My War Room: How to Be Blind to Ballistics

Notes from a mother, teacher, and reluctant war correspondent

Well I guess today I won’t be talking about AI, or about menopause or the complexities of being a mother because my head simply isn’t there. All my issues of last week—from the seemingly urgent to faintly irritating—have faded into a hazy background of pre-war life.

Now I’m going into survival mode of sorts, being propelled weirdly backwards and forwards at the same time, sensing my own helplessness when faced with ballistic missiles, F-15s and blustering tweets from world leaders that neither reassure nor appease.

Most terrifying of all is feeling the earth shift under my feet, the fact I’m going to go into free fall any second. After all, I spend my days juggling a work routine, the technicalities of urban life and family obligations. I sometimes kid myself that I’m winging it. Time and time again, I’m lulled into a false sense of being in control.

Then I awaken to a morning like October 7th or Friday the 13th and realize how foolish I am.

Worst of all, I inhabit the country that is pulled helter-skelter into everything. And I mean, everything. Online, offline, wherever.

Where am I going here? What am I doing with the burning rubble of my mind that I thought I could talk to, soothe, and reason with? It’s the very same mind that, in the face of the chaos and destruction I woke up to this morning, did an about-face.

I am getting WhatsApps about ‘tool boxes’ and ’emotional first aid’—but I feel like I’m at the foot of one of those destroyed buildings, trying to help the people trapped inside while armed with a spoon. There is so little I can do.

Ironically, the only thing I can do is save myself from being sucked into that black hole via Facebook feeds, reels, updates and the dreaded news.

My husband reminds me that relatively speaking, I have little to complain about. My girls are stuck in the US, this is true. But they are safe, with family who will take care of them for as long as it takes.

So the coffee shops are closed. Boo hoo. If only he understood how I need to find the sanctuary of the smell of yeast and sound of an industrial coffee grinder, even if it’s just for an hour.

Stop moaning. I’m in my apartment with a mamad (sealed room) five steps away. There are millions more in this country for whom a safe room is not a given, who have to think twice about where they go. Those buildings—even their stairwells weren’t safe enough. I can’t even.

The school has scheduled a Zoom. Don’t they understand that the word ‘Zoom’ is synonymous with the very trauma we are trying to escape? I think we’d probably be better off sending each other telegrams: “Hello STOP… am well STOP… kids are playing Taki in the mamad STOP.”

We gaze at each other’s online faces devoid of makeup, one teacher still in her pajamas and proud of it too, joking, keeping up the spirit when our spirits are sitting between the cracks, like old bits of chewing gum. But a school is a school and it has to do what a school does, even though it’s the last week of term.

My twelfth graders aren’t scared—they are just very mad. Their prom might not happen. They have been waiting for this ridiculous parade of fancy dresses and endless speeches for the entire year. It is the pinnacle of their high school existence, whether I like it or not.

They do not care about world events. They care about the here and now. They care about fun. They care about ‘seize the day.’ What’s going on in Iran or the US or anywhere beyond their neighborhood isn’t really within their mental and emotional grasp.

Last night I was out with Avi for our second walk of the day (what else is there to do to break the monotony?) when the school sent a message that I’m supposed to have a Zoom meeting with my class at 10am today. That’s the funniest joke I’ve heard in a while.

I’ve got twelfth graders. They barely come to school. Everything is low stakes right now. Their grades are in, their school lives are basically over. If they come to the Zoom meeting, it will be to talk to me. And I’m sure their sleep is much more important to them than a chat with little old me about their feelings. These kids don’t get up before midday unless they have to.

Most likely they did a ‘leila lavan’ or all-nighter with the first alert, which was at 1am. They did it voluntarily. Others had no choice.

Everyone in this country has a different way of dealing with this Armageddon crisis. We naturally worry about the younger generation, growing up in a situation that is so far from normal they might be living on Mars right now. But their coping mechanisms are entirely different from ours, too.

A year and a half of war since October 7th is a larger chunk of their lives than ours, a greater part of the reality they know as life. I went through two decades when the word ‘war’ was so distant—which somehow made it more scary than for these guys.

We lean into whatever we know and are familiar with. The countrywide shutdown and quiet streets are reminiscent of Covid. There, a microscopic foe could land you in the ICU, but most likely it wouldn’t. We are reminded of that dreaded day, October 7th, when Hamas terrorists and Gazan citizens went on a bloodthirsty rampage and ripped at the heart of our nation. Then Hezbollah and the Houthis joined the party.

And now Iran (or those who run it), the puppet master of the entire shit show, has reared its ugly head.

I think of warheads in neat rows being inspected by seemingly tiny uniformed men in military jeeps. I think of hateful rhetoric. Of quiet whispers of support from everyday Iranian citizens. Of women in jail, looking up to the light, hoping things will change. We are waiting for the poor vilified citizens of Iran to take to the streets, as they did in ’79. Then, hopefully, the world will become a better place.

How does my life—Ella Ben Emanuel, of gym, work and family, coffee with girlfriends and the occasional guilty purchase—meet geopolitics, Middle East flashpoints, Mr. Trump and Bibi, death, carnage and destruction? I don’t know. But one thing is true: the only giant entity that I have control over is my unsettled mind. At least sometimes, anyway.

My son has called me. He spent a lot of Shabbat in the basement with his in-laws, baby Ariel—my grandson—happily oblivious. Everyone has their ‘where were you for Shabbat’ story, and then I feel selfish because I forget how no two sealed rooms are alike.

Some are store rooms that are stifflingly hot and designed for one human at best. Last night many of them were occupied by two families or more. Or people crowded into a parking lot, or crouched by the side of a building. The country had a sleepless night—wailing sirens, the sky lit up with the worst kind of fireworks, screens flashing and the cry of small babies.

Whereas me? I just lay on my daughter’s bed and resisted the temptation to see what was going on elsewhere. Here in South Jerusalem, no sirens were heard. Our hearts were on alert instead.

I think about the week I had planned: meetings with students and parents, tearful hugs, speeches and jokes, choreographed dances—girls and boys. Microphones and overhead lights, expensive outfits and matching shoes.

We are used to our plans being cancelled. Every time we book a flight or close on a wedding hall, deep down in that darkest corner, every Israeli has their emotional insurance package. As long as our enemies are armed to the teeth with weapons pointed against us, nothing is guaranteed. But my students are still pretty mad.

I miss my daughters. My younger one is here quite a bit—I miss the distraction of her plans, her voice yelling on the phone as she applies makeup in the mirror, the sound of ice cubes in her coffee. She should be here, filling the empty spaces of silence between two rather calm middle-aged people in a spacious apartment in Jerusalem. But she’s quite far away. And nobody knows when she and her sister are returning.

During our Zoom teachers’ ‘check-in,’ we talk about how we are doing in breakout rooms. In what turns into a strange game of one-upmanship, I tell them my daughter’s plane made a U-turn back to the US. The response from my colleague is the story of her sister-in-law, who was literally about to land in Israel when their plane too was turned back. The woman is now stuck in Cyprus with her family.

My colleague remarks casually that it wouldn’t be bad to be stuck in Cyprus right now. I can’t help but agree. I wouldn’t mind sitting in a quiet restaurant by the sea, waiting for my Greek salad and grilled fish served by a polite yet indifferent waiter, and not looking for the nearest sealed room.

In the meantime, it’s back to the non-routine. I held back on returning my marked bagruyot because the thought of more monotony while my mind is doing an Irish jig is somewhat daunting. But you know what? When things are bad, you find your comforts in the strangest places. The head tester said it would do me good.

So it’s time for me to go into the Ministry dinosaur online system and start checking diplomacy matriculation papers.

Diplomacy—now that’s a bit of light relief.