Is the war really over? How over is it? How do I know?

The other night I went to sleep with just my underwear on.

I hadn’t done that in a long time. I’ve always been wearing at least a pair of shorts and a t-shirt. Many nights, I went to sleep with my shoes on. In case there was a siren. In case it was time again to run down the stairs with my children to the basement bomb shelter because of a rocket attack.

But now there’s a cease-fire agreement with Hamas, and Trump at least says the war is actually over. But I’m not so sure. Maybe it depends on what war you’re talking about or what it means for something to really be over. For the people who viewed this war from afar, there is probably little awareness of the little, everyday ways it changed our lives, even the lives of those of us who were relatively safe from physical harm, like myself and my family, thanks to the Holy One. And I find I’m constantly unsure about whether to give those little changes up, or if they are a permanent part of my life now. Like on Shabbat.

For many years, it’s been my practice not to carry electronics with me on Shabbat. But during the war, especially if I thought I might be separated from my family, I did. Again, in case there was an attack. To make sure we could check in with each other and make sure everyone was ok. But have things now changed enough that I can go back to my old practice, or will I always be carrying it now (if turned off)?

It’s not just concrete practices like carrying a phone that I’m starting to think about differently. There are also more subtle and complex things — things I really don’t totally understand yet — things to do with feelings. Like how irritable I’ve been since the ceasefire and hostage-release deal was first announced.

Yeah, I said I’ve been irritable. Maybe you would expect me to be elated, to be celebrating. And I certainly do have some positive feelings. But there’s something else, too. Maybe it’s disappointment. After all, Hamas is still operating in Gaza and antisemitism remains high worldwide, despite all the sacrifices that were made. Maybe also I’m just starting to let go a bit after so many months of suppressing my emotions in order to survive, and in order to appear to be a “firm hand on the wheel” to my children, a presence that didn’t deny that we were living through a sh*tstorm where terrible things were happening, but that somehow also communicated that yi-hi-yeh beseder — that everything would ultimately be ok. I can breathe now. I can feel now. That’s all welcome, but it can also open the floodgates to all sorts of things. Like anger and disappointment.

One way I suppressed my emotions during the war — one way I protected myself — had to do with restricting my relationships. I started to be very careful about accepting friend requests on Facebook, and I changed my settings so that strangers couldn’t leave comments on my posts. It’s not that I didn’t know that all the hate and antisemitism was out there, I just didn’t want it shoved in my face.

But really, maybe it wasn’t the most vile hate from strangers that I dreaded the most — it was the lack of empathy for Israelis’ suffering that I felt from so many American Jews who I would have expected to be our supporters. This started as soon as the horrible pogrom of October 7 happened. One rabbinic colleague shocked me then by writing about “cleansing the timeline” in something he posted about a family Simha. When I reached out to him, offering him mazel tov on the Simha, but also sharing how painful it was to hear him using language that echoed the worst of murderous Nazi antisemitism — as if we Israelis were “some kind of dirt” that needed to be cleaned up — he was nothing but unrepentant and defensive. It felt to me like he really didn’t think we were fully human.

And then, along with unempathetic expressions like this came the weakening support for us from these same Jewish “friends” as the war went on, and Hamas’ propaganda project of delegitimizing the very existence of a Jewish state found more traction on university campuses and in world capitals. It has been so painful to feel abandoned like this in our time of greatest need.

In a recent Forward piece, Tulane professor Ilana M. Horowitz writes about a kind of self-silencing she sees going on among her young Jewish students in her “Sociology of American Jewish life” class. Asked to write five words they associate with American Jews, they chose to write nothing at all about the two key aspects of any discussion about what it means to be Jewish in 2025 — 1) antisemitism and 2) Israel.

“My students are exhausted,” she writes. “Not physically tired, but soul-weary from the constant barrage of antisemitism they encounter online,” she adds. “My students are keenly aware that even among close friends, there might be hidden antisemitism. They’ve learned to perform constant risk assessments about when and where it’s safe to express their views.”

I’m much older than these students, and I no longer live in the United States (having moved to Israel over 10 years ago). But I still have a close emotional connection to the lives of American Jews. And I share with these students a sense of exhaustion. And I too am constantly engaging in risk assessments about whether it’s emotionally safe to engage in dialogue about Israel or antisemitism. Will I have another painful and dehumanizing encounter like the one with my “cleansing” friend, one that will just “rub salt in the wound” over the incalculable pain I feel about the horrible things that happened two years ago in the parts of Israel near Gaza?

I admire the warriors, like my former NYU classmate Mijal Bitton, and their courage to speak up and face down the haters on places like college campuses. But I know I am not that kind of fighter. I just want to live. My fight is just to try and live a good and full life — for me and my children — despite the haters and those who are trying to expel and kill us. And now that the war is maybe over, I just want to try and reenter life in all the ways I suspended or denied. Maybe it needs to start with a trip to Tel Aviv, to see the ocean, and the life of that young and vibrant city. I have barely gone more than a few kilometers from my house since the war started. I’ve just been reluctant to travel far from home, not because rationally it’s really been any safer than anywhere else. But there’s been a kind of emotional safety in staying close to home and never being so far from my family.

******

Just this morning, for the first time in a long time, I turned on the radio at 6am, as used to be my usual practice. They recite the Shema there on Reshet Bet at 6am, and then there are the headlines — the headlines and reports of what is happening with the hostages that I long found too intense to start the day with. This morning, there was still some about the hostages, but I found the headlines interesting and emotionally tolerable.

Maybe that was a new beginning.