July 24
Sarah, an Ethiopian mom, and Shimon, her youngest son, are driving with me to Petach Tikva. Sarah is pretty religious as far as the Ethiopian women are concerned. She even covers her hair. But her children, influenced by the street and disturbed by their father’s abusive behavior, have left religious observance, one by one. Shimon, an eighth grader, has one foot out the door. He wants to leave his Bnei Akiva middle school – he has been playing hooky for a few weeks already – and go to a secular school.
We arrived at the AMIT dormitory school in Petach Tikva, a religious, coed school set in a beautifully landscaped garden enclosed with walls – a village in itself. There are many counselors, and most of the youth come from troubled or disadvantaged homes. This is Sarah’s last hope for her son to remain religious. A school any more religious would be totally unacceptable to her son. He seemed positive about the place, for now.
While the kid is taking some tests, the siren goes off. People stream from different buildings towards the central school shelter. Right before I enter, I see the exhaust trail of a Gazan missile overhead. Suddenly, a second exhaust trail going almost vertically intercepts the missile. The two trails suddenly spiral downwards. Two minutes later – a BOOM. We go into the shelter and wait; ten minutes later, we are told it is okay to leave. The missile remnants landed nearby, in Rosh Ha’ayin.
Friday, July 25
I want to do something to help out. I had found out a few days earlier from a mother in Modiin that her daughter, an officer on a base 20 kilometers from Gaza, was complaining about the awful food they were getting. I offered to bring food, and the mother contacted the daughter, who contacted me, and we arranged for a time to make the delivery. I purchased food from Koritz, a Geula restaurant with an Eda Chareidis hechsher – two meals each for 20 soldiers, to be eaten on Shabbos. The owner, hearing that it was for soldiers, gave me a 20 percent discount.
Friday morning, around 9:30, I pick up the food, and head south on Highway 6 (Kvish Shesh) to the end, then continue on Route 40 till I get to the Kama Junction. I travel on a parallel road past the Bedouin city of Rahat, with all its minarets jutting out, and Mishmar Hanegev, close to Route 25, I turn onto the road that leads to an army base. The officer, Galit, a modern Orthodox woman in her twenties, is in charge of the radar tracking unit, one of many subdivisions on the base. When I am finally let in, I drive with her to some nondescript prefabs, where a few soldiers come up to the car and are only too happy to schlep out the boxes of chicken steaks, salads, and kugel.
Within half an hour, half the Shabbos food is consumed by the hungry soldiers. Aside from the officer, only one soldier in that unit is Orthodox. With a big smile, he hands me a glass of water and begs me to say a “shehakol” on it.
Galit takes me to one of the prefabs. Inside, I see three 20-something-year-olds looking at three radar screens. This is the only place in Israel that has special radar that covers all of Gaza. I see lines on the screen, depicting missiles that have been launched and their trajectories. “That one is going to Raanana!” says one of the soldiers, with very little emotion. They seem very unexcited, almost humdrum, about what they are experiencing. “A very slow day,” one of them says, “only 11 missiles so far. Even yesterday was slow, with 60 missiles.”
They contact the central command of Iron Dome, which has a radar system of its own, but does not cover all of Gaza. They also contact Israel Radio – Kol Yisrael, which announces – even in the middle of a sentence of a broadcast, warning of missile attacks – as they come up. For example, as I was driving to the base, I heard another voice speak over the current broadcast with the words: azakah, ezor taasiyah Ashkelon (siren, for the Ashkelon industrial zone).
July 31, 10:10 p.m.
In the middle of Maariv, my cell phone vibrates. This doesn’t feel good; it’s my old friend Sammy, from YU days. I am petrified. After davening, I return the call, breathless. “My son is okay,” he says. “His head got knocked against a wall in Gaza when his platoon was attacked by the Hamas. He was already wounded the day before but continued fighting. This time he was knocked unconscious. He called us from the emergency room in Barzilai Hospital (Ashkelon) before they were ready to operate on him to remove the shrapnel. He’s home now recuperating. I am so thankful that he called, rather than getting one of those dreadful knocks on the door from the army to inform the family that their son has been killed.”
Thursday, August 7
The ceasefire is over. After a 72-hour lull, Hamas is at it again, firing rockets into Ashkelon. Just yesterday, I asked my Rav (again) if it was okay to plan a trip to Switzerland, a summer excursion of hiking in the mountains that has become a yearly ritual for me. He told me to wait and see what will happen tomorrow, Friday. He already advised against the trip at the beginning of the war, as being insensitive during a time of tribulation.
Friday morning, August 8
In the GRA shul, I am about to go back to my seat after davening at the amud, when someone says, “Wait a minute. What about saying Shir Hamaalos? Haven’t you heard? They started shooting again!”
Sunday, August 10, 10:15 a.m.
I am sitting next to Dr. David Stein, in the Ein Yaakov shiur. His grandson, Eitan Yaakov Fund, made the headlines when he entered a tunnel with other soldiers in pursuit of the terrorists who snatched the body of soldier Hadar Goldin (who was apparently killed with two other soldiers as they approached the entrance of a tunnel). The doctor told me that his grandson, a strapping man of 6’2”, led the way in, with a pistol in his hand. He had to bend because the tunnel ceiling was low. The soldier behind him mounted a rifle on Fund’s shoulder to steady it. They fired their way in. The blasts from the rifle made Fund deaf (hopefully temporarily) in one ear. They went 30 meters, following a trail of blood, then turned right into an adjoining tunnel, going another 100 meters. One can imagine the bravery of the soldiers, not knowing what lay ahead of them in the darkness. Their pursuit was against official army regulations, and they had to go to the superiors of their immediate superior in order to get authorization.
I will not describe what they found, as told to me by the grandfather; the information is censored by the military. All I can tell say is that after I heard him, I wanted to cry. A few minutes later, a friend tells me that Fund paid a shiva call to the Goldin family, and brought with him something that he found in that tunnel: Hadar’s tallis and tefilin.
August 19, 11:30 a.m.
I get a onetime permit to leave the country on my American passport. The trip to Switzerland is scheduled for this coming Sunday, August 24. I am very excited to get out of this pressure cooker city into the pristine Alps. All reservations and travel plans have been made. I have a travel partner. The only thing left is to give my travel agent the okay to process the credit card number.
11:50 p.m.
I am awoken by an air raid siren. Looks like the ceasefire is over. I walk to the stairwell, go down one flight of stairs, and meet my next door neighbor with her son and grandson. We wait. This time, there is no boom.
August 20
Today I turn 60. My Rav informs me that I should delay – again – my plans to go abroad. I tell him that nature is therapeutic for me. He won’t budge.
August 21
I am hiking with a friend on a segment of the “Israel Trail” near Latrun, a rural area 45 minutes from Jerusalem. We pass along rolling hills dotted with vineyards and orchards. About 12 noon we hear air raid sirens go off. This is unusual for this area. We aren’t sure from which city the siren is coming (Rehovot? Modiin?). We hit the earth, face down, arms shielding our heads, and wait. Two minutes later we hear a loud explosion and feel the ground beneath us shudder.
That afternoon, I check the internet but still don’t know where it landed, or what landed: the missile, or the remnants of two missiles? Although my guess is that the missile landed far away, it didn’t feel like that to me at the time.
August 24
I feel resentful towards my Rav, who told me to cancel my travel plans to Switzerland until things quiet down. He was speaking on an ethical basis – that it was insensitive to leave the country when so many people in the south were suffering from barrages of rockets, and soldiers were waiting for orders to go back into Gaza.
I had made all the arrangements again, after having had to delay it once before upon the directive of the Rav. During the ceasefire, he had given me the green light to go. But Hamas broke the ceasefire, and so my travel plans were put on hold again. I am especially incensed over Shabbos, because the magid shiur of the Daf Yomi I (sometimes) attend just returned after 10 days – from his vacation in Switzerland! I am even more incensed when the magid shiur tells me that among the people he saw in Switzerland was none other than a prominent Israeli rabbi! Not fair!
In the meantime, I plan an alternative trip – to go to the Golan for a few days to “air out.” After sitting and writing this article and talking it out with my Chumash chavrusa, Rabbi Joe Drazin (also from Baltimore), I suddenly realize my own self-deception. Why did I ask my Rav in the first place for permission to go abroad? It was because I was feeling guilty about the trip, and I wanted him to assuage my guilt by connecting to my game plan; instead he told me what he wanted to say, not what I wanted to hear.
While we are talking, Rabbi Drazin tells me that he heard on the radio earlier that morning that five missiles were shot from Syria into the Golan. There go my Golan plans!
Other than that, life in Israel – in Yerushalayim, anyway – is no different than during peacetime. People are not afraid to go out. The restaurants and parks are full. But I don’t know what the story is in Ashkelon or Ashdod.
As Yogi Berra once said, “It ain’t over till it’s over!” More than looking for another ceasefire, we are hoping for a whole new era, one that we have prayed for over the last 2,000 years.
