Just because we aren’t on the floor crying and screaming, don’t imagine this is easy for us. It isn’t
After writing about Purim as a guide for Jewish survival, I realized there are things harder to explain — what survival feels like in real time.
There are things I don’t want to write about.
Like being exhausted after sleepless nights of air-raid sirens sending us racing to the shelter. Sitting with other exhausted neighbors in the cold of the night and concrete walls, waiting for the all-clear signal saying we can go back to bed — if you can go back to sleep with adrenaline pumping through your veins.
The couple with the baby, the age of the war — his mother was pregnant on October 7th. Now he’s two, and he knows to say, “Time to go to the shelter,” when the siren goes off.
How heartbreaking it is that he thinks it’s normal to come to the shelter in his Purim costume. Or to hear the other neighbor’s daughter, a fourth grader, say wistfully: “I hope we get to celebrate Purim when this is all over. I was supposed to dress up as a leopard.”
I don’t think I have the words to explain the difference in the level of stress depending on which alert we get.
The alert of missiles incoming from Iran — an ear-splitting alarm from the phone warning of danger, but also granting us blessed time to get to the shelter without running. Waiting to hear the next set of sirens. If they don’t go off and we only have to wait, that means the missile was shot down on the way. Good.
The next set of sirens means the missile is close and might be intercepted in our airspace — resulting in shrapnel the size of cars falling from the sky — or worse, the missile smashing through our defense system into its target, leaving entire neighborhoods looking like a tornado picked up buildings and threw them back down in smithereens.
After seeing the results of those missiles, like the one that hit the bomb shelter in Beit Shemesh, it is hard to sit and wait for other incoming missiles.
The stress of hearing the air-raid siren outside without receiving an alert on the phone is something entirely different. Missiles that come from closer sources, like those sent by Hezbollah, don’t give time for pre-warning. Their missiles aren’t as devastating as the ones from Iran — but hearing a boom before reaching the shelter is not a pleasant experience, to say the least.
I don’t want to write about the stress that manifests as physical ailments. Colds caught too easily. Jaws clenched so hard that splitting headaches are unavoidable. Being tired, frazzled, and irritable.
Being worried about others more than oneself. If the kids are safe. If friends are okay. The bereaved and the injured.
Please, God, let the pilots come home safely. Just one technical error, particularly over enemy territory, is a nightmare we don’t even want to think about.
I don’t want to write about financial concerns or how one continues living when everything is stopped because of the war.
I don’t want to write these things. What’s new about any of them? This didn’t start with the American attack on Iran; it started with the Gazan invasion on October 7th — and the other Iranian proxies who joined in, trying to finish us.
How can I explain the ice-cold terror of helplessness at the tidal wave of death trying to drown us all? Even many Israelis try to push aside the memory of that feeling.
Or the physical reaction of the body not being able to contain the knowledge of what the mind learned was happening — the terror that invaders would also come from the north, torture, rape, and burn us like they did to our friends in the south. Knowing that if they succeeded, our neighbors might also rise up against us and join in the genocide of the Jews.
For the first few days, our neighbors were more frightening than the missiles.
And as our nation fought back, our stress became fear and grief over the discovery of lives lost — our friends’ children and friends of our children — those who were at the party and those killed in battle.
Who has the words to explain the shadow of the hostages, constantly haunting us? Knowing that we were eating when they were not. That we were comfortable while they were being tortured. The empathy-terror — the phantom suffering with our sisters abused by the monsters who murdered our brothers.
That weight lifted when the hostages were liberated. But liberation is only the beginning of healing, not healing itself. Knowing the same thing can happen again as long as the same enemy with the same ideology exists leaves us no peace.
I cannot explain the stress and frustration of wars being stopped too soon — in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran — chasing the hope of a “deal” we knew was not real and would not last. Wars need to end in victory in order to end. Delay only makes things worse. We knew we were being forced to wait for the fire to reignite, and the longer we waited, the more dangerous the fire would become.
And that is why now we are again dealing with Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas still ruling most of Gaza.
And like Israelis say: “It’s not easy.”
Because we love to complain — but only about things that don’t really matter. The harder things are, the less we complain.
Because we don’t play the victim Olympics.
We survive.
And we thrive.
And now it is time to implement the lessons of Purim 2500 years ago. It is time to turn the horror into celebration, grief into gladness.
It is time for us to win.
Israel is not supported on the Substack payment platform. If you appreciate my writings and would like to support my efforts, please consider a PayPal donation to help me bring Inspiration from Zion to people around the world.
Inspiration from Zion: This is a Love Story 