Ordinary Life in a Time of War

Weekdays I get up early.

After davening I make breakfast: oatmeal, orange juice and coffee.

Now that I am retired, I do chores: make the beds, do the laundry, shop at a super close by.

Sometimes I get together with a friend for coffee during the day. In the evenings my wife and I have dinner at home, or sometimes out with friends.

Ordinary life goes on.

Yet our country is at war.

* * *

I never lived through a war before. I was born after the end of World War II, during which my father served as rabbi in small Midwestern US cities. My mother recalled that in the fall of 1943, troop trains dropped off Jewish GIs so they could attend High Holiday services in my father’s synagogue in northern Ohio. The Sisterhood made food packages for the soldiers when they left for battlefields overseas.

Later my parents lived in northern Indiana. The summer heat was so stifling that my father cooled off in the tub. My mother dealt with boredom by taking the train to Chicago to spend time in Marshall Field’s department store.

Across the sea, historic and terrible events were taking place: battles with many casualties; armies moving across Europe; huge sea battles in the Pacific; the Holocaust, whose enormity was coming into focus.

What did ordinary people in the US do during those stormy years? They followed the news. My mother referred to Hillel Kook’s 1943 rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden to protest the murder by then of two million Jews.  Some people prepared packages for soldiers, helped support families of the fallen.

But most of their life was ordinary. They shopped and prepared meals. They sent their children to school, helped with homework. They worked at their jobs. Some evenings they went to the movies. In 1942 many saw Yankee Doodle Dandy, in which James Cagney portrayed George M. Cohan, who wrote the film’s title song.

* * *

One Monday this summer we took a walking tour of the Nachala’ot neighborhood of Jerusalem. Knots of soldiers in uniform sat and listened to a tour guide discuss the area’s varied history. The soldiers looked bored.

The shuk nearby pulsed with activity. Music blared, neon lights flashed on and off. Swarms of young people surged down the narrow lanes looking for places to eat and drink or hang out.

Some of these eager young people may have been on leave from the army. Others would be joining the IDF before long. Not tonight, though. The kids had set their sights on more agreeable things.

* * *

On a warm Friday morning the tables outside the coffee shop are filled. Old men talk and joke. Young matrons sip as they watch small children.  Counter help from the shop bring out orders, clear the tables of those who leave.

Street traffic is brisk. A delivery truck has blocked one lane. As a car tries to squeeze around it, motorists on both sides of the street blare their horns in frustration. Pedestrians thread their way between the tables, to shop at the market, buy flowers or newspapers from a kiosk, browse at a street library.

As they do each week, a group of women from elsewhere pass through the crowds to a nearby stairway. Their leader totes a platform to the foot of the stairs. The others take their places on the steps, facing her and holding sheets.

The leader gives a short speech about hostages and the need to bring them home. She calls out a name.

Habayta achshav, say the others, Home now.

The leader reads more names, one after the other. Habayta achshav, say the others, Home now. Their voices are soft, their delivery rote. No one pays them any attention. When the visitors are done, they pack their things and leave, ignored.

Why? Don’t Israelis care?

Of course Israelis care. No one cares more intensely or more often than Israelis.  No other country lists every single war casualty, terror victim, or hostages not just by name but with photos, biographies, and searing recollections of those left behind. Nowhere but Israel do crowds flock to funerals and shiva houses of people they do not personally know.

In addition, many Israelis pack sandwiches, pick fruit, bake challot for soldiers, arrange for barbeques for the troops near the front, which may be all of an hour or two away.

Israelis care very deeply. But Israelis also live their lives. They shop online. They stream Netflix. They go on holiday, even in wartime: to Eilat, to France, to Dubai.

Those drinking coffee, or preparing Shabbat, or just taking a stroll, feel no obligation to disturb the rhythms of their daily life for murmured rituals performed by people who drop in from elsewhere.

* * *

In his novel Adjusting Sights, Te’um Kavvanot, Rabbi Haim Sabato tells of a soldier, also named Haim, assigned to a tank unit fighting the Syrians during the Yom Kippur War.  On his way to Jerusalem for a brief leave, Haim meets a Canadian volunteer, who is giving rides to soldiers in his rented Ford Escort. He offers Haim a ride, pressing him for news of what the war is really like.

Please, thinks Haim, leave me alone. It’s too much for me. Tell, repeats the Canadian.

Haim tells him of a tank he saw. Dazed soldiers with bruises stood on the turret. Are you out of your minds? they said. Syrians are ahead. Turn back, quick!

Haim thanks the driver. I get off here, he says.

The eyes of the Canadian fill with tears. Soldier! he says in broken Hebrew. Soldier! I also to do.

When Haim makes no response, the Canadian reaches into his pocket, pulls out a wad of green dollar bills, and sticks them into the soldier’s hand. Take, soldier! he says.

The soldier pulls his hand away. What’s the matter with you, mister, he almost shouts, Do you think I’m a charity case?

The Canadian is crying. Soldier, please! Take! I must…..I also to do.

In this deft passage, Sabato sketches the vast and unbridgeable gap between those who serve and those who wish they could, or at least understand, but cannot. Not everyone who wants to, says Haim, author and character, can also to do.

Some are called to serve. Others, however well-meaning, do best to stay out of the way and live their ordinary lives. After all, what more do soldiers themselves hope for, someday, than a quiet, ordinary life for themselves and those they fight for?

Sometimes Israelis even sing about this. Next year, they muse, next year we will sit on the porch and count migrating birds.

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* * *

The weather today is fine. I will stop at the pharmacy. Then I will take a walk on Binyamin MiTudela Street. This skirts and overlooks Emek HaMatzlevah, the Valley of the Cross. The vista is lovely, sometimes topped by graceful clouds.

Below and to the left is a hulking medieval monastery. Looming above and to the right is the Knesset.

As I walk, I will think of the people who founded this country, who fought in its many wars. I will think of those who gave much, of those who gave all, of those who made it possible for a retired man to take this pleasant walk on this ordinary day.

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