there is no safe room, they are technically supposed to be closed, although many, including ours, announced they would be closed and then had small minyanim and left it to the participants to figure out where they would go if a siren went off) . Sign up sheets have been going around for home readings of the megillah. Signing up is necessary as people are only accepting the maximum number they can fit in their mamad/safe room.
I missed the sign-up for our neighbor across the street and asked him if we could join anyway since we could easily get back to our house's mamad. He said we could chance it but that, if they ended up in the mamad, he was going to continue reading the megillah (and since one has to hear every word of the megillah, we would have had to go to a second reading)
Our street minyan (started during Covid and still going strong in what, during the week, is two parking spots under a house and on Shabbat and holidays becomes a full [if small] synagogue with upholstered chairs, a fully library, air conditioning and a gorgeous Sefardi Torah scroll] at the last minute announced a reading, so Penina, Ilana and I went there. Easy to sprint home if necessary. b''H made it through the entire megillah without even a pre-warning (most of us thought that a barrage would start the second the sun went down and it became Purim).
The way I grew up, a LOT of noise is made every time wicked Haman's (booooo) name is read. While there are readings like that, I think the most common thing is to booooo only the first and last time his name is read. And if it wasn't your minyan's custom *before* last night, it certainly is the custom today, as everyone is doing their best to get through the entire megillah without interrupting and hearing the entire thing (ie so participants don't need to go to another reading). There are zoom links going around for readings that kids can participate in and make all the noise they want (not for adults to count as fulfilling the mitzvah of hearing the megillah)
One siren during the night.....
Got up and davened with the neitz sunrise minyan, the earliest time. Off to try to grab the full spiritual potential of this incredible day.
Happy Purim! Join me in praying for miracles.
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Here are the guidelines sent out by the Rav of our shul:
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First siren Saturday morning. SO thankful that we had a normal night before this all went down....
We had a full house for Shabbat, b''H. Malden's own Ariella with Chaim and their beyond-adorable kids (3 and 9 months) and Ilana's friend Noa. And then two guys from the local Yeshiva for lunch. Despite a bunch of times in the mamad, a lovely Shabbat. Since we don't use phones etc on Shabbat we had little clue what exactly was going on, but, from a faith perspective it was great: a reminder that it's all from Above and scrolling is not really important.
Our guests all decided to go back home to Jerusalem and made it safely, b''H. Menashe even was able to take the bus there and back without sirens to get things they needed to temporarily move in here.
Ilana's seminary roommate and her father are in Israel on a trip and the needed to leave their AirB&B, so we trooped upstairs after Shabbat ended and changed sheets and cleaned up for the next in the revolving door :).
It is wild that this is all going down in the Hebrew month of Adar with Purim just a few days away. We are truly reliving the Purim story (and, hey, Iran--it didn't turn out so well for you guys the last time either).
Praying for peace, safety and security in our beautiful holy land. Praying for peace throughout the wold.
