Holidays!

I am a little late with this week’s blog. Well of course I am! It’s the week of Sukkot which ends our fall holiday season and just like everyone else in Israel, I am postponing things till אחרי החגים (after the holidays).

Sukkot is a joyful holiday. I love it!

Living outside Philadelphia as a child, we used to decorate our screened-in porch with strings of popcorn, cranberries, and paper loops. Of course it wasn’t a kosher sukkah because it had a green translucent roof that turned the tomatoes to a most peculiar color. But that’s kosher style. And it gave me a lasting tie to this holiday.

This is a big vacation week for everyone in Israel. The airport notified us that the parking lots were full, so please arrive by public transportation! It’s really nice that everyone is on vacation at the same time so you can visit with family and friends. In the Jerusalem area most workplaces are on vacation, or half-days. Still I checked my work mail once at the beginning of the week, to see that we had finally gotten through our ISO 27001 audit (by a non-Israeli auditor). Woohoo! That was worth checking for!

In the middle of this happy holiday comes the news yesterday morning (Wednesday 30 September) of the flydubai plane incident. It starts with the hijacking warning alarm sent by the plane, its dive into Saudi Arabia, and a flurry of inconsistent news flashes. It ends, miraculously, with all passengers safely home in Israel, the co-pilot in Saudi custody, and the captain receiving urgent medical care. For me and most Israelis this is an obvious terrorist attack—don’t take my word for it, take the word of the captain who sent the hijacking signal! For the media, it’s maybe a brawl between the personnel in the cockpit, or just the plane suddenly dived or … anything to avoid the obvious description of the situation.

As if we were to describe the war inflicted upon Israel on 7 October (Simchat Torah, the very last day of the fall holidays) as a deliberate plot by Israel to gain a chance to wipe out all of Gaza. Oh, wait, that is exactly the spin that so many in the media and social networks have tried to put on those tragic, horrific hours, and the weeks and months of missiles and rockets that came after.

Well, hell NO. We won’t give up the joy of Sukkot and of Simchat Torah. We will enjoy, dance, pray, eat (of course eat), visit friends and family, travel, vacation. We will LIVE.

עם ישראל חי! (The People of Israel Live)