I put my heart and soul into every piece I write—sometimes I look for humor in life’s moments and other times I wrestle with memory, fear, and the search for meaning in a world that keeps shifting beneath our feet.

If this essay spoke to you, please consider giving it a like, sharing it with someone who might need it, or reposting it. You can also support my work directly through Ko-fi—or simply by subscribing, reposting, commenting, or spreading the word. Every gesture, big or small, helps me keep writing, reflecting, and connecting through words.

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Israel has had a great deal on her plate over the past three years. Do I need to list them? Thank you. But we now have another challenge — one which, in my humble opinion, is fixable, and thus entirely avoidable. If only we had the forethought to solve this pressing issue before it leaps on us again next year. Sadly we are too busy with an upcoming election and a million unsolved problems to give my idea any thought at all. And this is to our loss.

I nonetheless wish to propose something radical. Let’s ban August. Yes, get rid of it altogether. Delete it. Pulverize it. Let it languish in the annals of history. I am not alone in this view. In fact, having conducted some ad hoc research on the topic, very few people I interviewed have anything remotely positive to say about this month of the year. They don’t just dislike it. They simultaneously detest it and dread it each year. And who can blame them? This pesky month wreaks havoc on our homes, our streets, our skin, our digestive systems, our nerves and our joy of life. If I try to imagine what hell is like, it is a place that is stuck in August for eternity.

Israel has an added challenge. While much of the developed world appears to have quietly given up on reproducing, Israelis are still having babies with tremendous gusto. It’s like this. We Jews love a bargain. So, if you can have one, then why not have two, or three, or four or perhaps even seven? Yes, right now strollers are a more common sight in this country than Chinese cars, and that’s saying a lot. Of course children are a blessing. Of course the Jewish people take “go forth and multiply” very seriously. Like literally.

I spent long and arduous years as a mother, soothing, calming, managing. I think I deserve to drink a cup of coffee without a split eardrum. In August, however, our caregivers are supposedly having a well-earned rest. No daycare, no gan, and an August summer camp is only available for those with well-lined pockets or on the verge of a complete nervous breakdown, or both.

Well, it’s barely a rest for these wonderful caregivers and educators of ours (like me) if there’s no quiet! Is my proposal starting to sound a little more sensible now?

So the babies, bless them, are out and about, along with their siblings. And their parents are running on a skeleton crew, letting out the odd mutter when it looks like the kids are about to kill each other. The children are bored, they are hot and they have driven their parents to let them do things that go against every code of parenting. Just for a few minutes of peace.

And there is no escape. In a country that you need a magnifying glass to locate on a world map, you will not find a quiet corner anywhere. At all.

Case in point. I recently went out with family to a relatively high-end Asian restaurant. The sort of place that needs an online booking two weeks in advance. I admit, we did arrive at the senior hour of 18:30, but guess who was occupying the table next door. An adorable little girl who sadly could only make herself understood in baby-yell language. Her pitch was perfectly designed to drive a sane person to utter distraction within minutes. And we didn’t even get a discount.

I have thus become a true August hermit, spending most of my August days as a recluse. Ironing my clothes, making pancakes and avoiding the news. Anything, but anything, but venture outside into the August hellscape of Jerusalem. Yup, it’s just me and hubby and the gentle purr of our AC. Thank God. But. Every now and then, however, I have no choice but to venture outside — God help me.

For the past two years, for mysterious reasons, Jerusalem city council has been hard at work, randomly carving up different parts of a main road just outside my apartment. One day there’s no left turn. One day no right turn. One day there’s a pothole. One day three lanes merge into half a lane. Rude sun-beaten men with mirrored sunglasses and high-viz jackets make mysterious gesticulations at me. I do not understand — do I stop or go? His mirrored expression is unreadable as he waves his arms, flashlight in one hand and cigarette in the other. Bottom line, the road you wanted to turn into has become a fortress of trucks and asphalt. Or your traffic lights have been replaced by another high-viz man sitting in a discarded office chair, letting traffic pass after he’s brewed his Turkish coffee.

Downtown used to be a nice place to go, but no longer. Instead of Judaica, coffee, and boutiques, you have rubble, trucks, and corrugated metal blocking where you need to go (on foot). And when you do, you’ll find the Jerusalem sidewalks have become fatphobic. Especially if you want to overtake anyone. Our beloved King George Street would make the good King shudder in his grave — it’s just a seething cauldron of dust and fumes — but that hasn’t seemed to have stopped the babies. Watch out for the speeding Mercedes stroller. You don’t have room to dodge it.

And did I fail to mention the weather? The less said the better. We crawl in and out of heatwaves and extreme heat warnings. We may get a temporary reprieve, but there’s another heatwave lurking round the corner. A trip to the beach might sound like a good idea. It isn’t. Our beaches are so packed that you emerge from the sea, head confidently towards your umbrella, and discover you’ve joined an entirely different family. Five minutes later, you’re chasing someone else’s toddler down the beach with a bottle of SPF 50. So don’t risk it.

The sun beats down mercilessly. My water bottle has a silent and vicious plot against me. It will spill its contents on my car seat before I’ve ventured outside. And I just want to run home, screaming. But I can’t. I’ve got a dentist appointment for root canal work and a double crown. It costs a lot — the same amount of money as a flight to somewhere that is not here.

At this point, you, the reader, have designated me to the shit pile of cruel, callous, cynical, and dismissive boomer somethings who wax lyrical about the way back. But I was right there. I am an August survivor. I see you all. In my time, I spent entire half days just taking my kids to the grocery store round the corner for a loaf of bread. It was something to do. I mentally crossed off those August days, one by one, as they slithered past at a snail’s pace. I understand why your children are roaming around taking apart supermarket shelves, their mouths smeared with chocolate ice scream. I get it.

Yes, it utterly sucks. And this is why August should be banned.

Skip the month entirely. June and end of school year, hurrah and all that. July and a bit of heat, a bit of beach, a fast day (that I ignore), and hup, it’s over. Then we go back to school and the regular chaos of elections, wars, terror, political crises, strikes, etc., etc. As simple as that.

Isn’t that a genius idea, or what?

How are you surviving August? Have you filled out any Anti-August online petitions? I’d love to hear your opinion on this issue.

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If this essay spoke to you, please consider giving it a like, sharing it with someone who might need it, or reposting it. You can also support my work directly through Ko-fi—or simply by subscribing, reposting, commenting, or spreading the word. Every gesture, big or small, helps me keep writing, reflecting, and connecting through words.

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My grandparents have both been dead for some time. My recollections of my grandmother are the strongest. Grandma Lotka was an elegant woman with pencilled eyebrows, elegant gold jewelry, a generous heart and forever sporting a fresh coat of lipstick. She was 73 and she and grandpa were on yet another vacation to the US when she realized something wasn’t right. The doctors hastily operated, only to discover they could do nothing for her. It had ravaged her from the inside, doing in months what decades of persecution never managed. Now there was little left to do but get her affairs in order. I was a new mother living in Israel at the time. I flew back to London as soon as I could, and she thankfully got to hold her first great grandson,in her bony arms. That great grandson now has a child of his own. Of course, he remembers nothing of her.

And time is eroding my memories. I recall the distinct smell of their modest house in Wembley, London, their opaque glass entranceway, and how the sprawling willow tree at the back of their garden tore up the adjacent parking lot with its massive, invasive roots and was thus condemned by the local council to an untimely end. I remember sleeping on their lumpy guestroom bed, sipping cups of strong tea served on blue zwiebelmuster china cups. Whenever we visit Prague, I seriously consider buying a set. Both my grandparents spoke excellent English (and French, and German) but were never able to rid themselves of their strong Czech accents. “Ella daahlink! Hew are you?” my grandma would croon on the phone as if I was the only person in the world who mattered to her.

I remember how they returned from vacations with gifts for everyone. I remember her serving steaming sweet and sour red cabbage (which I always make on Passover), and the gold tube of lipstick discreetly produced from her stylish handbag after each family meal.

But it’s what I don’t remember that could fill volumes. I beat my head about, but the memories are dried up wisps somewhere. Did Grandpa Yoshka and Grandma Lotka ever reminisce about their lives before they came to the UK? How did their past not cast a giant shadow on them, like a clock tower at the end of a summer’s day?

I must be gentle on myself. I was young. It wasn’t my fault that what lay inside their shopping bags from recent trips to the Swiss Alps or the Canary Islands, carefully wrapped in tissue paper, was more important to me than what was embedded into their souls.

And furthermore, I had quietly and conveniently framed my grandparents as the ones who had escaped. They weren’t victims. I didn’t know my great uncles, or my great grandparents on my grandpa’s side. We had other things to talk about. Like my grades, or summer plans.

They lived their lives, went on numerous vacations, watched movies and plays at the West End, ate in their favourite restaurants and played bridge with their emigree friends. My grandpa ‘did a bit of business’ long after he had officially retired. Every now and then, they murmured together in their secret language about things they didn’t want anyone to understand. So what difference did it make that I didn’t know?

I did know that they had first met in Nice, France at the outbreak of the war. I knew that my grandpa was a good deal older than my grandma when they met- she was a teen, and he was a dashing officer, already 27. She had my father at 18. As a teen, I loved telling my friends this fact and watching their eyes open wide in amazement.

But I was missing the pieces. Lotka was a refugee. He was fighting the Nazis, first for the Czechs, then for the British. She’d lost everything and everyone and so had he, although they weren’t entire aware of the scope of their losses until many years later. He’d repeatedly begged his parents to leave his home town of Český Těšín, one of the first Czech areas to be overrun by the Nazis after they invaded Poland. To this day, he has no record of what happened to them. I’m still searching.

Her father had reluctantly left his extended family behind in Pilsen in 1938. These are the pieces that I’m slowly putting together now.

By the time she was 15, the taste of fear was all too familiar to my grandma. Her uncles had been arrested in the middle of the night. She’d been violently ripped from the bosom of home and extended family. She’d left with her parents, clutching a few suitcases and some hidden cash (I’m sure) with vague plans and destination unknown. Never again would she set foot in the stuccoed apartment with high ceilings in the center of Pilsen where she had lived a pampered life, with her aunts and cousins lived next door and servants caring for her needs. She had left school, friends and community—a world that was subsequently extinguished.

And thus, her formative years were marked by one thing—escape. First as a teen from the Nazis, and ten years later as a young mother. They returned to Czechoslovakia in 1946, only to find themselves on the run again two years later - this time from the Soviets. So the beautiful young woman who fell in love with my grandpa in 1938 had witnessed more than most of us see in a lifetime. She was no teen.

I do not take great interest in genealogy as a rule. I do not wish to be seen as the branch of a tree- daughter of, née etc. No, I am from an endless patchwork of stories—some myths, some with details hotly disputed— and many erased by time. But the narrative of my grandparents, snaking its bold path through a century of turmoil and destruction intrigues me. To be precise, I have become obsessed.

How did they survive? Was it pure luck? Was it instinct? Was it thanks to that stubborn trait that I have passed on to my children? Was it a Guiding Invisible Hand? I would like to think so. But somehow, they survived whilst so many others didn’t. And I got to be born. And who would have believed that?

The internet was in its nascence as my grandmother laid dying in hospital, her skin hanging on to her bones and face void of lipstick. And now I have access to this thing. It is a giant metal key to endless vaults of information, names and dates. It accesses records. It details the destruction. It puts the timeline straight. It weaves a cautious narrative. All I have is names and places. Like magic, it conjurs up carefully handwritten documents, names, dates, stamps and postmarks.

As I click and scroll, I catch my breath. I have found them. I feel an urgent need to say them aloud. The names of my great uncles are before me- the ones who my great grandfather didn’t get to say goodbye to. I see an application for a driving license, dated 1938. A photograph of my great uncle appears on the screen—stiff collar, eyebrows and nose shaped so much like my father’s.

The dates of their deaths in Mauthausen are black on white. The whispy memories take form and start to come alive. Cold air blows on the back of my neck. It is the shadow of the past, and it demands to be honored.

my great uncle applied for a driver’s license in 1938- the year he was arrested by the Nazis

But what do I do with these stories? My dear aunt, who recalls names dates and facts in terrifying detail, has carefully put together a file. She even organized memorial stones to be laid outside my grandmother’s family home in Pilsen, that still stands today. The timing of the memorial ceremony couldn’t have been worse -October 7th, 2023. My aunt is reluctant to share the stories of I thirst for. She strongly asserts that the details of my grandparents’ lives are a private matter, and should thus belong to only them.

But if the memories, the names, the dates, the story become lost in the sea of time, what will be? Who will honor the bravery of my grandparents who are survivors of something that refuses to be grasped in one sitting? Whose eyes and imagination will trace the rich lives of a community before and the race against time of after?

And the tiny details—the lost fur coat; the rat in Nice, in the middle of the night, that saved their lives; a counterfeit visa to Ecuador; a boat laden with wheat where my grandmother and her family stowed away as the Nazis moved into Nice, watching from the deck as a towering rock loomed in the distance, correctly identified by my great-grandfather as Gibraltar; a sleeping draught administered to my baby aunt as her parents made their perilous escape from the Soviets to the German border in 1948; the shreds of survivors who wandered about in the Mittenwald DP camp, waiting for repatriation to the UK, where my four-year-old father waited for them. These details are woven into the cracks and crevices of my DNA, whether I’m aware of them or not.

The book, or at least the chapter outlines of the lives of ordinary individuals who made extraordinary decisions must be written. Even if it sits around and gathers dust for 50 years. Does history teach us anything at all? Probably less than we’d like to think. The stories, however, must be told nonetheless. If we do not honor them, then we do not honor ourselves. If not, then my grandparents will forever remain two emigrees with strange accents and loving hearts, and that is all. And they deserve so much more than that.

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I wonder how many of us are sitting on stories like this — fragments, names, half-remembered details we never thought to ask about until it was too late. If that's you, I'd love to hear what you're carrying. What do you know? What do you wish you'd asked?

I put my heart and soul into every piece I write—sometimes I look for humor in life’s moments and other times I wrestle with memory, fear, and the search for meaning in a world that keeps shifting beneath our feet.

If this essay spoke to you, please consider giving it a like, sharing it with someone who might need it, or reposting it. You can also support my work directly through Ko-fi—or simply by subscribing, reposting, commenting, or spreading the word. Every gesture, big or small, helps me keep writing, reflecting, and connecting through words.

buy me a ko-fi

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Who says summer camps are for kids? I for one can tell you that adults need them too. Why? Because I did one. This summer I signed up for a 9 day art summer camp at the Israel museum. No artistic background required. Those 9 days have left an indelible mark on me.

I was very excited about this course/camp as I have loved art since a young age. In my teens, I obsessively sketched portraits for anyone who would sit for me and when I was out of live subjects, I sketched movie stars. But as the years went on, my sketch book got produced less and less frequently.

Motherhood endowed me with the misguided notion that any creative activity requiring more than half an hour was a frivolous waste of time. In my eight month of pregnancy with my first child, I joined a sketching class for the morning. I do not remember what I drew, but I do recall that this was the last time I held a 2B pencil in my hands for many years to come.

I encouraged my kids to be creative. In fact, my daughter, the most artistic of the lot of them, graduated in fashion design many years ago. Her precise sketching is far superior to my juvenile scribblings and her paintings from her teens still cover my living room walls.

By the time I hit my fifties, my passion for art had been reduced to art appreciation. I made many excuses to myself for not going back to my sketch pad. A sketch or painting is only complete when you call the last stroke. And even then, you might change your mind. How could I pursue a hobby that went beyond the limitations of time? For the past few years, however I have given myself permission to take out my sketch book only during the holidays. A two month school vacation meant I could sketch guilt free. At least in theory, anyway.

And this year I started embroidery. I think the fact it didn’t make a mess appealed to me. My punch projects, each one growing in size and technical demands practically saved me during the war shutdown. I never dreamed that a wool supply store could be such an exciting place. But the artist in me- the furious sketcher, the water painter, the one with her fingernails full of bits of oil pastels…well, she was collecting dust in a forgotten drawer.

Until this summer.

Each day of my ‘summer camp’, I entered the parking lot of the giant complex of the Israel Museum with a feeling of joyous trepidation. This wonderful museum housed so many beautiful objects - and I would be making my own! The coffee shop was nice, too.

There is a whole section of the museum devoted to art education. It was thirty degrees outside, but the museum employees wore wool sweaters as the AC worked full power, partially to preserve all the world famous art the building housed.

Our art instructor, Michal- a woman my age- would give us a few brief instructions, which usually involved us working with materials we had never touched, or combining two techniques in a way we’d never dreamed of. One day we sat in a single file circle and drew the back of the person in front of us. Another activity was sitting opposite someone and drawing their face using one single line. Another morning she took us out into the wonderful museum gardens and had us render its trees with dry ink on a brush. Nothing was ever simple. In fact, on more than one occasion I ignored her and did my own thing, which actually didn’t turn out that bad.

I didn’t know people actually could do things with a dry brush and printing ink.

She gave us only the briefest of feedback other than saying ‘this is interesting’. But she liked to take our finished products at the end of each session and lay them on the floor next to each other, creating a collage. ‘Art is like handwriting,’ Michal told us ‘No two pictures are the same’. And when we saw what each person had made of the task, her words rang true.

no two pictures are alike. Same materials, same subject, same instructions.

She constantly told us to ignore the ‘little crow’ on our shoulder that would tell us our work wasn’t good enough. All art is art. And we had our crises, when we had no clue what she wanted or the ‘little crow’ was squawking too loudly and interfering with our flow- but each one us finally found her own little space between the lines and brushstrokes. I, too, resolved to stop regarding my work as ‘messy’ and begin appreciating its movement and dynamic shading almost as much as the process itself.

I don’t need to be a master, but copying one is nice.

I realized that art is the only place where I could be truly free to project my unique view of the world without worrying about what others would say. After so many years, I was finally conversing in a language that was as universal as it was personal. And I didn’t need to be Rembrandt to do it.

Michal would put music on. It was often Argentinian or Spanish. In order that our brain didn’t get distracted with words, she claimed. “Don’t overthink it-” she’d remind us to “use your eyes. You think you see but you’re just conjuring up pre-existing symbols. Look closely.” And we did. We drew trees and sculptures, we sat in front of impressionists in the gallery and copied brush strokes and perspective. And suddenly, a whole new world was unveiled before us- a world of movement, of light and shade, of texture, of mood, playfulness and of vibrant color.

Every day of these precious nine days was a moving meditation on the missing beauty of things I had previously taken for granted, or barely noticed at all.

Things began to happen. Suddenly while out on a walk, I would spot the way the afternoon cast its purple glow on an olive branch, or I’d become mesmerized by the intricate shapes of the bark of the tree. In considering how I would render it, I was absorbing its essence.

In between our frenetic bouts of creativity, we were taken on guided tours of the museum and its exhibitions. Michal showed us the therapeutic value of art. She told stories of how she had worked with soldiers with PTSD and neuro-divergent children, showing them a language that helped them regain their moorings in a frightening and confusing world.

As for me, all I knew was that I was fully immersed - never quite wishing to surface. When I worked, nothing else existed. Everything was on hold as I filled my page (if I didn’t, Michal made sure I did). In my frenzied passion of shapes and color, I felt little urge to join in the mundane chit chat of the teachers. It was baffling that they could discuss their work whilst grasping a crayon or brush. I wanted to stay in my cocoon of inner stillness and lock myself away from the outside world.

And the end product? Sometimes I was satisfied and sometimes less so. And it really didn’t matter too much. Because I was doing all of this for myself.

Upon finishing the course, and immediately set about purchasing art supplies which I have actually since used. I have become obsessed with drawing cacti and have illustrated all my house plants.

artistic center stage for my plants

Amazingly, I have discovered that I have a lot more patience than I realized. I completed a pointillist picture (postcard size) of the beach in Nahariya and it took me more than four hours.

pontillism is the point.

The greatest thing is that unlike my writing, I have no thoughts of of where this thing might grow to. No sales, no exhibitions, no published books and no followers. Just me and the immense beauty of this world.

The other major plus is that when I’m drawing or painting, I’m not on my phone. I am the producer of my own life. I can draw with music or in silence. I’m in communion with myself, and it’s quite nice, actually. The page in front of me is static, but what goes on it moves in slow time with my eyes and imagination.

Sometimes I wonder where my words have gone. They’re probably trying to find the right colors.

In our algorithmic world, we need to break free. We need to scribble, glue, splash paint, curl, shape, snip and scratch. We don’t need perfection- I just feel like that little creative blob that was inside me for so many years somehow found its way to the light of day. Because that’s where it needs to be right now.

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Keshet bridge - just so you get an idea of how lovely the North is

I put my heart and soul into every piece I write—sometimes I look for humor in life’s moments and other times I wrestle with memory, fear, and the search for meaning in a world that keeps shifting beneath our feet.

If this essay spoke to you, please consider giving it a like, sharing it with someone who might need it, or reposting it. You can also support my work directly through Ko-fi—or simply by subscribing, reposting, commenting, or spreading the word. Every gesture, big or small, helps me keep writing, reflecting, and connecting through words.

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Well, my dears, I can reassure you that war or no war, Hezbollah, Hamas or Democrats—Israelis are not dying of hunger. Not even a little bit.

Just in case you were worried, that is.

I have just come back from three glorious days in the North, and it appears that there are more food trucks in the country than safe rooms—if that’s at all possible. Coffee, burgers, pizza or French pastries—where there is space, large white outdoor umbrellas sprout like mushrooms, filling the green hills of the north with delicious pockmarks. And where there are umbrellas, there are eaters.

Yes—food will always do it. You can hate all you like, or bemoan our intractable political quagmire, but you still need to eat. And us Israelis have high standards.

The owner of the Airbnb gave us the names of the nearby recommended eateries before she sent the location or check-in details. As if this was a dealbreaker. And of course, we had a fully equipped kitchen with spices, olive oil, cinnamon sticks and 5 different types of tea. And a safe room.

Our blue and white mini-oasis, aptly named ‘Yamas’ was a hop, skip and a jump away from ‘Hof Hadekel’ (Palm Beach) which for those who know Nahariya is NOT a beach but a giant cavernous supermarket hidden underneath what looks like an innocent office building. The Arab-owned place is open from 7am–11pm, 7 days a week—basically always. Designed to cater for every hungry segment of the Israeli population, its endless shelves groan with strictly kosher, mildly kosher, Asian, Korean, halal and Russian products. And don’t get me started with the fresh produce.

So even the budget-conscious tourists like us who choose to skip the nearby chef restaurants can spend a good hour ogling at its vast array and purchase a feast fit for a king. Perhaps Nahariya is Hadekel for me.

I would like to take this sunset in my doggy bag

In the unlikely event that one becomes bored with Hadekel, Shuk Faisal Hagadol (the great Faisal Market) is a quick trip to the other side of town. Faisal, with its massive home department and upstairs food court, makes the yawning Hadekel look relatively pint-sized.

Yes, nobody is dying of hunger here.

A stranger to this land would have difficulty piecing together indelible trauma with an intense and indefatigable longing for life.

Yesterday, after passing through hills, valleys, precariously perched Arab towns on deep hillsides, and many flags of favorite Mondial teams, Avi and I visited our favorite winery in the Galilee. We recalled a quiet and tranquil wine-tasting experience three years ago, in another era. We remembered the staff telling us how they played gentle music in the vineyards to help the grapes grow.

Well, this time it seemed the proprietors had decided that those in need of music were the customers, and the louder the better. In fact, they don’t play music to the grapes any more at all.

The other guests appeared oblivious to the booming music. They were soaked up in wine, more wine, and a stupendous open view of the lush green valley that spread before them like a magic carpet as far as the eye could see. The blue waters of the Kinneret glimmered in the distance.

In the meantime, our glasses were filled and refilled with wine as the 19-year-old waiter gave us his smoothly delivered tasting spiel. We drank a lot of different types of wine, but I think by the fourth taster I was losing the plot somewhat. I’d even forgotten to get annoyed about the music. “Remember we really liked this one,” Avi told the smiling waiter who was evidently enjoying the spectacle of watching us getting sloshed.

The tasting ceremony included copious amounts of food. Did I just say food? Stuffed vine leaves, cherry tomato and mozzarella salad, herb salad with nuts and craisins, hummus, samosas, bread with olive oil and something else thrown in. Oh, and a huge plate of cheese and fruit.

view from the winery

By the time we were done we had no idea how we were getting home. The winding scenic route was out of the question.

We didn’t even know how many bottles of wine we’d bought. We might have spent less money if they were cash only, as places used to be in times gone by. But now, you tap and pray.

In between large glasses of iced Americanos, boutique ice cream and homemade Arab hummus I pushed aside mundane thoughts, more or less successfully. I gazed at the foamy waves hammering the rocky breakwaters, watched a falcon circling in anticipation of prey. I also noticed signs of what the north had been through since 2023. Numerous miguniot—man-sized boxes of bomb-proof concrete (portable safe rooms)—sitting on roadsides, in parking lots, in kibbutzim. Some hand-painted—they could have been confused with works of art—some decorated with stickers of fallen soldiers and others dedicated to a deceased loved one. We don’t have them here in Jerusalem, since we have a longer time to trot to a safe room in case of a missile alert. Nahariya is the last Israeli city before the Lebanese border. There is no time.

On a stroll along the recently extended walking promenade by the beach, I watched the locals biking, running, walking dogs or just chattering. None of these things were thinkable even a couple of months back when missile and drone alerts were as common as fried eggs.

And their act of defiance? Food trucks. Since our last visit to Nahariya two years ago, when we didn’t even know what a food truck was, an abandoned settlement halfway between Nahariya and the border has turned into a food truck area, scattered with greenery and mismatched outdoor furniture. Jazz music plays in the background as fairy lights gently sway in the sea breeze. Pizza to the right, burgers to the left and coffee and homemade ice cream straight ahead.

Today we visited Kibbutz Hanita, because Avi wanted to tour Israel’s only whisky distillery (okay, it’s not food but almost…). The bad news was there were no guided tours, but on the bright side, large preparations were being made for a grand opening of an entire area of artist studios, eateries and boutique stores. There was going to be a lot of very loud live music and I really wished them luck. Good God, our young Israelis deserve to live.

We explored an art exhibition featuring beautiful detailed drawings by a local artist, Iris Penscel in black and white—ink and pencil (I think). Two illustrations caught my eye—one of a huge pile of sandbags and the other of a tank. I imagine that for a local living within spitting distance of Hezbollah strongholds, drawing in black on white needs no explanation. The tank at the center of the illustration was framed by ferns and trees, drawn in precise and delicate detail. Beauty and war in an uneasy coexistence.

this is what contemporary Israeli art looks like

The tank illustration had been sold for a nice price.

Today we spent an hour wandering round Akko, which is a 20-minute drive from Nahariya. In past years the port and surrounding Old Town would be heaving with tourists. But today, less so. Many of the restaurants at the entrance to the Turkish market were shuttered (tourism has taken a heavy hit during the past two years), but at the famous Abu Christo fish restaurant, waiters were setting up tables where guests could enjoy fresh fish and a sea view.

Children were out on rides with tiny ponies, young people screamed while on an adrenaline boat ride along the bay. Avi and I just admired the new port promenade and watched, with more than a little awe. It will take more than Iran and Hezbollah to take the fight out of us.

We did our bit for Akko tourism by diving into an enormous breakfast at another restaurant overlooking the seafront. Our spread included hummus, bean paste, falafel, labane, garlic cream cheese, fried potato balls, manakish, baked taboun bread, coffee, juice, jam, tapas, honey, muesli with sour creamy yoghurt and a herb omelet.

not sure if the table can hold all this food

Abu Christo’s famous fresh fish or locally made kadaif would have to wait till our next visit. Yes, an empty belly is a must when visiting this part of the world.

And Avi and I have returned. As our indigestion fades, our thoughts are with the people of the North. They surf, walk, run, play, open food trucks, plan events, make art and above all, eat. With gusto. It’s not a YOLO type of thing; it is a statement of defiance. It is an astounding will to live, to build, to create and nourish.

But I’m home now and I’m not going to eat for another week, I swear.

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A Note from Ella

This essay is a piece of my heart and soul, written without pay but with deep commitment to reflecting on Jewish identity and the call to repair our world. If it resonates with you, please consider buying me a coffee on Ko-fi, sharing it with others, or leaving a like. Click the “Buy Me a Coffee” button below to support my work. Your encouragement, in any form, means the world to me.


With grateful thanks,

Ella Ben Emanuel

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Two thousand years ago, an unknown scribe took his stone pestle, ground up a blackish mixture of soot and arabic gum, dipped his reed pen, and scratched out the eternal words of the book of Isaiah on animal parchment. He had made sure to bathe himself meticulously in the mikveh (ritual bath) first. The heat in Qumran was merciless and the silence deafening. He was etching words learned by heart. Prophecies, warnings, reassurances and blessings. Words not every ear wished to hear.

And two millennia later, as the world limped out of its second war of the century, two unknown bedouin shepherds were searching for a stray goat. They suspected the goat had entered a cave, but they feared the demons of the dark and thus threw a stone inside first. Instead of the sound of the distant cave wall, they heard the sound of the stone on something hard and hollow. They entered the cave to investigate and found ancient pots containing tiny scrolls, some of them blackened by fire and age. They knew that precious things were sometimes found in caves but this time were disappointed—old parchment isn’t treasure, after all. They had no idea that they’d stumbled upon one of the most astonishing archaeological finds of the century. They may have feared the darkness of the cave, but it had provided ideal conditions for the preservation of texts that shaped humanity.

At first, they didn’t know what to do with them and hung them inside their tents. But they finally managed to sell them for today’s equivalent of $400. The scrolls went from dealer to dealer. As the historical significance of the scrolls gradually sank in, a giant archaeological cat and mouse ensued which moved from country to country, dealer to dealer. And the scroll of Isaiah was kept out of reach of the Jewish people.

But for the People of the Book, these scrolls were a treasure worth fighting for. For many years the fledgling state of Israel went to enormous pains to retrieve the ancient writing of their heritage, now known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. It involved negotiations, clandestine operations and huge amounts of money.

But today this scroll, the only one that was recovered intact, is ours. It is permanently housed in a climate-controlled underground warehouse—to be preserved for future generations. And now, it has been taken out for an airing. The timing couldn’t be better. Yes, folks, you don’t have to see its imitation brother at the Shrine of the Book exhibition (although you should definitely pay it a visit). You can now see the real thing—a rarity in our AI-fueled era of fake. And this only happens every 60 years. So go while you have a chance.

After walking past the enormous museum’s mummies, totems and impressionist art, I reached the dimly lit, climate-controlled temporary home to our ancient manuscript last week. I wasn’t allowed to view the exhibit for more than 10 minutes, as human sweat can damage the fragile parchment.

The small scroll bears the deep stains of two millennia, but the black Hebrew text is clear enough to read throughout. Parts of it are stained and burned. Corrections were written over the top or squeezed between its neat lines rather than being crossed out. The parchment pieces are coarsely stitched together with linen. There is no color besides the yellowing parchment and black ink, no dazzling artwork—this isn’t the Mona Lisa, and the images of two thousand years of our survival, metaphorical and otherwise, lie beneath its lines.

But it’s breathtaking. These words and this parchment are us. Our narrative—in black and white script that is both ancient and shockingly modern. It is the story of us then and us now. Our breath may shorten its lifespan, but it breathes life into us. This uncurled artefact reminds ourselves that we, too, are real. An ancient people. Just like the parchment, our survival is nothing short of a miracle. We are the descendants of those who knew that it would be a long and rocky road. And we’re still here.

‘Comfort, oh comfort!’ the words read. Our words. Our alphabet. Our language.

The neat tiny handwriting unfolds prophecies of doom and is yet profoundly optimistic. Then it reads; ‘the Lion Shall Live with the Lamb’. Perhaps one day. Hard to see right now.

It also mentions Jerusalem. 49 times.

The Israel Museum (in Jerusalem) invites you to spend an unforgettable ten minutes with this, a two-thousand-year-old scroll, rather than indulging in a pointless one. Jew or non-Jew, believer or doubter, I think the very act of staring at those ancient letters on parchment will wash over you and something inside might shift. No explanations needed. Just let history penetrate your bones.

‘A Voice from the Desert Exhibition’ is open to the public at the Israel Museum, but preregistration is required. For more details, go here.

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As usual, last Sunday I gave Yaakov a ride to our community Hebrew-speaking improv session. For some strange reason, Israeli men seem to be more drawn to improv than women. Or at least, that is the case in Jerusalem. Of late, it’s been me and eight or more guys of various ages, and Benji is one of them. Yaakov is in his early thirties, but has a baby face. He made aliyah from Australia at the age of 19 and still speaks Hebrew with a soft accent (mine is more pronounced). He loves comedy, sings karaoke whenever he gets the chance, and has a large mongrel dog that needs frequent long walks. I often spot him on our street, trotting along behind his beloved canine.

Except come July, I won’t be driving him to improv for a while. He’ll be on reserve duty in Lebanon for four months. It won’t be his first time. He told me about his memories of his previous reserve duty in Lebanon, three years ago. He lost some good friends there, but doesn’t go into details.

“It’s a beautiful country,” he remarked. “It looks like Switzerland.” He recalled staying with his platoon in an abandoned multi-generational home where there were great books to read in English, including the entire Harry Potter series. The bookshelves were located not too far from a framed photo of Nasrallah. The basement housed missile launchers and a large array of weaponry. His description sounded almost fictitious. I wish it was.

This week I have not seen Julie. She’s the bookkeeper at our school. She is petite, with long, dark corkscrew curls, and loves wearing black. It’s hard to guess her age, but I know her kids aren’t young anymore. Julie is my essential go-to person, as I sadly have to run a budget for the extracurricular activities of the Diplomacy elective. Except Julie is now in the hospital in Haifa with her son, who was injured in a drone attack somewhere in Lebanon, probably not far from where Yaakov is headed in a month’s time. By all reports, the prognosis is good. He will pull through, give or take.

And I’m worried about who will sign the cheques for the farewell trip I planned on Sunday. Please.

Nati, a high school literature teacher and a colleague I’m very fond of, just returned from Lebanon after his third round of reserve duty in the past three years. I think he’s done a total of about 500 days so far. I may have lost count. He has a two-year-old. He is doing a master’s degree in Yiddish and teaches Hebrew literature at my school. Nati is chubby, but in a lovable way, and has a runaway beard he often jokes about. Nati is a nerd like me. I’m always relieved to find him in the staffroom, but today in particular. I desperately need someone I can talk to about Tolstoy, Byzantine history and life in general.

“How was it?” I asked.

“It was the shortest round of reserve duty I’ve done so far, but it felt like the longest,” he sighed, digging a spoon into his oatmeal and fruit.

“Everyone is just so tired,” he said with a bitter chuckle.

Last week I received a message from the school management. Ilan got injured. Ilan? Our ex-principal? It couldn’t be. I’m guessing it was a drone, but I don’t know the details. Our secretary pooled money for a get-well-soon bouquet, chocolates, or whatever. Ilan is a commander, or maybe something higher. He gave a talk to our students about military service options last year. Ilan has a passionate love for his country. It often felt like he was born a principal. Ilan taught me a lot about leadership. One Purim, he impersonated one of our more lively students, Nevo, by riding a bike (his bike) around the school yard, as the students watched with delight from the amphitheater. And Nevo, a great actor, in turn, impersonated Ilan. He wore an IDF uniform and saluted with great pomp and ceremony. His impression was flawless. We roared with laughter. Nevo is now in an elite unit doing dangerous things in places he can’t talk about, and Ilan is recovering from his injuries at home. And so it is.

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I remember that during his years at our school, Ilan was out of his office on reserve duty a fair amount. And that was before October 7th.

As the Yiddish expression goes, you can’t dance at two weddings. But Ilan would politely disagree. On hearing the news, I felt myself drowning in a pool of helplessness, a feeling that is now almost as familiar as my own two hands.

And I don’t want to hear about our successes right now. I don’t want to hear which part of Lebanon we conquered. I don’t want to hear about Beaufort or Hormuz, or this officer, commander, munitions depot, or terror tunnel being eliminated. It’s all just noise.

All I want to hear is that they’re coming home. All of them. From Gaza and Lebanon, from Tul Karem and Hebron, from checkpoints and hidden bases, from naval ships, submarines, and underground bases. Don’t get me wrong. I’m proud of our army, but I want them to come home. It’s time. We are sick and tired of this.

And so I think of Yaakov, Julie, Nati, and Ilan. I think of my graduates who, two years ago, were sneaking glances at their phones or whispering to each other in their overly loud, barely broken voices. Most of them are there now, rifles propped beside them, still joking with their comrades, sleeping under open skies. I know of two of my graduates who got injured this year, and more who were injured after October 7th. I honestly don’t know what goes through the heads of my 12th graders who are busy with gym and kosher kravi, not knowing what the future holds. They barely remember anything close to normal in this country.

My friends’ kids are there. My daughter’s classmates at university are there. And a charred part of our hearts is there: the friends, mothers, wives, children, sisters, colleagues, and fellow citizens.

Lebanon, Gaza, and every war front are just a sea of faces. Of young, handsome, vibrant men who are willing to pay the ultimate price for a war that never seems to end. It’s just one war, really, with a few breaks here and there. Since when? I can’t remember. I don’t know if we would actually recognize real peace with our enemies if it slapped us in the face.

In the meantime, I’ve got a lot of events pencilled in for June. But everyone knows that it could all go to dust. One word from Trump or Bibi and we’ll be back to Home Front Command directives and safe rooms before you can say “Red Arrow missile systems.” The north is under attack. The word ceasefire has as much weight as ash in the wind. But we are the ones carrying the true weight of it all. The hundred-ton weight of wars, wars, and more wars.

The exhaustion goes beyond our bones. It’s profound. It forms a sticky coating on everything we do, the way we frame our lives, our here and now, and our future.

My car radio blasts endless ads for a luxury retirement complex by the sea in Rishon LeTzion. The kicker? Each apartment has built-in safe rooms. “So you don’t have to get up in the night when there’s a siren,” the cheerful voice announces brightly.

I wasn’t thrilled about getting old beforehand. Now I’m apparently expected to factor missile convenience into my retirement planning.

Yes, the post–October 7th patriotic pride worked for a while. But, like all painkillers, it wore off eventually. We’re all so tired. We’re sick of this war. We don’t need the world to love or understand us. We just want to get on with our lives here. We don’t want insurance packages. We don’t want lie at night wondering which front our kids or our grandkids will end up on. We want a future. And it’s just beyond our reach.

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I put my heart and soul into every piece I write—sometimes I look for humor in life’s moments and other times I wrestle with memory, fear, and the search for meaning in a world that keeps shifting beneath our feet.

If this essay spoke to you, please consider giving it a like, sharing it with someone who might need it, or reposting it. You can also support my work directly through Ko-fi—or simply by subscribing, reposting, commenting, or spreading the word. Every gesture, big or small, helps me keep writing, reflecting, and connecting through words.

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My husband and I, after lengthy debate, decided to escape the chaos that is Israel between wars and spend a long weekend in Sinai. We are currently waiting for our coffee—which we hope won’t take as long as the hummus did (forty-five minutes, approximately)—in a glorified ‘camp’ on the coast. The place is practically empty, the entire area silent save the odd cock crow, the sweep of a swallow, or the distant wail of a minaret. We have the place, which includes a beach and numerous lounging areas, entirely to ourselves, it seems.

We have come fully equipped with books, chargers, a laptop (for creative purposes only), Avi’s calligraphy equipment, a yoga mat, my watercolors, and even some downloaded audiobooks. I didn’t forget my waterproof shoes and snorkeling mask, but Avi is still recovering from surgery, so sadly he will have to give the calm, blue Red Sea a miss. This time, that is.

And we are having our quiet, middle-aged celebration of something that is closer to a miracle than many would believe. The two of us walked into our previous marriages in the firm belief that by now we’d be growing old with our respective spouses, grandchildren on the knee, etc., etc. We had given our all during those years but, at some point, it had dawned upon us that no matter how vigorously we bailed out the water, that ship was sinking, never to resurface.

And, licking our respective wounds, we did what a lot of people did back in the day. We joined Facebook. This was when Facebook was a community, not a marketplace. We found ourselves in an Israeli divorcees’ support group and, somehow, we started chatting. For a year, on and off, we messaged each other with mundane queries about jewelry making and divorce lawyers.

Then, one Friday afternoon, we started chatting again. But this time, our conversation went a bit deeper than usual. Out of the blue, Avi asked if I wanted to meet up. I did, but he had to solemnly swear it would be nothing serious. We were just having a breather from it all.

We met for the first time just after Shavuot—the harvest festival and (quite aptly) the celebration of the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. We ended up at the Dead Sea, of all places, at the Mineral Beach spa, which subsequently (after renovations, it should be noted) got sucked up by a giant sinkhole. Thank God that isn’t what happened to our relationship. Pretty soon, it was quite clear that we weren’t just forming a mini-support group. Within a matter of weeks, we were spending most of my child-free days together. Shared custody had its pluses.

Avi wasn’t yet fully divorced. Four out of his six kids were adults, two married. For various reasons, he had more time to himself than he would have liked. He and I already shared a profound distaste for a system that had scarred and jaded us, alienated us from our children, and left us attempting to repair deep tears in complex family relationships. We were both trying to figure out who we were in our new lives. We bore numerous scars and a longing for family life that we had been given no choice but to abandon. It was a miracle that at this stage, we were still emotionally intact. It was a miracle that we stuck together.

At some point, we made a pact to ‘stop spiraling.’ That was the word we used to describe how we offloaded our divorce woes onto one another. I was still fighting over custody and child support issues in court; he was trying to free himself from a dead marriage. Yet as time went on, our discussion points slowly turned from alimony and custody to whether we liked the movie we just watched, planning a quick getaway, and tentative talk about a future. Our future.

We sealed the deal one sunny weekend a year later. Avi was finally fully divorced. Nobody attended our wedding at the Larnaca town hall. We celebrated at McDonald’s with a McFlurry shake and a dive in the sea. We didn’t need anyone there; our kids had been through quite enough. We just needed the documentation to stop my ex using the Rabbinical law courts against me. And it worked.

During the past fifteen years, we’ve moved four times, attended four of our children’s weddings, and celebrated the birth of eight grandchildren (mostly his). We’ve established a slow, gentle rhythm which swings from the utterly mundane (are we eating cheese omelets again?) to the highly adventurous (getting stranded in India tops it all right now). The comfortable silence of coupledom is sometimes just as important as sharing the most intimate parts of ourselves.

I will not be giving podcasts on ‘the secret of a fulfilling marriage’ any time soon. Not because I don’t think I have a word or two to say on the subject, but because I think it’s simply better to regard myself as exceptionally lucky. The man can put up with me—with my impatience, my aggressive outbursts, my mysterious tears, my obsession with a neat appearance and regular haircuts, my unpredictable digestion, and my constant search for more. I’m not sure if anyone else could.

He probably does so because he thinks nobody else would have the patience for him. He talks about God endlessly but is staunchly secular in his practices. He overextends for his family and has an obscure sense of humor. His communication style might be called ‘obtuse.’ I have an invisible translation guide that others do not possess, so I frequently find myself acting as his interpreter. His hearing isn’t great, even with the equipment. But I personally believe he tolerates me more than I do him. After all, he has the patience of a saint and he is gentle, loving, and respectful to everyone (including those I’d have throttled given half the chance).

So, are we even? Perhaps that’s really the only secret of a good marriage. To be balanced—spiced enough not to be bland, but without requiring a fire extinguisher. To enjoy things together, but never lose a strong sense of self.

We suffered from our divorces in immense ways. Our kids still hold secret resentments for all the mistakes we both made. Avi’s kids accept me more than mine do him. And so it is.

This morning we went for a walk along the sandy shoreline. I got irritated with him as he, as per usual, led me on a ‘scenic route’ past Bedouins sleeping on the shore next to their jeeps. A stray dog accompanied us the entire way. I’m not the only one who loves this man, but he doesn’t want a dog. “You would have had a kid with me, but you don’t want to have a dog?” I asked.

And so we had another little quibble about that. We walked into the tired town of Nuweiba, drank cold coffee, and agreed that it wasn’t too bad. On the whole, we agree on more things than we disagree on. I’ll live without a dog.

The shadows grow longer as the sun gently sets behind the mountains. Perhaps our sun is gently setting too, as we enter a graceful, not-so-middling age (this year he turned 63 and I’ll be 56 in September), and as aches and pains proliferate and gray hairs maddeningly multiply. But perhaps the slow glow of wisdom has given us an appreciation of each other that we would have been too busy for twenty years ago.

Soon we’ll flag down the indifferent worker (who still hasn’t yet cleared away our plates from lunch) and order a dish we’ll quickly agree on. And then we’ll wait—Avi more patiently than I. But I’m getting there, too. After all, there is nowhere else I’d rather be than sitting opposite the man who, for reasons of his own, decided that of all people, he’d like to be with me.

Are you celebrating a milestone this month? I’d love to hear from you! If this piece resonated with you in any way, leave a comment below and tell me about your own 'Chapter Two'—whether that’s a second marriage, a fresh career, or a quiet miracle of your own. What does your second chapter look like?

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I put my heart and soul into every piece I write—sometimes I look for humor in life’s moments and other times I wrestle with memory, fear, and the search for meaning in a world that keeps shifting beneath our feet.

If this essay spoke to you, please consider giving it a like, sharing it with someone who might need it, or reposting it. You can also support my work directly through Ko-fi—or simply by subscribing, reposting, commenting, or spreading the word. Every gesture, big or small, helps me keep writing, reflecting, and connecting through words.

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Musings from the surgical day admissions.

Today, dear readers, I am writing from an unlikely—and some might call unfortunate—place. I sit among a zigzag of purposeful, blue-clad workers, their heads covered with mesh, kippot, headscarves, or hijabs. A drugged patient of indeterminate age is wheeled past, clutching an extremity or two. I am surrounded by antiseptic, aspirin and bandages, infusions and sterile garbage cans, carefully labelled machines, curtains, sockets, and the strong, sterile scent of endless waiting.

And it’s all really about a tiny piece of glass. A couple of millimeters, more or less, wedged deep in Avi’s elbow. How it got there is another chapter of another story. The moment when our jeep tipped and we found ourselves upside down on an abandoned hillside is etched in my memory, but my fingers refuse to craft our jeeping adventures into essay form. Embarrassment, perhaps? I mean, accidents do happen—even ones that involve emergency rooms and extremely expensive repairs. I reserve the right to remain silent on the issue.

The staff here are remarkably—and shockingly—cheerful. Since I ruled out any possibility of a career that involved blood, pus, and broken bones (even worse, birth canals) a long time ago, I never cease to be amazed at those who choose to spend their days healing human flesh. I find it hard enough to deal with humans when they are healthy—but when they are in pain? It boggles the mind. And yet here they are, barking orders in Arabic, joking that Avi has put his foot cloth on his head and his head cover on his feet (“but you’re looking very nice,” she says).

They’ve asked him to remove his hearing aids, so I’ll be saying everything twice from now on (if not more). I think I’m better off writing for the time being.

Amazing—a tiny piece of glass, and an entire performance involving multiple members of staff with multiple responsibilities: surgeon, nurse, assistant, cleaner, administrator, head of department, and a lot of people whose jobs I’m unfamiliar with.

They’re chatting about a wedding coming up. For all their smiling, the staff could be at a wedding right now (just replace the scrubs with glittery dresses). Working in stressful situations produces a level of intimacy that might be the envy of certain families.

It might not even be the blood I could never work with, or the pain and screaming. I think it’s the fluorescent lights. They do something to me. I feel myself slowly merging into the system, losing my defenses, my individuality, my sense of night and day. It’s a bit like being online for too long.

Our country is in a waiting room. We wonder if the suffering is behind us, or if the worst is still to come. Our wounds are open and raw. Sterile conditions are required. Handle with care. Do we make plans, or err on the side of caution? We worry about secondary infections and superbugs, God forbid. And yet we are helpless—a tiny country in a giant tsunami of rage, caught in whirlwinds beyond our control. Just like all the patients here, we are utterly helpless, hoping and praying those in charge know what they’re doing. Because we can’t fight this one on our own.

I have my doubts about those in charge, however. The hospital staff have a brief, at least: do no harm. I wish I could say the same for the others.

A wailing Arab child has been wheeled in. He’s post-op, and they want to get him out to free the bed. It’s not going to be a quiet wait. There’s a Jewish kid on the other side of our cubicle kicking at the paper-thin walls. It’s more than a little distracting. And yet there is no shortage of jokes from the hospital staff. They’ve come to the conclusion that all the boy needs is a pudding and everything will be fine. My limited Arabic tells me he is refusing everything offered to him.

If Iran or Hezbollah or the Houthis keep their missiles to themselves, my students will graduate. In 2019 they had COVID. In 2023, October 7. Last year, a ten-day war. And this year—six weeks. Teaching only works with continuity. These kids didn’t get an education, but they will get a piece of paper claiming otherwise.

In the meantime, I’m not sure surgical intervention will be of much help in our country. There’s just damage limitation. Or survival.

The nurse is explaining in Hebrew how to continue follow-up treatment, and another nurse is translating into Arabic. Yes—the craziness of not sharing a common language. But somehow, we manage to make ourselves understood.

We cannot shrug off a piece of glass. When a foreign object embeds itself where it doesn’t belong, it must be removed before it does real damage. In the meantime, we steady ourselves with jokes and optimism—hoping it isn’t already too late.

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I put my heart and soul into every piece I write—sometimes I look for humor in life’s moments and other times I wrestle with memory, fear, and the search for meaning in a world that keeps shifting beneath our feet.

If this essay spoke to you, please consider giving it a like, sharing it with someone who might need it, or reposting it. You can also support my work directly through Ko-fi—or simply by subscribing, reposting, commenting, or spreading the word. Every gesture, big or small, helps me keep writing, reflecting, and connecting through words.

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Not a Biker

I am not a biker. I own a decent bike that can deal with different types of terrain. I even have a couple of pairs of padded Lycra shorts and colorful biking shirts with triple back pockets; it would be easy for you to be fooled. But my helmet and mirrored glasses are a scam. The only time I might define myself as such is on Saturday mornings, when the quiet Jerusalem roads beckon. It is then that Avi and I take our Saturday Morning Ride. Our shirts match, but our pace doesn’t—he’s much better than me. He is a biker, well and truly. Proof of the fact: he owns another road bike that has only one gear. I think this piece of equipment was invented with only one thing in mind: utter torture. And he thinks it’s fun.

Packed and Ready to Go

We pack coffee and cheesecake in a cute little thermal bag that attaches to my handlebar. We have a number of options, but there is one giant loop that we do most of the time. Get ready for a hilly ride.

The city is forever growing, and the bike lanes are too. The former mayor of our city, the marathon-running, beloved Nir Barkat, pushed for biking paths and outdoor gyms throughout the city. For the most part, the paths work—we occasionally have to compete with joggers, drunken toddlers, and dreaded electric bikes, but this is nothing compared to the mayhem on the Tel Aviv bike lanes.

Sadly, however, we have to start our route on a busy road. Once the tramway is finished, we’ll be able to ride the tracks—but that won’t be for another five years.

Welcome to our Neighborhood

We are riding through our neighborhood, which is predominantly religious. Morning prayers are starting, and men rush toward us wearing prayer shawls. We cut through Chanoch Albeck and pass the huge stone walls of the Saint Claire Catholic monastery. I have no idea what the place, home to 20 or so cloistered nuns, looks like. I occasionally spot them exiting the giant iron gate in a service van—on their way to buy supplies, I guess.

An unlikely neighbor to the monastery is the Yes Planet cinema complex. Its opening a few years back induced a lot of hype. The secular population rejoiced, but the Chareidim protested; a movie theater open on Shabbat was taken as a direct affront to the holy nature of the city. In the meantime, the place, like many non-kosher and/or non-Shabbat-observant establishments in the area, has suffered a lot. Restaurants have opened and closed. As for me, if there were anything worth seeing on a Saturday, I guess I’d go there. But Hollywood is disappointing right now.

The First Station

And then we pass the entrance to the First Station on the right. The First Station, now once again under massive reconstruction, is also symbolic of the city’s identity crisis. It was once Jerusalem’s first railway station, with tracks intact. It was originally built during the Ottoman period, connecting Jerusalem to Jaffa. Apparently, it took four hours. But nowadays, an upturned truck on Highway 1 is all it takes to subject drivers to hours of misery. Better off spending four hours on a slow train.

It closed in 1998 and was repurposed as a secular social entertainment center. They did try. The dream was that religious people would be welcome, too. Restaurants and bars, some kosher and some not, opened up. On Fridays, it held an arts and crafts fair. During the week, there are some cute events, like Israeli folk dancing and yoga. But there have been too many closures. COVID-19, October 7th, and the wars with Iran have put immense strain on a place that was fragile to begin with. What was once a treat to visit feels like a mess.

The Ramparts

We are now heading downhill, and some drivers are honking impatiently behind us. The walls of the Old City come into view, but I’m trying to get some speed so the next hill isn’t such bloody hard work.

The ancient walls loom ahead of us as we hobble uphill. Cars are overtaking us freely, but there isn’t anywhere else to ride. Then we veer right and cycle on the stony path to Jaffa Gate. A strange combination of religious worshippers on their way to the Kotel, Arab Old City locals, and day tourists pass by, leaving us a respectful amount of space to cycle past.

Before October 7th, the Jaffa Gate area swarmed with Christian pilgrimage groups. An Arab with an ancient wooden pushcart would be selling yeasty ka’ak al-quds (sesame-covered giant pretzels), freshly baked pittot, and yellow ka’ak asfar (donut-shaped cakes). The aroma would almost knock me off my bike. I haven’t seen the guy recently. I hope he’ll come back.

Chareidim of various ages, shapes, and sizes head towards us, heading toward the Wailing Wall. Portly women covered from head to toe, wigs blowing in the wind; small babies; bearded Chassidim with shtreimels and long coats. We also see young men in knitted kippot and tourists with their hiking gear and expensive cameras. A thickly bearded Greek Orthodox priest in full black garb comes into view, his thick grey hair tied in a neat ponytail, a giant gold cross dangling.

And we are none of the above.

Riding on the Seam

From one side of Highway 1, otherwise known as the Seam Line, it’s easy to forget that we are indeed cycling past predominantly Arab East Jerusalem. Never have two populations had less to do with each other. We are cycling on the side that was under Jordanian control between 1949 and 1967. The four-lane highway was once a no-man’s land of barbed wire and snipers. Now it is the border between two entirely separate neighborhoods. The division line is invisible but impossible to miss.

Even though the Damascus Gate tram stop is closed on Shabbat (Jewish state, Jewish rules), the bus station and adjacent giant car park are full of the hustle and bustle of a regular day for East Jerusalemites. People wander past with bags of fresh produce. The neon lights of stores flash; birds in cages hanging outside hummus joints chirp loudly.

The Damascus Gate area is also heavily populated with policemen and women in armor-plated jeeps, riding their jet-black anti-riot horses, or just drinking Turkish coffee and noshing on pittot. Geopolitical realities are impossible to ignore, even while you are huffing and puffing.

Four lanes across, the Chareidim are heading to and from their little shteiblech (small prayer houses) in their Shabbat finery. Both neighborhoods are overwhelmingly poor and overcrowded; both populations have high birthrates and do not speak the language of mainstream secular Israeli society. Both have their own separate education systems. Neither serves in the army. Neither thinks the other should be living in the city. They have so much in common, they should start a support group.

Down, down into the Arazim Valley

And then we head downhill. What bliss. No more pushing pedals for a while—just steering carefully along the twists and turns of the path. We are now on the northern ring section of the Jerusalem bike path and will remain on paths until we start looping back into town again.

We pass the Ramot Arazim Valley, a miniature forest with wildlife and deer. The odd family from the predominantly Chareidi areas of Ramot, Sanhedria, and Maalot Dafna might be out for a walk, but the path is otherwise clear for us to bomb down. In the winter, the chill of the winds slices through us on our descent. The layer that was removed on the uphill is quickly donned again. In the summer, it’s a blissful respite. Yes, I’ve swallowed a few flies here and there, but have lived to tell the tale.

We cut past the entrance to Ramot, Jerusalem’s largest neighborhood. The highway is empty—most of the secular residents of the neighborhood have moved out by now.

It’s at this point that I’ve waved farewell to most of the signs of big city life. I’m immersed in fig trees, olive trees, picnic areas, and shaded parks. It’s May, but come September, Avi and I will be stopping off here for a fig break—the purple figs are the most delicious. We sometimes stuff extra ones into one of our three back pockets—or perhaps two.

As we pass vineyards and forested hillsides, it’s hard to imagine that we are technically still within the confines of the city. We are now in the land of sweat-wicking sports gear, overpriced sneakers, and noise-canceling earbuds. Jews and Arabs alike come here to break into a Saturday morning sweat or take their eager dogs out for a brisk walk. We dodge toddlers on miniature bikes. Our shouted warnings to the joggers we pass are often useless. No noise-canceling earbuds can protect you from the shock of an unexpected cyclist whizzing past. And we are on an official bike path, after all.

The dogs are the most unpredictable, but mostly they just ignore us. The toddlers are dragged out of the way by their anxious mothers.

The Picnic Crowd

We enter a gravelly parking lot. Abundant picnic areas are in full occupancy—runners, walkers, families, you name it. They’ve driven here from everywhere and are opening plastic containers filled with freshly cut vegetables, cans of olives, cookies, and chocolate milk. Some expertly prepare outdoor coffee (otherwise known here as “pakal”) in a finjan on a small camping gas stove.

My stomach is starting to rumble, too. We, however, are pretty religious about when we eat breakfast. We still have some more climbing to do.

The Winter Lake

Then we pass what we call the Winter Lake. In truth, it’s not much bigger than a giant pond. Signs warn people not to swim in it—but how deep can it be? It fills up with the winter rains. Now it’s May, and the riverbed has dried up once again until the next rainy season.

Ein Kerem Turnoff

Up ahead, the gold crowns of the Russian Orthodox Gornensky Convent of Ein Kerem glitter in the distance. We’ve climbed into the lovely neighborhood of Ein Kerem on countless occasions, but today we are going to cut left and pass the entrance to the old pastoral moshav of Beit Zayit.

Dreaming of Cheesecake: The Jerusalem Forest

This is where the climb gets a bit grueling. I’m in better shape than I used to be, but trust me—this is the part of our route when I’m sorely tempted to get off my bike and wheel it. Now I just drop into the “granny gear” and make my way up in zigzags.

Today the weather is mild, but once it gets hot I’ll probably give this route a miss. Ten years ago, my personal thermostat handed in its final notice without warning. Since then, no matter how fit I am, I cannot exert myself when it’s over 28 degrees, or I will most likely turn a stunning shade of beetroot red and keel over. And it’s not all in my head. Ask Avi, who has had to deal with me lying prone, knees raised, semi-conscious more than once. That’s why I’m not a biker. That’s why I like cool sports, like swimming, for example.

We are actually on the road now, but nobody drives through the Jerusalem Forest on a Saturday, and if they do, we can hear them from a mile off. By now, the only thing keeping me going is the thought of the coffee and cheesecake nestled in our thermal pannier.

Breakfast at Last

Twenty minutes later—hurrah—a well-deserved break. In terms of seating, we are spoilt for choice. The forest is full of empty picnic areas dedicated to so-and-so and so-and-so. We pick the table with the nicest view. All we can hear are muted city noises and the overwhelming twitter of birdlife.

Yes, this is the first official stop we actually make after two hours of riding. We are a little crazy.

Once we are refreshed and renewed with our takeaway espresso and the best cheesecake the city has to offer (made by me), we are ready—sort of—to resume the steady climb upwards.

Har Nof and Har Menuchot

The Jerusalem Forest borders on the Har Nof neighborhood. Look up: endless white stone apartment blocks. Look down: the Jerusalem hills and valleys. And look to the left: the Har Menuchot cemetery. The hillside is white with plain gravestones that sprawl across it. From this distance, they look identical. Jewish graves are not fancy things. Avi’s parents are buried there, and so is my son, Yitzchak Meir. (Another story for another time.)

Sometimes I look over at it pensively, musing on life as a fleeting dream. Today, no such thoughts cross my mind. With wars and terror, I want to escape death for a minute, if I can.

Back Toward Civilization

The hillside below us is steep. Once we reported a fire in an abandoned area below the cemetery, and once we even saw a car that had plunged to the depths—we never got the full story. Not so long ago, along the same path, we spotted a rather brazen porcupine. He wasn’t in the least bit bothered by us.

The trees are more sparse now, and the area is more of a no-man’s land of junk, broken stones, and vague plans. We pass a caravan, and then we are almost back into civilization—whatever you wish to call it. We pass the gas station—closed on the Sabbath—and move into the traffic junction of Givat Shaul. This is Jerusalem’s first industrial zone, forever under construction, where finding a reasonably priced parking spot is mission impossible.

Heading into Town

We pass what once was Angel’s Bakery, an old and historic Jerusalem landmark. Many moons ago, I lived in Har Nof, and I will never forget the tantalizing smell that would descend on the neighborhood as the giant ovens fired up on Saturday night. Buying a freshly baked roll from the bakery was a treat beyond description. How times have changed.

A large sign advertises the place for rent. Giant, ugly industrial bakery, anyone? Given the number of boutique places mushrooming in the city, I’d say: not a chance.

Final Stretch

We are now following yet more tram tracks under construction past the Givat Mordechai religious neighborhood, past more men, women, and families heading home from shul, past the famous Mercaz HaRav Zionist Yeshiva. We keep an eye out for the odd car and swing left onto the wide and open Shazar Boulevard, where we stick to the tram tracks. We’ll need to push our pedals a bit to ascend the Meitarim Bridge. Meitarim means “strings,” and the bridge, a relatively new and modern Jerusalem landmark, does indeed look like a giant white harp stretching over the central station area.

The End

Relief once again—we are going downhill. Past the central bus station and its giant clock face. We are heading toward the Shuk Machaneh Yehuda, now silent and shuttered.

We are almost home. We are entering Talpiot, cranes everywhere. The city is building upward, transforming before our eyes.

As I puff and push, I’m reminded of past, present, and future. There are a lot of unknowns in this city. It’s preparing itself for a population boom, but real estate prices are the highest in the country. It still fails to provide the same opportunities as the Center.

But one thing is certain: I’m done. I couldn’t bike another kilometer. Even the gentle uphill to our apartment is a chore.

As we park our bikes on minus five of our underground parking lot, Avi thanks me for biking with him. He is entirely sincere. He understands that this is not a given.

But I’ve been doing it for so long—my Saturday mornings wouldn’t be the same without 40 kilometers of black hats (and other types of headgear) and, of course, the hills.

Were it any other day of the week, I wouldn’t saddle up—even if you paid me.

As I said, I’m not a biker.

How do you unwind on the weekends? Would love to hear about your hills (metaphoric or otherwise)

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If you want to read more about how chicken soup fuels my Jewish identity, then go here.
If you curious about how the perfect recipe for chocolate cake (and the woman who bestowed it to me) changed my life, then go here.

I put my heart and soul into every piece I write—sometimes I look for humor in life’s moments and other times I wrestle with memory, fear, and the search for meaning in a world that keeps shifting beneath our feet.

If this essay spoke to you, please consider giving it a like, sharing it with someone who might need it, or reposting it. You can also support my work directly through Ko-fi—or simply by subscribing, reposting, commenting, or spreading the word. Every gesture, big or small, helps me keep writing, reflecting, and connecting through words.

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I’ve been living with a linguistic frustration for years: I share my daily life with two million Arabic speakers, and I can barely speak a word to them. The people who fix my car are Arab. The people who take care of my health are Arab. 40% of Jerusalemites are Arabic-speaking. The tragedy is that, like me, most Israelis don’t speak Palestinian Arabic. A large chunk of Arabs living here don’t speak Hebrew either, even educated ones. In many cases, both peoples resort to English to bridge the gap, which I find utterly absurd. No wonder we have problems getting on.

Yes, the school I teach in, like many others, boasts an Arabic elective. But guess what? During their three years of high school, the kids don’t learn to communicate in Palestinian Arabic at all. The best they can do is translate parts of the Koran or answer questions on an article in Al Jazeera. Ironically, it’s the army that offers the most effective and fastest route to fluency, training entire units to a high command of Palestinian Arabic. But it’s far too late for me.

Yes, most Israelis know a handful of basic words in Arabic. A lot of them can haggle pretty well in the language. But up until three months ago, I knew nothing save shukran. And I was embarrassed.

So, as part of my sabbatical year studies, I took a course in basic spoken Palestinian Arabic. It was a win-win—finally, I could have a basic lexicon in my pocket, and I get PD (professional development) credits at the same time. PD credits bump up a teacher’s salary, but sadly not enough to keep up with hikes in gas prices.

The course was solid. I was bombarded with questions and exercises. Each unit was dense with lexical gems and useful chunks. The video clips, however, were embarrassingly outdated. An entire clip featured a man trying to decide which music CDs he wanted. What the hell is a CD? The other was an argument between a husband and wife over what he had and hadn’t bought in the shuk. The prices sent me into a fit of nostalgia.

wanna buy a CD?

But truly, going back to grade one in anything, particularly at the age of 55, is truly humbling. The garbled dialogues that left me stumped gave me a special kinship with the weaker English learners I’d taught in the past. Back then, I was pretty convinced that learning English was merely a question of willpower. I now realize that when your brain is assaulted by too many alien words, no level of determination will get you over your complete blackout.

After a week or two of my enthusiastic sortie into the world of Palestinian Arabic, I was finally able to greet the Christian Arab cleaner in our building properly. Nice guy. The problem was that before I’d chewed over conjugating “how are you” correctly, he had reverted to Hebrew—which was hands down better than my Arabic.

I nonetheless have to give myself full points for being a very diligent student. The war, which left me housebound for a month, only strengthened my resolve to tackle a language I hear every day. As I sat in front of my laptop, listening to the same dialogue for the eighth time, I realized I couldn’t do this alone.

Palestinian-speaking AI to the rescue. My language assistant churned out Quizlet flashcards as quickly as you could say mabruk. My Netflix watchlist at the gym was soon replaced with Quizlet churn-and-learn—each workout strengthening my conviction that I have no ability to retain anything. Recycle, recycle, recycle—that’s how it’s supposed to work—but it appears that my recycle bin was badly malfunctioning.

In the end, something clicked. I realized how similar Arabic is to Hebrew. We are, after all, cousins. I may not have become fluent, but at least I became a better guesser. I’m also two steps ahead of most Arabic learners, with one Semitic language (albeit with appalling pronunciation) under my belt.

And therein lies the problem, folks. First of all, I’m working with a decidedly middling brain—not a well-oiled Ferrari like the ones my students seem to possess. Number two, I am of British origin. My accent in Hebrew is bad enough, but getting my mouth around the flat “a”s of Arabic is more than my palate can handle. The Gods of the online course point-blank refused to accept my recorded sentences, even though I’d double-checked their accuracy with GPT. Does this mean that nobody will ever understand me? I’m going to need a real Arabic-speaking human to help me get over this. Number three, I’m lazy. I’ll learn the words like siti (savta—grandma in Hebrew), akhel (ochel—food), and bint (bat—daughter), because they’re so similar to Hebrew—but when it comes to constructing sentences, I balk like an untrained filly.

I tried learning the letters, but unlike Hebrew, Arabic is written in a connected script. Knowing the letters on their own doesn’t mean I can recognize them when they’re joined together in a word. So, in the meantime, I remain illiterate.

It’s one step forward and two steps back, but I refuse to back down. The PD course has now closed—it was only three months. Who can chatter away in Arabic after three months? I’m looking into classes in the area, but the hours don’t work. And of course, this time I’ll have to pay out of my own pocket, which is a real deterrent.

Learning English online is a breeze. Why, the entire internet is in English! But Palestinian Arabic? Firstly, it’s not the same as Egyptian, Lebanese, Iraqi, Syrian, Moroccan, Tunisian, or any other Arabic. When I tried my Arabic on the Egyptian driver in Sinai, he laughed. Even in Israel, not all Arabs understand each other. Do not expect a Palestinian from Hebron to be able to communicate with a Bedouin from Beer Sheva, even if they are geographically close.

Finding good sources with the right Arabic dialect isn’t easy. There is an Arabic national radio station. I tried it. Couldn’t understand a word except “new” when the ads came along.

I had a genius idea: learn Palestinian Arabic through Fauda. The problem is that it’s full of words I don’t need—kidnap, kill, smuggle, trap, bomb, weapons. Not exactly the impression I’m going for.

My stepson’s wife (maybe there is a word for this familial connection in Arabic, but it doesn’t exist in English) did a course in Arabic, so whenever we meet, we compare notes. She recommended watching a series called Sorry for the Question, which is very popular in Israel and actually has a few episodes where Arab Israelis are interviewed. But once again, the subject matter doesn’t provide me with a rich vocabulary for conversations at the gas station. One episode was focused on people who had lost loved ones due to sectarian and family violence. I got so depressed with the tearful testimonies that I quickly turned to another episode. This one was parents of kids with special needs. Not really much of an improvement. I really have enough to get depressed about, thank you very much.

I just want to be able to order extra laffa in the restaurant my parents frequent in Ein Rafa, and talk to random strangers about where I live, my family, job, and hobbies. Is that too much to ask?

And then I did a YouTube search in Hebrew and struck gold, finally! An entire playlist with stories in Palestinian Arabic. The voice sounded natural—not even a whiff of AI. This is what I need. The first story was about Leila Al Hamra. I heard the word hamra many times, and it finally clicked that I did indeed know the word. It meant “red.” I was listening to Little Red Riding Hood in Palestinian Arabic! I was so excited I almost fell off my chair. The best thing of all was that I actually understood more than 50% of the text—once I slowed it down to 65% speed. I realized that words like basket, wolf, stomach, and hunter were all very similar to Hebrew.
Little Red Riding Hood in Palestinian Arabic

NotebookLM transcribed the story into phonetics and Gemini walked me through a lesson, encouraging me on my brilliance every step of the way. And now I know how to say “once upon a time” and “from now on.”

I’m not sure how much all of this will help me order a coffee at the gas station, unless I want to warn them about a big bad wolf in the area. But at least I’m gaining confidence. I’m not sure if I will ever be able to open my mouth and have the Arabs I interact with truly understand me, even if I ever deign to produce a full sentence.

But surely, if I can speak a few words of their language, greet them properly, and say, “I’m fine, praise Allah,” they’ll smile in delighted surprise—and for a moment, I’ll feel that the world, even if it isn’t a better place, is at least one where we occasionally understand each other.

Have you ever tried to learn a language and failed miserably? Or taken on something you’re just appallingly bad at? I’d love to hear your experiences.

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I put my heart and soul into every piece I write—sometimes I look for humor in life’s moments and other times I wrestle with memory, fear, and the search for meaning in a world that keeps shifting beneath our feet.

If this essay spoke to you, please consider giving it a like, sharing it with someone who might need it, or reposting it. You can also support my work directly through Ko-fi—or simply by subscribing, reposting, commenting, or spreading the word. Every gesture, big or small, helps me keep writing, reflecting, and connecting through words.

Subscribe now

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As my readers may be aware, I developed a serious thread addiction during the war. Since my ship containing my next punch needle project is lost at sea or being held to ransom somewhere, I decided to DIY my own punch project sans kit—a pillowcase cover. That should keep my fingers occupied for triple-digit hours. Having my hands busy, however, is not a complete panacea for wandering and futile thoughts.

Here’s one I made earlier: a wartime project of covering up an unfortunate bleach stain with embroidered flowers. Quite proud of myself.

Thought one: are we going to be back at war before the summer matriculation exams?
Thought two: will the price of chocolate shoot up by 20%, just like gas? My husband has assured me this isn’t the case. I know someone somewhere has doctored my favorite treats to cut corners. Taste buds do not lie. This must stop. I’m sure Trump can do something about it.

My brain’s scenarios are almost as varied and colorful as the threads at the local craft store. I imagine the housing market crashing, riots in supermarkets as the stock market lies in tatters.

And then I pull out the thread and imagine a better world, where Iran will no longer have a chokehold on us, forcing us into one war after another. I imagine Russia and China cowered into a graceful retreat. But no—a podcast turns my optimism inside out. After all, if Trump doesn’t win the next election, we’ll be back at square one. The Democrats will assume the role of Middle East supernanny, and our grandchildren will continue fighting to keep our borders safe in a never-ending loop.

But just like the tiny stitches on my pillowcase cover, I’m making incremental progress. Everything was going swimmingly. I broke the system. AI was at my side, dispensing craft advice, drafting designs, and patiently answering my wool queries. And then disaster struck. The fabric I had ordered and patiently awaited turned out to be punch-intolerant—what were supposed to be elegant stitches became gaping holes. “Oh no,” said GPT, “you need a smaller needle.” Which means I need thinner thread, which means my hour-long visit to the craft store and subsequent $25 was entirely wasted. Drat and damnation.

DIY crafting. Time and patience

But I am an Israeli. I am stubborn, prickly, dogged, and I won’t give up on a project I’ve invested so much time and energy into. I will stitch the thing by hand with teeny loops, even if it kills me. If little Israel can bring Iran to its knees, then all I need is a bit more patience.

So, as I stitch my stitch, I wade my way into a new era. We won, kind of. Yes, Hezbollah is still making trouble. Lebanon and Israel are in peace talks after a quarter of a century. Should I be optimistic, or should I pepper it with a bit of healthy Jewish cynicism?

My white loops are starting to make their fine imprint on the anti-punch fabric. Well, on a quarter of it, anyway. My chest is still tight. I suffered four days of terrible stomach cramps last week, out of the blue. I became best friends with an ancient hot water bottle and drank a ton of mint tea. It didn’t help. I ate baby food. I still woke up in pain. I got frightened to eat anything. Not bad for weight loss, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

Then I considered something that hadn’t previously occurred to me. Perhaps my gastric symptoms were a delayed reaction to a month of missile attacks? Sometimes the diagnosis is the cure. So I finally just let go. I admitted it: it was a rough time. Yes, we are strong, but no, we aren’t exactly OK. We are all knotted up right now, and it’s going to take a lot of untangling to set us right.

At improv, we started joking about seven years. Yes, it’s almost seven years since COVID-19 threw us into state-sponsored seclusion. Then along came October 7th, then the Iranian “love missiles,” then the first Iran war, and now the second US/Iran war. In Pharaoh’s dream, it was seven years of plenty and then seven years of famine. So I said happily to my husband, “We are now going into seven years of plenty. Yay!” “Wait,” Avi said. “You’ve got it wrong. It’s seven years of plenty first.” Darn it. Foiled yet again by semantics.

We’ve also had some strange weather. Our long Saturday morning bike ride was shelved due to a dust storm. Jerusalem looked more like Be’er Sheva this morning—shimmering beneath a cloud of dust. Whatever next.

Aliens, some Israelis joke. We’ve seen it all. Now it’s time for them to land in Modi’in or Petach Tikva. We’ll show them where the best hummus joints are.

But joking aside, at work I discovered that, principal and head of Year 11 aside, the small male staff of our school had disappeared to Lebanon for their umpteenth round of miluim, leaving their wives to man the family front. And then there are the ragged-looking female teachers whose husbands have been gone for the past five weeks. The school put up a message for a meal train for these women who dealt with safe rooms and now loneliness and fear.

And I failed to mention the dreaded Remembrance Day. I’ll put on my white shirt and attend the school ceremony. We won’t have enough chairs for the growing number of graduates in their crisp IDF uniforms who come back. I’ll sniffle into a tissue and hug the young adults I had the privilege to teach for a year or two or three, and who are now putting their lives on the line to protect us. The number of the fallen is growing, too. We’ll light a memorial candle for Refael Kauders, a beloved educator from our school, killed in service on the border in 2024. We’ll light another for the brother of a graduate of mine that was killed at his base on October 7th, 2023. My headspace doesn’t have room to hold all of them.

I want to hide away. I have nothing to complain about. Tsss, stomach cramps—my eye. I shouldn’t be sewing pillowcases; I should be babysitting their kids and doing their laundry. What a failure I am. The only thing I can do is write endless words in an attempt to iron something onto my readers, or to smooth away a few wrinkles. “Ah, I know exactly what she’s talking about,” they might say. What a joke. I am not doing night shifts with a six-month-old and dealing with fights, meltdowns and an empty bed.

And so here we are. A fly on the wall might be mistaken in thinking things really are OK in Israel. The shekel is strong—shopping on Amazon became fun. The gym and pool are open, and the sauna finally repaired. So people swim and run, lift weights, sweat, and then go and eat large Israeli breakfasts in coffee shops bursting at the seams. “No, I don’t want any tahina with that,” they tell the helpful waitress.

And then they park their car in a quiet corner and have a good cry. Mothers everywhere check their phones fifty times a day for messages that their loved ones are OK. Others will curse Bibi, curse Trump, and curse whoever cut in front of them in line as they wait at checkout with their meat, beer, and salad vegetables in preparation for Independence Day. This year, the traffic will most likely be awful, and we are supposed to be happy about it. Empty roads are a terrible sign. Compared to missile attacks, standstill traffic is a mild inconvenience.

My embroidery is making slow progress. Flip it over, and it really looks a mess—my needle got caught in knots so many times. I’ve trimmed the threads, and I’ll pretend it’s not there.

We are on the wrong side of the tapestry right now. Israel is waiting for God to flip things and show us the other side—the finished piece, with its smooth stitching and vast array of colors. It will be a masterpiece. But we’re so far from finished.

all my mistakes revealed

This time of year, many Israeli families, alongside dealing with shopping lists, are making summer plans. This includes deciding on a destination, booking an expensive flight before it becomes unaffordable, and chatting with friends, comparing notes.

My thoughts have drifted to the topic of summer plans, but like most of us, I’m drawing blanks. Firstly, the world hates us. The innocent question that tourists ask one another whilst on a boat ride or jeep tour—“Where are you from?”—has become a loaded gun. Their friendly smiles quickly dissolve into frowns, and our hearts thud as we await the inevitable hate-filled rant about colonial occupation, genocide, and other topics they know nothing about.

Greece used to be a genuine escape, but I heard of an Arab Israeli getting beaten up on a picture-perfect Greek island because of his answer to that selfsame innocent question.

If that isn’t enough, being stranded in Hungary two months ago, just after war broke out, has given me a bit of extra trauma—like unnecessary sprinkles on a cake. It’s nice to go somewhere that’s not home for a week or two, but being stranded there, our lives at the mercy of fickle airlines, is something else altogether. Maybe we’ll just go to Sinai and be done with it. A land border feels a lot more secure, and even if they aren’t too keen on Israelis and occasionally have a spot of bother with the Muslim Brotherhood, I won’t be spotting Hamas flags whilst ordering gyros.

Maybe I’ll just buy a five-star tapestry project and call it a day. If I go to the Rishon beach at 6 a.m., I can have the place to myself. I might even have a “let’s pretend” vacation.

Even if a lasting peace were established (except there’s no peace until the IRGC, Hezbollah, Hamas, and their ilk become dust), we still have to deal with our dysfunctional politicians and the tears in our society that deepen as our differences widen. We have so many repairs to do. We might need to unpick a lot. We might even have to start all over again. We can’t just do a patch job on something that was never cut right to begin with.

And me? I am just a person with thoughts that come and go in uneven loops, and here’s my attempt to unpack them. I’m in my own escapist bubble—stitching, thinking, writing, crying, laughing, and hoping. I think I must invent a new word for this strange mood that has settled on our country like an unwelcome dust storm. In the meantime, we Jews will have to reinvent ourselves. We’ve done it before. What’s past is past. Time to move along, stitch by stitch, into the unknown. We are war-torn, we are as angry as hell, but we might be a little wiser.

It’s time to go. My hands have completed this artifact. It’s time to thread the needle once again.

How are you holding things together between the stitches? I’d love to hear how you’re coping. If this resonated, feel free to share it, like, or subscribe.

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I put my heart and soul into every piece I write—sometimes I look for humor in life’s moments and other times I wrestle with memory, fear, and the search for meaning in a world that keeps shifting beneath our feet.

If this essay spoke to you, please consider giving it a like, sharing it with someone who might need it, or reposting it. You can also support my work directly through Ko-fi—or simply by subscribing, reposting, commenting, or spreading the word. Every gesture, big or small, helps me keep writing, reflecting, and connecting through words.

buy me a ko-fi!

Subscribe now

If there’s one thing that’s impossible to escape in Beer Sheva, it’s the sand. You can sweep your yard to your heart’s content, but you will never truly rid yourself of it. It creeps into every crack and crevice, hides under forgotten furniture, and lodges itself under your skin. When it rains, the stuff forms sticky clumps that will cling stubbornly to your shoes. Resign yourself to it—or leave.

Why are my husband and I in this far-flung desert city on a mild Saturday in April? And why am I vigorously removing sand with a handbrush from the bottom of my shoes?

Actually, we are in a relationship with Beer Sheva, so to speak. Just over two years ago, we made a somewhat impulsive decision to sink some capital into the soft-hued sands of this city, otherwise known as ‘the Pearl of the South’. Why? Well, it looked like a good investment.

But as in all relationships, there is give and take.

The route from Jerusalem and Beer Sheva has become as familiar to us as the back of our hands. We could definitely give detailed google reviews of all the gas station rest stops on the way, and have endured camels, herds of goats, mad drivers and, of course, lots of sand.

After having purchased the property with little haggling or resistance, we had no problems finding tenants. It appears that some people actually choose to live in Beer Sheva. It appears that some people actively choose to live in Be’er Sheva.

Cashing in as landlords and property managers requires work, and not everything can be dealt with remotely. Damp has appeared in very strange places - a lot of detective work was required to figure out where it was creeping up from. And that is without the three wars that ensued since contracts were signed. In my next novel, our apartment would play the rugged protagonist - errant missiles and tenants would add spice to the plotline and the climax - a 2 hour blackout in the middle of the summer. I would dedicate an entire chapter to the eyesore of a bomb shelter right that sits opposite our entranceway, and how, in an ironic twist of fate, it transformed from a bug into a feature.

Every time we go to Beer Sheva, we discover a new nook or cranny of this unassuming hotchpotch of towers and old Ottoman buildings that rise out of the wilderness. It is a city of 300,000 inhabitants, 97% of them Jewish, surrounded by numerous Beduin settlements, some recognized, and some not. The patter of Hebrew, Arabic, Amharic and Russian are strange background music to a city that is definitely an acquired taste. The list of parts of the city requiring renovation or demolition grows daily, but I still feel that there is something about Beer Sheva that is tragically overlooked.

For example, the city boasts 7 malls including one bang opposite our property - most convenient. If you are ever short of anything, albeit Russian chocolate, Arab kunafe or Italian espresso you can find the item anytime, anywhere. And nobody will look at you strangely if you are a Russian with a penchant for kunafe.

We’ve found a great coffee shop (that was probably what sealed the deal when it came to our investment) frequented by hipster students with their laptops, adopted dogs and nose-rings, a great Indian vegetarian restaurant, and a Georgian bar serving delicious kachapuri. We were able to furnish the property with everything thanks to numerous furniture stores and, of course, an Ikea as well as a cheap store with the most unfortunate name of ‘BOOOM!” in the aforementioned local mall.

Our weekend was business combined with a little pleasure. Friday was happily spent chatting with our tenants, one is a doctor, who is completing her residency at Tel Hashomer. She is an Arab from Northern Israel. We chat in English, but her Hebrew is perfect also. She was knee deep in anatomical diagrams on her laptop as we did our own check-up of the apartment. We chatted and compared notes about how we coped during the war.

Our other tenant is a cheerful new Oleh from Mexico, who volunteers for Mada and has been living here after having volunteered to help during our October 7th war.. He told us about some scary moments in the city with the most recent war, especially when he heard a bang so loud that the earth shuddered - he was convinced that he would be returning home to a pile of rubble. Turns out it was just a low interception. I wryly commented that if he was still determined to stay here after the past two years or so of craziness, he’d definitely passed his ‘trial by fire’.

We ate dinner in Friday night in a burger place nearby, bursting to the seams with boisterous families. Didn’t we just have a war? I don’t get this country.

By Saturday morning, however, the city was ghostly quiet and shops firmly shuttered. Being thin on options for things to do, we took a walk. Most likely, we’d discover something new.

We left the neighborhood of our apartment and entered the Old City. Laid out in orderly Ottoman lines, it feels like a place where histories overlap rather than settle—stone buildings, half-restored, half-forgotten, sitting uneasily beside cafés and quiet streets. Corners of it have a wild beauty—restored Ottoman buildings, bursts of street art—but others are semi-derelict. The Old City hasn’t decided whether it’s time to resign itself to a slow death or get ready for a rebirth.

Case in point. Artwork looks great if you ignore the frame.

I was, however, happy to see that sunshades have been installed across the pedestrian precinct to protect foot passengers from some of the ravages of the desert sun.

shaded and waiting- but for what?

Sadly, no coffee was to be had in the Old City, so we quickly continued to our next stop: Abraham’s Well.

Be’er Sheva is named after the biblical well where Abraham and Abimelech swore an oath, in one of the earliest recorded examples of water conflict resolution. “Be’er” literally means ‘well’ and “sheva” means both ‘oath’ and the number seven, possibly referring to seven lambs that were offered in exchange for water rights. Abraham’s Well is now enclosed in a modest visitor center, where ancient narrative is reframed through curated exhibits and careful reconstruction. It stands as a quiet, slightly self-conscious attempt to anchor a living city in a story of origins—where the biblical, the archeological and modern presentation meet but never quite fully merge. The place looked interesting, but sadly, like most of the city, it is closed on Saturday. The QR code for further information didn’t work either.

Abraham’s Well.

It was time for us to dip into the proverbial well of caffeine. Google had told us that there was a coffee truck a 15 minute walk away, so made our way to the Neve Noy neighborhood, a stark contrast to the tumbledown buildings of the old city.

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The neighborhood is recently built with spacious apartments and two storey villas. Not only did the aforementioned truck in the neighborhood park exist, but it was also open! We were overjoyed. Families and runners sat at the outdoor tables, shaded by huge ancient trees. The war was over (for now), the spring rains had finally stopped and business was brisk.

coffee truck time.

Food trucks are a thing in this country. The relatively new secular shabbat custom of frequenting food trucks is de rigeur in Israel - and standing in line is part of the appeal. People come heavily accessorized with kids and babies in strollers, skateboards, bikes, the latest running gear, and a few good war jokes while they enjoy their camembert croissant and strong cappuccino. Today the weather was perfect for it. Our pastries and coffee revived us, as did the festive atmosphere in the park.

Our glucose levels spiking, it was time to continue on and follow Nahal Beer Sheva- a giant wadi (dried riverbed) that runs from east to west of the city. The municipality has invested considerable sums into walking and biking paths that wind gently alongside the wide river bed. This past winter was one of the wettest in years, with heavy rains stretching into late spring. The riverbed bore witness—streams of water still flowing through its center.

I’d love to say that Nahal Beer Sheva is gorgeous and lovely, but it isn’t. It’s full of rocks and mud, in need of more than a surface cleaning.. The municipality has apparently adopted a blinkered approach - when on the path, you’re supposed to look right and avoid peering to the river bed on the left, where all the trash is.

This is Nahal Beer Sheva. Now look right.

Nonetheless the wetlands of mud and watery pools have attracted quite a bit of birdlife. Dozens of swallows made swooping paths over the rivulets, and we spotted a couple of white spur-winged lapwings, with their elegant long legs and stunning black and white plumage. Wild flowers were still in full bloom alongside the river bed, frequented by miniature white butterflies.

By Charles J. Sharp - Own work, from Sharp Photography, sharpphotography, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=55646038

flowers in the wilderness

In the distance, the industrial reality of Beer Sheva was in full view, towering chrome high-tech office buildings, a street mall in the distance boasting a movie theater and an ice rink. In the distance, new neighborhoods mushroomed.

In recent decades, Be’er Sheva isn’t just for birds, it seems. Big plans are underway to expand an already bustling high-tech hub, anchored by the Advanced Technologies Park near Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, attracting cybersecurity firms and multinational companies. The IDF is relocating its major intelligence and communications units to a place where the sand itself offers room for growth. New neighborhoods are being built to meet the demand as young professionals, such as those we saw at the park, flock to the city.

It seems that this city is forever a work in progress. Sand is easy to build on, land is cheap, and there is enough water underground to quench everyone’s thirst, even when the temperature tops 45 degrees celsius.

At the same time, older areas and even former military sites are being redeveloped into dense residential and cultural hubs, as the city shifts from a spread-out desert town into a more urban, connected metropolis. Our tumbledown fix-me-upper will most likely be turned into a tower block in the next decade, as part of a pinui binui project. Pinui binui means old apartments are knocked down and spanking new towers are left in their place. For the owners, it means a free upgrade and for the developers a lucrative business opportunity.

We passed more park areas. Children screamed in excitement on swings. An Arab family had laid out rugs for a picnic in the park. The grass was soft and freshly mown. And then our eyes swung to the left - a huge herd of goats and sheep, probably not so genetically different from Abraham’s herd, had appeared on the dry river bed- - their shepherds were young Beduin boys who were calling out in a dialect I couldn’t follow (Palestinian Arabs have great difficulty understanding Beduin Arabic - I have learned). A few donkeys grazed nearby. The parkgoers unwrapped packages of bamba and pringles, and kids screamed in delight on the mini-zipline, seemingly oblivious to this stark incongruity.

We continued to the Park HaAgam - a recently constructed giant ecological park, featuring a large artificial lake overlooking the Nahal Sheva wadi. The idea of a giant green space in the middle of the desert shows you just how accommodating sand can be. Golf carts and pedal boats were available for hire, and a kiosk was open, selling ice cream and snacks that were surprisingly reasonable. The temperature was a balmy 22 degrees - in another month, you won’t find too many visitors by mid-morning as the heat is too ferocious. If you want to live in this place, there’s no point fighting the meteorological reality.

water in the desert- the Agam park artificial lake

It was time for lunch, and, once again, the options were sparse. Beer Sheva’s Jewish presence started as a tiny community of officials and traders who lived under Ottoman and British Colonial rule. The population swelled after 1948 with Jewish immigrants from North Africa. Unlike the largely secular ethos that shaped Tel Aviv, Be’er Sheva developed a more traditional character—less ideological, more inherited. Jerusalem, too, shuts down on Shabbat, but its religiosity is visible in the rhythm of family life spilling into the streets. In Be’er Sheva, religious life is more contained, largely concentrated within a handful of neighborhoods.

It is strange that despite the many non-Jews who frequent the city, and the large number of young secular residents, shabbat activity options are extremely limited. All seven of its malls are closed.

The Agam neighborhood is brand new. I hope the apartments there don’t suffer from mysterious damp- the blight of so many buildings in this country. On the other side of the neighborhood is a large Ikea branch with an Arab supermarket and other Arab-owned stores nearby. The supermarket is enormous and part of a nationwide chain, open 7 days a week and frequented by Israelis and Arabs alike. It has a bakery serving baklawa and Turkish coffee inside - a dieter’s paradise (not). The selection is fantastic and prices competitive. Best of all, it’s almost always open.

Arab pastries at the supermarket. Just try eating one. I dare you.

We ate lunch at the Caesaria restaurant - also Arab owned. A carafe of freshly made lemonade appeared on our table without being asked. The waiter kept coming back with more and more salads, each more delicious than the next, handmade laffa pitta bread, hummus, Jerusalem grill and shnitzel. But we only had so much room. We declared defeat halfway through- packing the leftovers for another meal. We had been given enough food for a small army, and yet paid a little more than I usually pay for a burger meal for two in Jerusalem.

This photo was taken before they loaded more salads onto our table

I cannot say that Beer Sheva will ever be first on your list for a city break - malls or not. Sand only has a limited appeal. But what lies underneath - a cross current of the biblical, geo-political, the new and old, the fierce tradition and bursting modernity deserves a second glance. Sand has many colors, it can be shaped and formed - a by-product of centuries of violent clash and upheaval. I don’t know what shade of sand Be’er Sheva will take on in the decade to come. But for as long as pipes leak and damp creeps through the tiles, my relationship with Beer Sheva continues to grow roots deep under the ground, reaching towards a quiet seam of water beneath it all.

This is my latest project - now I’ve got to wait for the next shipment-aarrgh!

I put my heart and soul into every piece I write—sometimes I look for humor in life’s moments and other times I wrestle with memory, fear, and the search for meaning in a world that keeps shifting beneath our feet.

If this essay spoke to you, please consider giving it a like, sharing it with someone who might need it, or reposting it. You can also support my work directly through Ko-fi—or simply by subscribing, reposting, commenting, or spreading the word. Every gesture, big or small, helps me keep writing, reflecting, and connecting through words.

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As the days of peacetime blur into forgetfulness, I begrudgingly sink into this new normal of alerts, sirens and check-ins. The irony is that with all the arrow missiles and ballistic warheads moving at the speed of sound, I’ve been forced to slow the fuck down.

You see, the small amount of work I had ‘till now has dwindled to a virtual halt. Our school set up a ‘zoom lite’ schedule for the kids—a minimalistic schedule, in confidence that ‘bagrut lite’ matriculation exams would replace the regular ones. Now I’m not even sure if the exams will happen at all.

So my usual 6 hours of teaching got rescheduled to almost zero; my subject isn’t a top-tier one in any case. I feel little need to spend time creating online lesgreensons, when AI can simply revamp the ones sitting in my drive from COVID-19. God help me. I’ve created some great review materials, but my 12th graders show little interest/motivation in looking at them. You can lead a horse to water. But I’m not judging anyone these days.

Yes, the timing could have been better. I’m supposedly on sabbatical and all the courses I enjoyed got moved online. What a joy. And now, Israel is supposedly on Passover vacation. Two weeks where there is officially no school and less work. But let’s make something clear for those who didn’t get the memo: nobody is getting a break from anything. This war doesn’t do breaks. Only deceiving lulls for a few hours, which is hardly the same thing.

Passover is usually family time—an occasion for trips and hikes. My friends talk about getting in their cars and heading to the Negev or somewhere that isn’t home, but who are they kidding. The highway is a scary place right now. During a siren some drivers carry on driving oblivious, while others stop by the side of the road. That alone is a recipe for disaster. The North, usually the go-to for Israeli families during spring break, is being pounded relentlessly. In our tiny country, the map of “safe” places is shrinking, and we’re running low on ideas.

So I wake up in the morning, thankfully with no little ones whining for choco and their iPads—and my day is strangely empty. No work, no projects of any import, no courses and, worst of all no plans—neither for the near or distant future.

And whenever I get my teeth into something, like a row on WhatsApp with disgruntled teachers, some impossible verbs in Arabic, or the one interesting documentary on Netflix, there it goes. The alert. Gee thanks. As if I had forgotten.

It’s official, our nation is clean out of panic cards—all we can do right now is low-grade grumbling resentment. As the siren goes off, we make swift calculations. Should we take our coffee/our phone/laptops/favorite pillow/gin and tonic into the safe room or leave it outside? Usually it comes in with us as we sit there in smoldering silence. The only remark you might get is “that boom was loud.” In fact, when I go to our safe room and hear NO booms, I feel strangely dissatisfied. I want my money back!

The worst is a siren without a pre-alert. That is simply rude.

My brain is on permanent strike. I can’t look at pictures of dead soldiers, hear of injured children, see pics of rubble and flames, and I don’t want to hear Trump or Netanyahu’s “reassuring” address to the nation.

Of course I care, it’s just my nervous system is shot to pieces.

Is there a proverbial light on the horizon to this wonderful month-long marathon watch shit show? Yes. Definitely.

If it wasn’t for the war, I wouldn’t have started playing around with wool and, in the process, discovering that I have more patience than I thought. Facebook decided I was in need of soothing punch embroidery. In a hypnotic AI induced trance, I ordered a set. Punch embroidery is a type of embroidery that is done on one side of the canvas only with a special punch needle that looks like a pen. And you literally punch the wool in. I love it, it’s aggressive, just like me at times, and yet it’s delicate. The feel of the wool grounds me in a way that is hard to explain.

I like my punch embroidery - shame the colors don’t match my green wall

Problem is, punch embroidery kits are hard to get your hands on. I’ve completed three kits and last word from AliExpress is my latest purchase hasn’t even been shipped yet! Something to do with the Strait of Hormuz, no doubt—geopolitics interfering with my craft projects again.

I also started doing a bit of watercolor painting. I am not a new Matisse by any stretch of the imagination, I’m just a middling drained Israeli woman trying to stay afloat.

this one was inspired by my trip to India

All this is teaching me that joy doesn’t come from quick fixes, but a slow and steady rhythm. And the slow flow is reaching into other parts of my life, too. I’m more than willing to prepare a dish with a complicated recipe—I made risotto last week and spent an hour pouring the home-made broth cup by cup into the gently bubbling rice. I didn’t even have to watch Seinfeld to distract me.

Today I did a full hour yoga flow with my favorite online instructor. In the past once I got to 30 minutes, I was climbing the walls (almost). But when you haven’t got much to do, and the war won’t end any faster either way, something shifts.

The second thing war is teaching me is to prioritize family. Being at home, away from colleagues and friends means those I spend the most time with are my loved ones. My daughter, Rachel, is back from college for the “vacation” and her long-awaited flight to the US was cancelled (no surprises there). We actually did a joint project—a real first. We painted the hallway dark green. The product was far from perfect (it looks much better when you squint) but the process—from choosing a color together to making our purchases, to framing photos for the hallway, applying primer, taping and setting up and cleaning up huge splats of green paint from the floor—was just as bonding as the layers of paint. Would we have done this had there not been a war? I hardly think so.

our green wall - mixed reviews- but we don’t care too much

My elderly parents relocated to Jerusalem three months ago and I am eternally grateful that I do not have to endure yet another war with them far away. They now live close enough for impromptu breakfasts and lunches, which could not have happened when they lived in the center of the country. We thought that the proximity would create a breeding ground for petty rows, but surprisingly our rendez-vous have become more relaxed than in the past.

On Wednesday evening it looked like our family seder plans would have to be scrapped. My oldest daughter, Kayla and stepdaughter, Hodaya, together with their partners and family had barely left their homes in the center of the country when the sirens started. And they just didn’t stop.

As Kayla and her partner crouched in a ditch between two buildings, rain pouring and booms overhead, they seriously considered turning back. Meanwhile, my husband’s daughter, her husband, and their ten-year-old neurodivergent son were sheltering on level -3 of a nearby mall parking lot—they’d only just left home when the sirens began. One siren is scary enough; five is something else entirely.

They all arrived at my door later than planned, shaken but smiling and hungry. Our table heaved with delicacies that had been prepared with love, dedication and patience (Avi made pickled tongue—a dish he’d been preparing for the past week). I was so relieved that they’d made it that all the little things I usually make a big deal about when I’m entertaining guests became instantly inconsequential.

War or not, I’ve begun to ask myself where we’re all hurrying to. Nowadays, when we make tentative plans, we know that the outcome isn’t a given at all. I think when this is over (hard to imagine it now), I will miss the slow rhythm of the lulls between sirens. There is so little that matters right now. But my sanity must take a priority. But wasn’t that always the case?

And so I set my phone aside, I allow the news updates to wait their patient turn. I thread my needle or dip the brush in paint and take a deep, cleansing breath. There is still a lot of beauty in the world. My son might call me, just wanting to check in. Or my mum wants the risotto recipe. I’ll send her a picture of my embroidery. It’s not great, but it’s mine and it took time.

Deep down, I know that this too will pass. As all difficult things do. In the grand scheme of things, when the world flips on its axis at the touch of a button, I’m as caught up in the undertow as everyone else.

I can, however control my thoughts and reactions. I can gently tend to my frayed nervous system with threads and watercolor. I can fill my heart with love. I can limit the poison of rage and fear that threatens to leak into the walls I am carefully constructing. And I can develop the ultimate winning skill—patience.

If you made it this far, perhaps something here resonated with you. How are you keeping your own nervous system intact while the world feels like it’s falling apart? I’d love to hear your “survival” rituals in the comments.

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Every bit helps keep the light on (and the caffeine flowing).

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I put my heart and soul into every piece I write—sometimes I look for humor in life’s moments and other times I wrestle with memory, fear, and the search for meaning in a world that keeps shifting beneath our feet.

If this essay spoke to you, please consider giving it a like, sharing it with someone who might need it, or reposting it. You can also support my work directly through Ko-fi—or simply by subscribing, reposting, commenting, or spreading the word. Every gesture, big or small, helps me keep writing, reflecting, and connecting through words.

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buy me a ko-fi!

The Mossad of Festivals

I’m not a major fan of Orthodox Judaism. Well, most aspects of it, anyway. It’s a long story with quite a lot of post-trauma mixed in, but for me, festivals in Israel are tantamount to national chaos. And I’ve had quite enough of chaos, thank you.

A case in point: My husband and I left the country to escape the loud drunkenness of Purim, only to learn that war had broken out less than twenty-four hours after our plane had touched down in Budapest. Just call it Divine justice.

So even though we’d happily escaped a somewhat muted Purim, by the time we were back, costumes and snacks were either fully consumed or tucked away for next year. We did not, however, escape a war that refuses to end. And to add insult to injury, Israel is in the throes of getting ready for another type of madness: Pesach.

The Flourless Folly

Missiles or not, endless convoys of trucks are shipping boxloads of matzot and constipation-inducing but completely tasteless other goods. Take out the flour, take out the joy. I dare anyone to tell me otherwise. Occasionally, new “kosher for Pesach” products arrive on the shelves, each one more tasteless than the next -but nobody is making a fool out of me.

Then there’s the mad Pesach cleaning that defies rhyme or reason. God told us to avoid leavened bread for seven days, but said nothing about savagely scrubbing the crevices of bedroom closets with bleach. Pesach is as thorough as the Mossad in Tehran—it takes no hostages. If you are less than enthusiastic about checking the Pesach rabbinical approval on all of your groceries, you might, like me, feel a little left out.

Finding leavened products in Jerusalem during Pesach is mission impossible. You might be temporarily distracted by what looks like bread rolls in restaurants or cafes, but one bite and the offensive item instantly reveals its true colors as a rubbery, gluten-free roll.

And then, after the buying frenzy is over, the stockpiles of matzot and gelatinous products become mysteriously depleted. By the time the chag is over, you’ll be fortunate to find little more than a sad horseradish or some crumbled-up “kosher for Pesach” chips on the yawning store shelves. The madness has left another form of devastation in its wake. From feast to famine. It’s time to go to the neighbors with a begging bowl. They were most likely the ones who cleared the shelves in the first place-“panic buying” is an understatement.

A few years back, there was a pre-Pesach egg crisis in our country. Eggs are the staple of our Pesach kitchen; it’s almost as bad as running out of Arrow warheads. Facebook pages and WhatsApp lists mushroomed, informing people of the last known locations of eggs. In the end, the nation was saved from imminent starvation, thanks to an emergency airlift from Ukraine .

And then it’s all over, as fast as it began. Israeli women everywhere call their doctors for sick notes, claiming they need at least four days to recover from the invasion of families and the devastation inflicted on their sacrosanct space: the kitchen. Untouched boxes of matzot, overbought to an extreme, are advertised as free for the taking. As if we haven’t had enough of the stuff. “Please take my matzot,” we beg our family members. Not a chance. They might be okay next year if we wrap them in three layers of sticky tape, but most likely it’s a lost cause.

I’m basically okay with not eating bread for a week, but I’m not okay with everything else. I’m into live and let live. I will observe every possible leniency known to the Jewish people. I am not a meshuggeneh.

Leil HaSeder, however, fills me with dread. Every year. Avi and I, with his religious kids and my ultra-Orthodox ones, have done “religious Seders.” Our kitchen has been scrubbed in every nook and cranny. We have changed dishes, cutlery, and labels. We have stood to attention while our kitchen undergoes stiff religious inspection. We’ve hidden chametz in tinfoil packages under beds and tables.

But we are now older and tired. And not terribly religious. We just don’t want to perform this stuff anymore. We are prepared to buy overpriced, ready-made cooked food guaranteed by many rabbinical authorities as well and truly kosher for Pesach, just to avoid the endless preparations. But even then, an invasion of vast swaths of religious family who will eat, sleep, and repeat over two days is a tall order in our modestly sized apartment. One meal I can do, but three? I’m probably just too Ashkenazi.

After four glasses of wine and matzah crumbs forming a thick layer on the carpet, basking in the warmth of family and togetherness almost convinces us it’s worth it. But then there are dishes to wash. So many of them.

Seeking “Seder” in the Chaos

I know I’m sounding irreverent, but in truth, I’m the one who talks to God on a regular basis (now especially—haven’t had any answers yet) and has a deep appreciation of Jewish tradition. I talk about the Bible a lot. I think deeply about what it means to be a Jew. Unlike the Pesach products on the shelves, however, I’m not wrapped up in the rituals. No, I don’t believe that eating only shmura matzot or whether or not you sold your chametz to Chabad or not will write your fate in the World to Come. And I’m just a little tired of acting a part in a repetitive play just in order to appease those who do.

Seder night is, however, a time for family, gratitude, and remembering miracles—from the enormous ones to those that go unnoticed—to joke about our crazy traditions and obsessions. It is a time to sing, to drink wine, to eat ridiculously heavy food, and to embrace our peoplehood— our time-worn DNA, our crazy sense of humor, and our determination to survive. Biting into that first slice of matzah triggers something ephemeral that no moist challah can accomplish.

After months of war, our nation is in dire need of a Seder. At this point, fervent prayers to the One Above—for an uninterrupted Seder, free of the ear-splitting “risk: extreme” alerts blasting from our smartphones—would be most welcome. We are more than a little tired. Our preparations are sluggish. Our kitchens won’t share the same sparkle as in previous years.

You see, we still haven’t fully recovered since October 7th. In truth, we are still a little shaky from our isolated Seder nights during COVID19. Perhaps we are on a march backwards, rather than forwards. We are on our way to meeting our ancestors, feeling more in common with them day by day.

They left Egypt with “great haste,” probably the same speed with which we head to bomb shelters, with dough that didn’t have time to bake; their only currency, the words: “Trust me.”

In any case, we’re rapidly losing our trust in anyone else, especially those who say the war will end ‘soon’. Our ancestors lived day by day, as we do. The miracles that freed them and kept them alive were quickly forgotten under the relentless desert sun, with nothing but sand in sight. “What a mess you got us into,” they told Moses. “The only mess is you guys,” he retorted.

The Grand Narrative

And us? We see shrapnel. We hear booms. The sandstorm of information overload causes us to fumble about blindly. We doubt our own resilience as often as we doubt our own sanity. Nobody, but nobody, can understand what it’s like to live from alerts to sirens to safe rooms to updates unless they’re here. But I’m not recommending a visit right now.

Seder. Literal meaning: order. I might not like the dry matzot and the bitter herbs, but this year I like the word. When I run to the safe room mid-scramble, eggs still undone, and then again minutes later, downing the dregs of my still-warm coffee, I realize I need it. Order. First things first. People, let’s get the timeline straight. Let’s do a ceremony of remembrance. Let’s use some realia—a sweet spread to remind us of the cement we used to build Pharaoh’s pyramids. That will do. Edible, ideally.

Right now, I need to wrap myself in the soft blanket of belonging. I long to gaze in the face of a Grand Narrative because otherwise, nothing makes sense.

Our country’s history makes no sense. Our very survival makes no sense. The fact we face atrocities and are then blamed for them makes no sense. Our enemies plot against us—shooting us in our homes and during ceremonies, firebombing our synagogues and ambulances, spreading lies and hatred that take hold in universities and institutions. And none of it makes any sense.

As it says in the Hagaddah (I always break out in goosebumps when I read it—I think this year I might lose it altogether):

וְהִיא שֶׁעָמְדָה לַאֲבוֹתֵינוּ וְלָנוּ,

שֶׁלֹּא אֶחָד בִּלְבַד עָמַד עָלֵינוּ לְכַלּוֹתֵנוּ,

אֶלָּא שֶׁבְּכָל דּוֹר וָדוֹר עוֹמְדִים עָלֵינוּ לְכַלּוֹתֵנוּ,

וְהַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא מַצִּילֵנוּ מִיָּדָם.

“And it is this that has stood by our ancestors and us; for not only one has risen against us to destroy us, but in every generation they rise against us to destroy us, and the Holy One, blessed be He, saves us from their hands.”

I remember my sedarim as a child—the table set with my grandmother’s gold-embossed bone china wedding set, reserved for this occasion alone. My grandfather, who had escaped the Nazis and had never really made peace with God, read the lines resentfully. He didn’t need a glass of wine to remember so much lost Jewish blood. And now, children, and grandchildren alongside my elderly parents,, overly familiar with the wails of sirens and booms, read the ancient words. They don’t need to close their eyes and imagine. The words of our ancestors dance on the haggada’s pages.

“Look and learn,” they tell us.

Perhaps it isn’t the hand of God that controls our life-saving Arrow systems, guides our air force, and provides us with stunningly sophisticated military technology. But when a missile lands inches from its target, when fragments the size of horses gouge steaming craters in the road—and people step out of shelters to sip their coffee or resume Zoom meetings with a shrug—I find myself believing in a Bigger Picture. I don’t really have a choice in the matter.

Still Making “Seder”

According to basic rules of history, my ancient people should have been wiped off the earth long ago alongside the Ancient Egyptians, Romans, Persians, Mongols, and many more. But for some strange reason, we are still dusting ourselves off, laughing at another crazy bomb shelter meme, checking up on family, and making tentative plans.

The Haggadah is an ancient and eclectic collection of texts, spanning a few centuries. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to a casual reader. I’m not sure if I vibe with tales written in Aramaic of a Rabbi that miraculously aged 70 years overnight—but I do like the songs I have been singing since I was a child. It is our own confusing history book. And we are the main protagonists.

Israelis often attach ymach sh’mam—“may their name be wiped out”—to the names of those who seek to harm us, turning it into a reflexive verbal curse: the Nazis, Hamas, the Iranians—ymach sh’mam.

Go and get forgotten by humanity” is probably the worst insult in our arsenal. It’s quite therapeutic to shake a fist at the skies and yell it aloud after being woken up for the fourth time in a row by a missile alert. But there’s something deeper to it. We are basically saying: You may think you’re building a great nation and a glorious future—but you will be remembered as nothing. You might be around now, but soon you’ll be forgotten. God will bury you, just as He buried all the other enemies of the Jewish People. And nobody will remember you as your name will be wiped out.

And right now—war-torn, PTSD-ridden, exhausted, irritable, and battling stomach issues—we are still making a Seder out of absurdity. We will remember how Pharaoh’s heart was hardened until it wasn’t. We’ll remember our exodus. We’ll be grateful. Our entire book hasn’t been written yet. The next chapter is still to come.

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A warm hello to those of you who haven’t seen the outside of your home in twenty days. At this point, even your furniture is starting to feel like close family.

A special mention goes to the frontline heroes producing AI-generated updates, generously sprinkled with emojis and optimism, and then quietly ignored by the rest of us. We couldn’t not read them without you.

Having lived through Covid, October 7th, the twelve-day war, and now this — I feel uniquely unqualified to offer guidance. And yet, like many Israelis, I will do so anyway.

What follows is a practical guide to surviving a missile war with your body intact and your soul… negotiable.

1. Sleep: a strategic decision

There is nothing “pre” about the pre-alert.
It drags you out of sleep, shuts down whatever you were doing, and delivers its message with chilling efficiency:
“Alert. Extreme.”

At which point, your body agrees.
So spare yourself the torture. It’s just not worth it. The siren will wake you up anyway.

2. The bunker as a lifestyle choice

If you are relying on a shared shelter, it is worth investing in atmosphere.

A small speaker. Incense. Something vaguely meditative.
You are not hiding from missiles — you are curating an experience.

If you can find someone to sit cross-legged in the corner radiating calm, even better. Authenticity is optional.

3. Wartime nutrition

This is not the moment for restraint.

Chocolate is no longer a treat. It is a coping mechanism, a reward system, and in many cases, a personality.

Variety is key. You want depth, range, and emotional nuance.

Chocolate tastes best immediately after your phone informs you that “the event has ended.”
It hasn’t, of course. But the chocolate helps sustain the illusion.

4. Parenting, redefined

During a missile war, parenting becomes… theoretical.

The goal is no longer enrichment, structure, or values. The goal is: everyone remains alive, relatively calm, and not actively dismantling the house or each other.

Old devices may be repurposed for entertainment purposes. Content standards may be lowered.
Snacks may be consumed in locations previously considered unacceptable.

These are not failures. These are adaptations.

5. Cleanliness and other abandoned ideals

There is a widely held belief that cleanliness is next to godliness.

This belief has not been tested under conditions of overcrowding, interrupted routines, and low-grade collective anxiety.

Adjust your expectations.

If the house is standing, the food is edible, and the ants have not formally claimed the kitchen — you are doing well.

6. Emotional safety (or what passes for it)

After weeks of alerts, explosions, and relentless information, you may find yourself feeling numb, detached, or strangely indifferent.

This is not a malfunction. It is a feature.

The mind, like any system under strain, reduces output in order to survive.

If you can identify one small thing to look forward to — a quiet moment, a clean surface, a piece of chocolate — that is enough.

7. Relationships under pressure

Extended time at home, combined with uncertainty and lack of control, may lead to tension.

You may find yourself reacting strongly to things your partner says, does or fails to do that would not have registered a few weeks ago.

This is normal.

Conflict, in this context, is not necessarily a breakdown. It is, occasionally, a form of stimulation.

8. Hobbies (emergency edition)

In the absence of normal life, the mind seeks structure.

This may manifest as an intense interest in folding, sorting, organizing, or manically repeating small, manageable tasks.

Lean into it.

A hobby does not need meaning. It needs boundaries.

9. Your social media diet

It is important to be aware of your media consumption.

Not to change it, necessarily — that would be unrealistic — but to observe it with a degree of self-awareness.

The cycle of checking, refreshing, and absorbing partial information serves a purpose.
It creates the feeling of control.

Whether or not that control exists is, for now, a secondary concern.

10. A closing note on survival

There is no correct way to move through a period like this.

There is only the quiet, ongoing effort to continue — to maintain some rhythm, some connection, some small sense of self.

If you are here, reading this, functioning in whatever way you can — that counts.

The rest can wait.

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I put my heart and soul into every piece I write—sometimes I look for humor in life’s moments and other times I wrestle with memory, fear, and the search for meaning in a world that keeps shifting beneath our feet.

If this essay spoke to you, please consider giving it a like, sharing it with someone who might need it, or reposting it. You can also support my work directly through Ko-fi—or simply by subscribing, reposting, commenting, or spreading the word. Every gesture, big or small, helps me keep writing, reflecting, and connecting through words.

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What day is it again? I’m trying to keep track. Yes, I remember. Monday.

The I-wish-that-f-ing-lion-would-quit-its-roaring war is still on, and nobody has seen fit to tell us when this will end. In the meantime, I’m mournfully deleting events from my Google Calendar, one by one. I was supposed to be busy.

I am glad to be back, although I do occasionally ask myself why. I hope this doesn’t reflect too badly on my sanity.

Every war in Israel has its own distinct personality and its own suitable metaphor. This one is akin to having a distasteful, mentally unstable, semi-destitute stranger turn up at your door with odious breath, a booming voice, and no sense of personal space. He walks in as if he owns the place, and you have no idea when he’s going to get the hell out.

At first, you’re too polite to throw him out. You try gentle hints. You become more firm, but nothing works. You try calling the police—but they accuse you of being uncharitable.

You then resort to pretending everything is normal. But he hogs the bathroom for three hours straight and refuses to clean up after himself. You make a superhuman effort to ignore him, but his booming voice and sour smell reach every corner of the apartment. He plays heavy metal music at night, and when you bang on the wall, he turns it up even louder. He’s also a little scary at times—unpredictable, with mood swings and wildly exaggerated stories designed to make you feel sorry for him.

Worst of all, he’s pilfered all your favorite cookies.

And there’s absolutely nothing you can do. You can’t just get rid of the bastard. And you don’t know when he’ll pack his bags and leave.

We weren’t polled about this war, and it’s insulting. We are somehow expected to carry on—yes, even with small children at home—pretend it’s business as usual and work remotely. What’s the big deal? So what if the very word Zoom makes us break out in hives?

Online learning schedules are published every day, or twice a day, or whenever. Nobody seems to remember anything from the notorious Covid era. I’m willing to wager that staring at little boxes all day carries roughly the same health risks as venturing outside during a rocket attack.

We’ve become like the inhabitants of Macondo in One Hundred Years of Solitude—struck by a peculiar insomnia, trapped in torturous wakefulness between pre-alerts, sirens, and frantic scrolling. Who needs sleep anyway?

A miasma of irritation, boredom and gnawing fear settles over everything. We’ve been here before. We didn’t like it then.

And now—cluster bombs? I mean, really?

After five hours on Zoom yesterday, I was climbing the walls. The only thing standing between me and a full virtual breakdown was my punch-embroidery kit (try it—it’s great). A friend took pity on me and hauled me out for coffee, only to find the place overrun with other half-crazed families escaping their own screens.

Every park is occupied by kids. Teens descend on our lobby late at night—probably thrown out by their desperate parents.

And I haven’t even mentioned the soldiers heading north. Another ground invasion. More sleepless nights.

I feel bad for everyone.
I feel bad for myself.

The news is a waste of time.
He said, they said. Blah blah.

So what are the exciting developments in my household, other than red alerts and sporadic sorties to the safe room?

Well, I’m learning spoken Palestinian Arabic. Yallah.

I like learning languages, but my fifty-five-year-old brain—not so much. On the one hand, Arabic is quite similar to Hebrew, so many of the words are easy to pick up. On the other hand, I’m too lazy to learn the alphabet and the tricky grammar, which is really slowing me down.

I can’t pronounce the words for the life of me.

I’m going to have to find a human teacher, even though the online course (a paid one) is pretty decent. It definitely passes the time. I still have a long way to go before I can understand the cashier at my supermarket or make small talk with Dawud, my friendly mechanic.

It’s nice to have goals in life that aren’t pending missile alerts.

Today, after an alert, I took my laptop into the safe room and continued trying to pronounce impossible-sounding words as the booms echoed in the background. We even got photos of where the missile fragments landed in Jerusalem.

The other bit of news is that I actually ventured out this week to Hebrew-speaking improv, relocated from its usual semi-outdoor space to someone’s apartment so we could have access to a safe room. The impromptu gathering gave me a new lease on life. I felt young again, surrounded by weirdos like me who just want to spend an evening playing and not being serious at all.

A lot of the scenes revolved around Iran and the war. Duh. Some of the improvisers could do fabulous Iranian accents—mine definitely needs work.

Instead, I engineered a scene about a mega-stressed mother trying to teach on Zoom while her child drives her mad. In desperation, she drugs him. The child was played by my fellow actor Ohad, who brilliantly picked up the cues, drank his imaginary laced choco, and collapsed on the floor.

I think that was the high point of my week so far.

My daughter dragged me to the mall the other night. She claimed she needed jeans. I didn’t believe her, but it’s her money.

The mall was extremely busy. I bumped into one of my students in H&M—the first I’ve seen in the flesh since the war began. She claimed she was looking for an outfit, but it was clearly just something to do.

And so it is.

Oh, and the other newsflash is that I made low-carb cheesecake brownies—somewhere between a nap and a Zoom class. They weren’t bad, but sadly some stuck to the pan. I was spooning off gooey cheesy chunks while listening to Trump’s rambling speech on YouTube.

As I was sealing the plastic box and debating whether to freeze the bars, he started going on and on about Venezuela.

Venezuela? Best friends? Oil?

I’m losing the plot here.

I literally can’t keep up.
Qatar. Bahrain. Saudi Arabia. UAE. Hormuz. China.

I think it might be easier to learn Palestinian Arabic right now.

But I’ve got to learn the alphabet. Perhaps I should punch-embroider the letters. Would that work?

So goodbye for now. Back to the funny farm called Israel at war—again.

There’s only one punch I need—the bloody punchline of this sad joke.

And it ain’t coming.

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I put my heart and soul into every piece I write—sometimes I look for humor in life’s moments and other times I wrestle with memory, fear, and the search for meaning in a world that keeps shifting beneath our feet.

If this essay spoke to you, please consider giving it a like, sharing it with someone who might need it, or reposting it. You can also support my work directly through Ko-fi—or simply by subscribing, reposting, commenting, or spreading the word. Every gesture, big or small, helps me keep writing, reflecting, and connecting through words.

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Six days after the war started, we were supposed to have flown home. Landed on the tarmac in Tel Aviv and let out that long sigh that signals the return to reality.

But instead, eight days after the war started, we landed in the middle of the Sinai Desert. And our journey home was far from over.

The flight to Sharm El Sheikh that Sunday was, most fortunately, half empty. The only passengers were stranded Israelis — religious and secular, with one common denominator: exhaustion. Some had come from Prague, others from Vienna. The options for getting home had been limited.

This wasn’t travelling in style. But the kids got to clamber over the seats and I had the luxury of trying out various sitting and lying positions that might ease my sciatica.

I blamed Hungary’s notoriously soft beds for the stabbing pain, though it was probably war-induced. A sort of reverse PTSD. I hobbled in miniature steps and yelped whenever I moved. Had the flight been full, folding myself into a budget airline seat might have finished me off.

At Budapest airport we bought our third bottle of Baileys of the trip. The first two are still being held hostage in Ben Gurion’s duty free.

A war requires alcohol, I’m sure you’ll all agree.

We spent our last Hungarian forints on sandwiches that looked somewhat better than the shrink-wrapped €15 meal deals on the plane, downed our last coffee of the trip and boarded, carefully avoiding crying babies and toddlers and a rather doddery-looking rabbi.

I had downloaded The Godfather for the flight. Nothing like mafia wars, silk suits and whimsical Italian music to briefly forget cluster missiles.

The sun was gently setting behind the terracotta desert mountains as we touched down. All we saw was sand. Sand and more sand.

It felt more like home than the spires of Hungarian churches and the winding Danube. But we still had a long way to go.

Avi had ordered a private cab from the hotel. We weren’t in the mood for haggling with drivers this time. We just needed someone holding a sign with our name on it as we came out of customs. We’ve done cheap travel in India and Vietnam. This wasn’t the time.

The sun was still leaving its dim glow behind the mountains of Sinai when we set off. The driver spoke good English and generously let us use his hotspot. The news: war and more war. What were we thinking? We announced on the family WhatsApp groups that we were now a good deal closer to home.

The desert road was new and mostly straight, but one stretch simply hadn’t been finished yet. Our driver solved this by crossing into the opposite lane. For ten long minutes, in the dark, we drove directly against oncoming traffic. He flashed his headlights occasionally to warn approaching cars, though I found this far from reassuring.

The road was empty save the odd taxi or van and a stray baby camel.

Sinai is so full of checkpoints that, odds are, there are probably more policemen and soldiers than Bedouin. This too failed to reassure us.

An hour and a half later we were in Dahab. The town was quiet: a scattering of tourists, a surprising number of dogs who seemed to belong to no one, and a windy town square where we waited far too long for food. The muezzin echoed across the town while I scribbled notes in my notebook — the only entertainment available without Wi-Fi. Avi wandered through nearby shops. Eventually we resorted to mild bickering. I was in pain and wanted to be home.

We were also hungry.

We were two Israelis, 700 kilometers from home, biding our time and hoping that the missile attacks would be less frequent by the time we got back. Best-case scenario: a ceasefire. Not much chance of that.

My night was painful but the muezzin did not interrupt my restless dreams. The dogs did. A bit.

We awoke and I hobbled to the single square meter of Wi-Fi next to reception to contact our driver. We ordered a taxi to take us to the border for 10:30. With no flights to catch, there was no great hurry. By the time we left the hotel in search of breakfast, the sun was blazing and the deep blue waters of the Red Sea glittered with marbled waves. Hardcore swimmers were making their way across the water in steady strokes. Scuba divers were donning their gear for another day exploring the open seas.

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It was 9 a.m. and the restaurants were mainly closed. But we found one that bragged about good coffee. A brazen lie.

We ordered a “continental breakfast” consisting of two hard-boiled eggs, papery toast, artificial butter, artificial jam, a small slice of feta and a banana. It wasn’t overpriced. It wouldn’t make TripAdvisor either. You can’t have it both ways.

Avi and I had discussed visiting Sinai in the past. We’d both been before — me with my daughter and him with his. It’s cheap, it’s a land border, and the Red Sea is glorious. But after October 7th we got nervous about it. Israeli tourism dwindled. Whether it’s safe to come here or not depends on who you talk to. Mind you, I’ve heard of nasty things happening to Israelis in Greece, so go figure.

And here we were. We weren’t buying trinkets — we had virtually no cash. And we weren’t in the mood either. We breathed the sea air, gazed at the mountains, said polite hellos and glanced away from shop owners trying to entice us into their emporiums of stones, spices, magnets and dreamcatchers.

Then I remembered Maayan. She’s a good friend in Jerusalem. Whenever we leave the country, we bring back a small souvenir for one another. It’s become an unspoken rule of our eight-year friendship. I hadn’t bought anything in Hungary. In a dimly lit and dusty store I spotted a bronze Cleopatra magnet. Perfect for her.

Then it was time to head back to the hotel and continue on to the border. The sun was high in the sky but the cool wind continued. Last time I was here it was 40 degrees. This felt almost refreshing. The driver didn’t speak much English and was having mysterious conversations all the way to Taba. I didn’t feel like asking him for his hotspot.

The border was deserted. I guess the Israelis who didn’t manage to get out on repatriation flights decided to wait.

Heading home via Sharm or Taba is pretty hardcore.

An endless stream of Israelis headed toward us, most of them ultra-Orthodox, their peyot flying in the desert wind. The sight of them crossing the sands of Sinai felt oddly anachronistic.

In what felt like a flash, we were back on Israeli soil. Officially repatriated. Emotionally deflated. No flags and no medals.

The only consolation prize, courtesy of the Ministry of Tourism, was a forlorn-looking Egged airport shuttle bus waiting outside customs.

My heart leapt. And then sank again.

Two other people sat on a bench. The bus had already been waiting there for two hours. It was now 1 p.m. The driver declared he wasn’t leaving until the bus was half full. Were we ever going to get home?

My husband is a patient man. He adopted the attitude that, given Eilat is three and a half hours from Jerusalem on a good day, our final leg home was going to take time in any case. Waiting here or there made no difference to him.

I, on the other hand, was bugged because there was no coffee to be had for love or money at this border outpost. Lunch? In your dreams.

I often rant about how Wolt and its ilk are destroying society. I’ve argued that we’ve replaced the joys of a family meal with mountains of plastic boxes delivered by a teenager in a helmet. But that day I thanked God for Wolt. It wasn’t quick. But it came eventually.

Avi stood by the closest traffic circle — the nearest place recognizable on Google Maps. I sat on the bus and pretended not to care.

We finished eating and, lo and behold, in dribs and drabs more tired-looking Israelis appeared, loading backpacks and bulletproof trolley suitcases into the luggage compartment. Finally, at 3:30, our driver got the green light to depart. The mood was buoyant.

Once again I felt grateful. This time for a siren-free journey and empty roads.

But I knew they’d come eventually.

By the time we arrived at the eerily empty airport, darkness had descended.

The security guard grudgingly allowed me inside to use the facilities. I caught a glimpse of sparse groups of people wearing lanyards, standing beside suitcases near the closed ticket counters — embassy staff, I think.

I was quick, and so was our journey home. Avi’s daughter was picking us up with the car.

Highway One is usually packed with traffic, night and day. Not today. Essential journeys only.

And by 8:30 p.m. we were home. Dirty laundry, racing pulses. No sirens, just a long welcoming sigh.

“Why are you coming back?” Avi’s daughter had said. “Stay in Europe. It’s no fun here.”

She was probably right.

Two days later I’m one of the millions of Israelis heading for the safe room when the sirens sound.

It’s no big deal. Most of us shrug it off unless the booms are particularly loud.

We have returned to a country in heavy stages of denial.

But it is home.

And we are here — body and soul.

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If you made it this far, thank you for reading.
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I put my heart and soul into every piece I write—sometimes I look for humor in life’s moments and other times I wrestle with memory, fear, and the search for meaning in a world that keeps shifting beneath our feet.

If this essay spoke to you, please consider giving it a like, sharing it with someone who might need it, or reposting it. You can also support my work directly through Ko-fi—or simply by subscribing, reposting, commenting, or spreading the word. Every gesture, big or small, helps me keep writing, reflecting, and connecting through words.

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Hungary in 2026 is full of surprises. A war. Cancelled flights. And yet—crisp weather, lazy alleyways, baroque buildings, statues and fountains on lonely hillsides.

Right now we’re on stage three of our trip, all going e

xactly as planned. We’re staying in a small hotel beside Lake Balaton called Aura 18+. It sounds X-rated, but it’s really rather tame. You see, I do love babies, but when I’m soaking in a jacuzzi a squealing toddler is the very last thing I want to hear. Well—almost the very last.

And it all sounds so perfect, doesn’t it. Crisp white shirts, room fragrance and useless decorative pillows, wine glasses polished to perfection by otherwise unoccupied bartenders, being politely addressed as Madame. My carefully folded fluffy white robe awaits.

Except there’s a wee bit of trouble in paradise.

Except that I’m wondering if this is it. If the world is finally coming to an end after one too many disasters fueled by religious wrath and increasingly sophisticated weaponry. It’s plausible, at least.

Perhaps that’s just what happens when your befuddled brain hovers between sleep and wakefulness under freshly laundered hotel sheets. For a few seconds I’m still on vacation in a comfortable upgraded room. And then I wake up and remember we’re at war. Well, my country is at war. And I’m here. Pretending not to look forward to buttery scrambled eggs and mild roast coffee.

The pikud haoref (Home Command Front) hasn’t yet released guidelines for concerned citizens abroad who can’t quite call themselves stranded. Yet. My kids are grown up, my husband is retired, and my work isn’t essential. We are indeed completely inessential. Even if we were in Israel, my panic attacks would probably be of no use to the resilient Jewish nation. I’d definitely end up in a row with my daughter.

So nobody is going to summon us on a speedy rescue repatriation flight.

Here goes coffee number three of the day. And it’s only eleven am.

Haven’t I talked about feeling guilty before? Now it’s not mum guilt or child guilt. It’s something halfway between Jewish guilt and Israeli patriotism guilt. There has to be some unwritten law against dipping into a thermal bath while your brethren are running to safe rooms.

My friends back home keep telling me to enjoy myself. Like it’s an order. So I flip my phone over on the dining table for the umpteenth time and stick my fork into a slice of cremshnitt.

And it tastes like shit.

The very fact that I’m writing this piece while wallowing in the self-pity of the privileged should probably be illegal. But writers are supposed to describe the human condition. So here it is.

The condition I call feeling inside out.

I have spent entire days wearing clothes inside out and only realized it when someone pointed it out. But right now it feels like I’m consciously living that way.

It is perfectly acceptable to wear something inside out. Except the item wasn’t designed to be worn that way. The seams scratch. The label sticks out for everyone to see. There is a strange vulnerability in being inside out—a reality that isn’t quite the way it should be.

The sympathetic Hungarians make gentle tutting noises when I tell them where I’m from. Their polite expression seems to say, not much fun in your country right now.

There’s my label, fully exposed. As if being Israeli wasn’t statement enough before.

So we go about the motions. We wander along the shores of Balaton. We admire the quiet cobblestone streets of Győr. Avi and I have long contemplative conversations uninterrupted by the deafening noise of everyday Israeli life.

Our talk swings back and forth in a gentle pendulum—war, dinner, war again, then where to find a bathroom.

But everything is…inside out.

We aren’t really here.

Perhaps seventy percent of us walks the shores of Balaton or the streets of Győr. But thirty percent of us isn’t. Thirty percent is scratched by the seams of what will be and is everyone alright, watching the tower of carefully constructed plans called life begin to topple like a disastrous move in Jenga.

We’ve booked flights to Sharm El Sheikh for Sunday. Us and probably a large constituency of Israelis desperate to get home. It will be a long journey. A four-hour flight, then a three-hour taxi ride, then a slow wait at the Egyptian border before finally reaching Eilat.

I’m not even dressed for this. I packed for zero-degree March weather.

Worst of all, I don’t want to go back.

I don’t want to run to the safe room. I don’t want the sombre eyebrows of Yonit Levi the newsreader greeting me with images of rubble and emergency crews. I don’t want the slow, reassuring broadcasts from the Home Front Command that signal the grand opening of a national crisis. I don’t want to check my phone every hour to see whether life is continuing or temporarily suspended.

I’d rather sip Hungarian coffee and feel guilty.

But I don’t want to live inside out either.

I wasn’t designed that way.

My seams and labels announce to everyone that something is wrong. At home no labels are necessary. I don’t want to be the lonely Israeli with a war-zone address politely ordering another croissant. I don’t want to watch the quiet concerns of a peaceful European country and pretend they belong to me.

So we will head to the blue skies of Sharm knowing that with every step we are getting closer to home.

A home of sirens and constantly changing directives. A home of noise and chaos. A home of one Jew and three opinions. A place where people laugh and cry with abandon and where baristas call you mami (slang Hebrew for ‘darling’).

I have a white terry robe at home. It has been hanging on the bathroom door for a year now, ready in case a siren goes off while I’m in the shower. Grab and run.

I should probably try it on again.

And this time I’ll make sure I’m wearing it the side out.

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Trying to pretend we’re on holiday while Israel is under attack is its own modern Megillat Esther.

If you read through Megillat Esther, you notice that God’s name never appears. Everything important happens offstage, in the shadows, through coincidences that aren’t coincidences. It’s a story about hiddenness, reversals, and the unbearable tension of waiting for a disaster to turn itself inside out.

Purim is exactly when Avi and I usually pack our bags and run. Not from Persia, but from the drunken zeal of bad costumes, oversized mishloach-manot baskets, and roaming packs of teenagers expecting us to join in their merriment. Bah, humbug. Chaos isn’t our idea of a good time.

So Europe has become our annual escape route. Hungary, specifically—cheap flights, civilized streets, no plastic clowns in sight.

The past few weeks had been a whirlwind of work—good things, but relentless ones. I barely had a moment to think about the upcoming trip. In the background: the steady drumbeat of potential war. I told myself I’d cancel if things escalated, but as any Israeli knows, if you plan your life around what might happen, you end up planning nothing at all. Besides, there had been more noise than action. Rumors, threats, tweets, counter-tweets. You learn to live with it.

Still, I packed my laptop. “Just in case.”

As it turned out, we were on one of the last flights out of Israel before everything exploded—literally and politically. Less than twelve hours after landing in Budapest, the news hit: Israel had struck Iran, Iran had struck back, and Israeli airspace was shut down.

Back home, our friends weren’t waking up to sunlight and pigeons. They were waking to sirens, amber alerts, orders to stay in their safe rooms.

Our task was to pretend we were on a normal city break.

Which is almost impossible when your phone is buzzing with every frightening non-update. I curse these devices. You can “choose” not to check, but the gravitational pull is constant and insane. The great irony: we had come here to disconnect. Purim is the season of surprises, but this one lacked humor.

I checked the family members who answer on Shabbat. All fine, thank God—or fate, or the hidden hand of Megillat Esther. The news wouldn’t report locations, only casualties. So far, nothing catastrophic.

We joined the crowds climbing up to Fisherman’s Bastion. The day was painfully beautiful. Instagram couples posed in curated jackets; groups debated cocktails vs. thermal baths. Their greatest problem was brunch scheduling.

Not safe rooms.

Not dictators.

I found myself longing—actually longing—for Israelis. I usually avoid us abroad, but that day I scanned the crowds for my people. I spotted a couple of Israeli guys at a funky restaurant where we inhaled ghoulash and sourdough, but they looked unfazed. Then I remembered my 23-year-old daughter, who treats wars the way others treat train delays: irritating, but not worth rearranging life for. I didn’t approach them. They weren’t in our headspace.

We kept the day moving, because pacing your anxiety is a full-time job.

A walking tour of the Jewish Quarter brought the point home even further: two-thirds of Hungary’s Jews exterminated in a matter of months—when it was already clear Germany was losing the war. One mad dictator replaces another. The abyss doesn’t vanish; it changes shape.

Monument and Graves of Jews who perished in the Budapest ghetto, 1944, Dohany Synagogue

Back at the hotel that afternoon, we received a predictable update and an unpredictable one.

Bad news: our flight home was cancelled.

Good news: Khamenei was dead. Ding-dong. A Persian tyrant falls the day before Purim. Somewhere between satire and scripture.

In Iran, they danced in the streets. In Israel, they danced in bomb shelters.

History in the making, and we were missing it—wandering past Secessionist façades and thinking about mass graves.

Home is where the heart is. The problem is that mine isn’t here—not in Budapest, not when Israel is under attack. A dear friend offered us her place, but we feel too old for sleepovers. Maybe we’ll head to the Tatras, but I packed the wrong shoes for war-adjacent alpine hiking. Or maybe airspace will reopen and we’ll rush home to… whatever comes next.

It’s Purim, after all.

A season of masks, reversals, dark jokes, and impossible timing.

A story where everything is hidden—until suddenly, it isn’t.