24 years ago, I was almost murdered

My mother likes to tell the story of my birth, the grueling 36 hours of contractions, the inept and anxious Resident who didn’t know how to properly place an epidural, the oppressive heat of that Summer in The City. At 16:30, I came into the world, the first daughter of the first daughter (Mom), of the first daughter (Bubby Z”L).

Loaded with expectations in a post-hippie Woodstock decade, into a world that did not include internet, cell phones, computers or cable television. Where my brother and I played Lego for hours at a time, woke up insanely early on Sunday morning and watched five hours of cartoons before our parents emerged from their weekend slumber. (I can still sing their theme songs in my head!) In an ancient time where if you were bored, you went outside and played with your friends [Gasp, outside? Fresh Air and sunlight?!], or read a book, actually held paper in your hand, instead of doomscrolling.

In a school system that switched me and a small group of my classmates in the third grade from writing left-handed to right-handed – to make everyone the same – while demanding that we all learn cursive. Every morning, before we started classes in our Jewish Day School, we recited the Pledge of Allegiance, sang three different variations of the American National Anthem, followed by Hatikvah, gazing at the Israeli flag, hand on our hearts. We were proud to be American Jews, doubly proud to be New Yorkers, and valued the highest moral standard that the United States represented to the rest of the globe.

In other words, according to my snarky teenage daughter, in the age of the dinosaurs.

Today is my 24^th birthday.

I am neither delusional, nor suffering from early onset dementia, nor do I think I can magically turn back the clock of time.

24 years ago today, a bullet from a Palestinian sniper missed my head by two inches, on the Tunnel Road on the way home from work in Efrat.

24 years ago today, at approximately 16:30, I was granted a second chance, a second opportunity to redirect my life and make different choices, once of course I had dealt with my PTSD.

Especially in these times, when families of hostages and soldiers pray every day for their loved ones to come home safely, I thank God for my life no matter how difficult it may feel to me on any given day; for my incredible daughter who as a small child named this day Saved Day, and celebrates it every year; and for having the chance every day to leave the world a little better than it was when I came into it.

On this day, I want to celebrate the families whose sons and daughters and parents and grandparents came home from Hell, who have the chance, surrounded and supported by those who love them, to work through their trauma and appreciate their second chance.  Like Israeli-American freed hostage Sagui Dekel-Chen, who gets to read bedtime stories to his two girls and tuck them in at night after almost 500 days.

On this day I pray for the collective soul of the Israeli people, who will not be whole until all 73 come home.

On this day, I want to dream (foolishly perhaps) about a time when we are no longer at war with our Arab neighbors, when all of us in the region can co-exist quietly near each other; when we accept that we all share the same DNA, and that we humans are but (terribly destructive) microbes on the organism that is Gaia. A Cold Peace perhaps, but still, the acknowledgement that we all want to enjoy time spent with friends and family, earn a living with honor, and not dread listening to the news or carry the existential threat that our relatives will not come home alive.

I look forward to a world where sanity and humanity return to the forefront.