"You Give Strength to the Weary"

For a long time, I have maintained that the appropriate prayer for any issue a person is dealing with is found in Morning Blessings.

It is hard to believe that for 404 days, we have been saying the blessing matir asurim --"You release the bound"--with the concept that, yes, our limbs are moving and we can arise from sleeping, but also that there are hostages who truly are bound and need to be released. Every morning I say the name of each one of the hostages and Daven that today will be the day they come home. 

We ask Gd each morning to give us strength ("Please Gd, give all the soldiers who are working so hard, all the strength they need").

But the blessing that is most resonating with me these days is hanoten l'yaef koach, "You give strength to the weary". I try not to speak for everyone, but for this, I think I can truly say that the country is weary. It is hard to believe it's been 13.5 months since the war started. 

When it began, I numbered my blog posts ("War Day 5"), in the innocence of thinking this would be over soon.....

Now, we have my friend's son, who was called up in his Reserve Unit on October 7 and was in the Army until mid-October. That's OVER A YEAR. He's home now, working and getting ready for his upcoming marriage, and just found out that, though he was supposed to go back in the Army in February, it's been moved up to January. His wedding is the 29th of December, so they better not push it back any further....

A video going around shows a restaurant closed as the owner has been called up for reserve duty. "Pray for me" the sign says:

It is soon to be our neighbor Binyamin Airley's first yahrzeit. His mom, Jen, has become a very popular speaker on the English-language circuit (listen/read any of these: she's always amazing). His parents opened Beit Binyamin in his memory, to give soldiers, first responders, war widows and others deeply affected by the war the space to do some healing. 

And each day, each week there are the smiles in the photos of the beautiful soldiers who have been killed in battle. "Approved for release" have become heartbreaking words because they're followed with the names of soldiers who have fallen in battle:

And how can there still be HUNDREDS of missiles being sent to us each day?! Yesterday alone, there were 265 incoming missile alerts. The total since the beginning of the war is 28,000 incoming missile sirens in Israel. 

This is what the middle of the country looked like on Tuesday, mid-day. Menashe, who has started a new job in Tel Aviv, says he's learned his way to the building safe room really well:

We had an "incoming" siren the other morning at 5:56 a.m. The best spin on it that I heard was, "At least I didn't need to wake up my kids for school". 

And here I am, about to make my annual weekend visit to my mother to celebrate my birthday and I truly cannot wrap my head around the fact that I am, again, collecting supplies for soldiers. Last November, I would have said there was no way I'd be collecting again this year. Yet here we are.....

https://www.amazon.com/registries/gl/guest-view/3M02MX8X2KQG0

Still praying for peace and permanent safety for our tiny little corner of the world.

October 7: One Year

It is truly hard to believe that it has been a year since the beginning of all of this....I went back and read my first blog post about the war. In the beginning, I numbered them: War--Day 5. I can't imagine I was alone in thinking that, like the Six Day War, this might be bad but at least it would be short. 

And crazy that today, we had a siren ("anniversary siren"? GRR). This was an "easy" one: no booms, the house didn't shake, and the sirens stopped after one time. Evidently it was the Houthis in Yemen sending a ballistic missile (which, thank Gd, got intercepted by David's Sling, which is the Iron Dome for ballistic missiles).

I want to share something that I recently heard in a Torah class. I believe it was from Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz. 

If you're the same person now that you were last October 7, you're doing something very wrong.

I've been thinking about this since I heard it, probably a month ago. Feel free to send me a message with your thoughts.

Praying for a world at peace.

Rosh Hashanah 2024/5785

There was trepidation going into "Three Day Yontif", but it turned out to be absolutely wonderful (at least here. The North of the country had a very rough few days with tons of missiles sent from Lebanon). We had three quiet and peaceful days and it now feels to me like Tuesday night's crazy missile attack from Iran was a million years ago. I think it also really helps that pretty much everyone in the country went through that together so there's an instant support group with, well, anyone you talk with.

We had a full house for the holiday: Penina and Menashe, Menashe's mother, stepfather and 10 year-old brother, and Ilana and a friend of hers from camp who is from Gibraltar so spoke both English and Spanish.

First night of Rosh Hashanah, we ate with two other families who we are really close with. As we were setting up, there was some talk about where everyone had been Tuesday night but it was already feeling much farther away than only 24 hours. (Menashe's family had been coming back on the bus from doing a big grocery shopping trip [they are still getting their new apartment set up]. Thankfully, another person on the bus showed them a store they could all run into. They were already in their neighborhood, and between sirens they tried to run back to their apartment, but with all those groceries, it was impossible. Thankfully they were able to flag down a driver who drove them right home. 

Another "fun" story we heard later in the holiday when Ilana's former Boston classmate Naomi C. came for a meal. She said she had been shopping in Meah Shearim and trying to get back to her seminary in Geulah when the sirens started, so she had to lie down on the sidewalk with a bunch of Israeli-bubbe types because all the nearby buildings were locked. 

"And then I ran back".

 "Wow, how far is that?"

 "It normally takes about 15 minutes, but I did it in 8" ;))

We're heading into the October 7 anniversary and I was focused on what memorial events would I attend, when Ilana's seminary sent out a notice that they had told the girls to stay on campus due to the high risk of terror attacks (one person was killed yesterday in a terrorist attack at the Be'er Sheva central bus station). I hadn't even thought about that....Hashem Yishmor

What a Night Part 2

 Part 1 was the Iranian missile strike five months ago. And last night we had the encore.

Last evening I left my house with my bubbe cart, walking to the mercaz to get all the fruit and vegetables we would need for Rosh Hashanah, which, this year, is the rare-in-Israel Three Day Yontif (I mentioned to someone at work yesterday that, although I miss very few things from life in the US, when we have three-day holidays, I REALLY miss my second freezer and second refrigerator).

Just at the end of our street, our family chat got messages from Penina, who was in Tel Aviv on her way home from work (she's a pre-intern at a small international law firm and really enjoying it). She said that there had been a terrorist attack in Yafo. But the news was really conflicting at that time with whether the attack was in the CITY of Yafo (which is essentially part of Tel Aviv--you might have even heard of it as "Tel Aviv/Yafo") or on Yafo STREET (in Jerusalem, which Penina and Menashe's apartment is off of. As in one building off of). We had news reports of each place. Menashe had just come in to their apartment and he felt that it couldn't be Jerusalem as things had been totally normal on Yafo street. 

At 7:05, Penina sent this:

"Maybe I should just turn around?" I asked on the chat. "Everyone stay home" Penina responded. (I would like to thank you, Penina, for saving me last night. Not saving me physically, since we know that, THANK GD, no one was killed in Israel, but mentally because that was a brutal night and would have been more so had I been in some random stairwell in the mercaz. Not to mention I would have abandoned by bubbe cart and probably lost 200 nis worth of fruit and vegetables!).

I stopped at the apartment of a young couple on our street who are having a tough time financially and gave them some money to help with their Holiday preparations and came home. Not saying this to humble brag, just seriously sharing the concept that we learn from Rosh Hashanah that prayer, repentance and acts of charity avert harsh decrees. 

And then.....While Shalom Shachne was talking with his Mom on the phone, the sirens started.

First our phones came through with an usual sound telling everyone to get in a protected space which made us wonder if we (okay, not really "we") should listen to the advice. "Who cares?? Let's go!!!! Bye, Ma--gotta go. Sirens here" (Sorry, Ma, that must have been scary to hear).

We took Percy into the mamad  (which had had a problem with the metal shutters closing that my amazing Shalom Shachne had just fixed mere hours before) and then, oh my goodness.....

The sirens on my phone

The sirens on his phone

The sirens outside

The BOOMS. We should be old hat at this after almost a year, but this was the worst we have ever heard. 

And more sirens coming, coming, coming. 

I had heard people question: If we're supposed to stay in the safe room ten minutes after a missile siren, what would happen if a second missile came in during that time--would there be a second siren or not?I now have the answer: YES, there will be another siren because we had, I think, three almost in direct sequence. 

I can't even imagine how stressful it was for Penina being in the protected room of the train station with all the other passengers and hearing EVERYONE'S phone alerts going off at the same time (I just about jumped out of my skin with the two phones we had in the mamad with us).

Ilana was in the safe room at seminary. She was supposed to come home in the evening and then seminary announced that girls could only leave if they got a ride, no public transportation. Thank Gd she and I weren't on the road driving. Our friend, Eitan, who just came to yeshiva in the Old City a few weeks ago, was at his school, thankfully. Our friend Menachem who was in the grocery store in the mercaz went in the safe room there and they had a maariv minyan for evening prayers :). At the mall, there was singing in the safe room. Cousin Coby was on a bus from Jerusalem and, poor guy, had to twice get out and lie on the side of the road. And the woman who did evening shift at work had to stop three times on her way home to lie on the side of the road (thank you, Hashem, for giving me day shift yesterday). She said it looked just like this video that someone else in the city posted: 

WARNING: you will hear sirens in this video: If you don't see if here, it's also posted on Youtube here: https://youtube.com/shorts/H6OCyIFzVTo?feature=share

I'm crying writing this.

It is a total and complete miracle that people were not seriously injured or killed; thank you, Hashem.

It was SO incredibly hard to not be together. During every other siren we've had we were either all together, or I was at work and the rest of the family was here together. And worrying about Penina and how she would get home was brutal. I felt like Mrs. Weasley in Harry Potter, where the clock in their house points to family member's location and, during the war, all of the clock hands are pointed to "Mortal Peril". 

Shalom Shachne and I said tehilim and learned some of hilchos Rosh Hashanah (thanks to Rabbi Shalom Andy Shulman for sending that out earlier in the day). I discovered that it really DOES work to lie down and put one's feet up when you're feeling faint (I didn't actually think I would faint, but I was definitely feeling lightheaded). I had a routine: take some Rescue Remedy (can I just say again that that stuff works wonders?!), read some tehilim, check my phone for the family chat, and repeat. Again and again and again for an hour.

This was perhaps the scariest thing I've ever lived through, because there was no saying when it would end and/or how it would end......Were they taking a coffee break and they would start up again? Later that night, a car door slammed outside and I practically screamed, "WHATWASTHAT?!"

There is a thought that we should all include a new siman at our Rosh Hashanah dinners tonight: a burnt food, so that Hashem should "burn up" our enemies and as a reminder of all the miracles we witnessed last night.

I will be offline until Saturday night, Israel time. Wishing us all a new year of PEACE, health, happiness, love and financial ease. 

Sharing a quick read

 While flipping through the latest issue of Hadassah magazine, I read this very compelling "graphic essay", "Welcome Home", by Abby Horowitz. I think many of you will relate to what the author writes about visiting Israel and the difference for her from life in the US:

https://issuu.com/hadassahmag/docs/hadassah_sepoct_2024_1_/20?ff

Things are heating up, but, thankfully, still calm where we live

Yup, that's about all I have to say at this point (mostly because I'm slightly desperate to go to sleep after a morning run, working in Jerusalem and then a few hours with Menashe's family in Ikea [at least the food there is kosher so you can get a snack when faint from hunger]).

Lots (and LOTS) of soldiers are being called up for reserve duty.....My good friend's daughter, who is in the army, just told the family she won't be home for Rosh Hashanah.....The son of a woman I work with, who was supposed to be home until the end of October, got called up today (like "go ASAP").....We hear planes and helicopters overhead throughout the day and night.....I'm going (yet again) tomorrow to stock up the pantry (the mamad is still fully-stocked. But the pantry, not so much. What can I say? We keep eating).

This editorial in the Jerusalem Post really sums up my feelings (and fears, frankly):

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-821395

With thanks to all who have checked in and sent supportive messages. We feel your care and concern!

Yay! Menashe's family is here!

 b''H they arrived early Friday morning after three planes, delays, a missed flight, and missing luggage. What can I say--we know that the land of Israel is acquired by yissurim and hopefully this will be the worst "pain with a purpose" that they have here.

#SweetestPictureEver

#ThanksChanaForTheBalloon

For their first week, while they outfit their apartment, they are staying with friends from Costa Rica in another part of our city, so Shalom Shachne and I visited before Shabbat started:

That sign played an important role in OUR aliyah journey! Our friend Temima's sisters made the sign and then showed up at the crack of dawn at the airport to welcome us 9 years ago. I told Menashe's mom that I was specifically giving them that sign, updated for their family, rather than making them a new sign, so that we could try to share with them the strength we've gained and the good things we've experienced over the years here. 

Gosh, we were young!

SO GLAD THEY'RE HERE!!! YAY!