War Stories from the Back of the Front

Say Cheese

The routine rushed morning conversation with my Yafo-living daughter and mother of three, takes place as she stands on line at the supermarket.

“Ima, last night, one of the Iranian missiles hit a building in Petach Tikva, around the block from where S and Y live. Windows in their brand-new apartment jumped their tracks from the impact. Their kids are fine but Y is terrified,” my daughter reports.

“So, what’s with end of year school plans? “I ask in order to change the subject away from such distressing news about friends of my kids.

“Well, the girls are on Zoom in the morning with their teachers but it’s really hard for them to concentrate, and hard for the teachers too,” she said.

“Kids are missing school and each other,” she added. “The two-day camping trip to the north for the sixth grade has been cancelled and D is disappointed. Her scouts end of year sail is postponed as is the sixth grade graduation party and the play, based on Wicked, the sixth graders were rehearsing.”

I also know that two of my three granddaughters are part of a Yafo dance ensemble that was to perform at the Israel Festival in Jerusalem. Cancelled as well.

“You and your sister grew up during the Intifada – an era of terror attacks, of suicide bombers and busses blowing up. So much death and destruction. Then there was the Scud War when we had to cower in our living rooms or shelters wearing gas masks and you guys were so much braver than either your Abba or me. There were peace treaties or almost peace treaties along the way but the conflict and the killing never stopped.”

“Now my grandkids, the third generation of our family, who grew up and into Corona, are the targets of Iranian missile warfare,” I said. “When will Israel find peace and kids have normal lives?”

Silence

“250 grams of sliced yellow cheese double wrapped please, and 300 grams of white cheese spread,” I hear my daughter respond. “Gotta go Im

Recycling

After receiving the all clear from the Home Front Command, I continue my day, taking old newspapers and a bag of empty plastic containers and bottles to the recycling station near my Jerusalem apartment. Outside the apartment building next door, a Magen David Adom ambulance and a firetruck with flashing lights have parked, but the emergency seems to have been resolved.  The ambulance driver is not going to tell me what happened so I just thanked him for his service as he pulled out to go. Anyway, probably someone got stuck in the saferoom.

Beautiful morning. Empty streets mostly. Kind of a Yom Kippur vibe all around but scarier.

No one but me at the recycling station where the yellow bin for clothing is overflowing with peoples’ hand me downs no one is claiming.

A dirty old car pulls up to the curb as I am tumbling my plastic stuff into the orange bin. I turn to see the driver, a 50-something year old guy with a car full of plastic and glass bottles. He extracts himself from his vehicle with great difficulty, using his crutches to leverage himself out onto the asphalt.

“Do you have bottles?” he asked me.

“At home” I say, “I didn’t bring them.”

“Do you live near here? I can pick them up,” he offers.

“Not worth your effort,” I say, “it’s only a few.”

“This is my livelihood, how I feed my family,” he explains.

Using one of his crutches to poke through the purple bottle recycling bin, he pulls a few glass and plastic bottles out, each one bringing a deposit of 30 agarot (very roughly about 10 cents) and tosses them onto the floor of his car through the open window.

Then he pauses looks at me stuffing my old newspapers into the already full green paper bin.

“You and I, we have no trouble getting along,” he says. “It’s the crap leadership, yours and ours. All they care about is power and money.”

Then he swears in Arabic.

“Majnoun,” I say. (Crazy in Arabic. One of the 10 useful words I know.)

“Meshuga,” he replies with a sad smile.

I want to say Salaam to him as I leave but I can’t bring myself to form the word and release it into the world. It seems flat and forced, empty of meaning.

Nonetheless, we wish each other well and I walk home quickly in case there’s a siren urging us to seek shelter.

The Conversation
A gentle midafternoon breeze comes through my shaded bedroom window as I lay on my bed reading a book. My phone rings. It’s a video WhatsApp call from Chicago friend Marty who I met on kibbutz 50 years ago. Despite his leaving Israel after 6 years, he has maintained close family-like friendships with people he met on the kibbutz and one of them is me.

“Oof, I look terrible,” I exclaim, “I hate video calls.”

“I wanted to check in and see how you are doing. It’s dark on my side I can barely see you,” he reassures me.

He does most of the talking, wanting to share the success of his meetings with groups, churches, synagogues and high school students during which he tells the extraordinary story of his parents, Nana and Aunt…..all Holocaust survivors. His parents had lived in Pre State Palestine, served in the Hagana and eventually against their wishes resettled in the US but Israel and Zionism were always part of the family conversation. He is proud of the impact he believes he is having on youngsters through the talks he gives and the conversations that take place afterwards.

“I’m also involved with the Wiesenthal Center and am having dinner this evening with the Midwest Director who took him on as a speaker he tells me proudly”.

We haven’t spoken since his trip to Poland.
“Auschwitz Birkenau was so touristy that I found it sterile and not as powerful an experience as I was hoping.”

I told him how some years ago, I had completed a course at Yad Vashem to be a guide for March of the Living. We had a five-day educational tour of Poland. I told him that I found the power and the horror in small moments, in the unexpected: like the one red open-toed sandal on the heap of shoes at Auschwitz; the dirty looks we encountered from Poles on the streets of Warsaw who seemed to understand we were speaking Hebrew, the apartment complex very close to a Holocaust memorial site in Warsaw surely built on the bones of dead Jews. I felt ghosts.

He yearns to be here with his people in their time of need. He regrets that he left and never served in the army when he could have. He lets it all out with me.

His pain, his fear of the peril we are facing, understanding that all the pro-Israel activity there in Chicago is no substitute for being here, on kibbutz volunteering or in Jerusalem having a barbecue with his longtime friends and sharing the sirens huddling in our saferooms, while the chicken wings burn on the charcoals.

He suddenly bursts out crying.

“I’m sorry,” he apologizes, taking his glasses off to wipe the tears away sitting in the kitchen of his Skokie condominium. “I haven’t cried like this in a while.”

I get it. He is a 2Gen son. He tells his parents’ story over and over again and misses them.

He is married to a woman he adores and they have a wonderful life together.  She doesn’t share his passion for Israel but she understands him and supports him.  He is thrilled that Renie, his daughter, a therapist, is right there with him, and with her, he shares his grief and concern because she has been to Israel and to his kibbutz several times and loves this country almost as much as he does.

So, he cries and I hear him, his pain, his longing, his regret for the road not taken.

All I say to him is “Marty, it’s been a long time since I made a man cry.”

He starts to laugh and frankly so do I.

Shabbat Interrupted

On Thursday, I was in the kitchen happily concocting dishes to be served at our family Shabbat meal he next evening. There was a cold chowder, Turkish boureq, two kinds of salmon; one cold and one warm. But Thursday’s overnight Iranian missile fire into the heart of Israel put a stop to those plans.

“Dear neighbors, I have half a Shabbat meal made and my family will not be joining me because of the security situation. Perhaps it is the same for you, so let’s gather for the Shabbat meal over good food and wine, great conversation and prayer for the country and our soldiers and pilots. If you’re frightened to walk outside come to me through the underground parking. Bring what you have and Ill see you at 7:30

We were seven, all of us over the age of 70, some of us members of the Co-Housing in Israel group who moved into this apartment complex together five years ago. But they were all late. A 7:30 siren to go to the shelter kept six of us from joining until 7:50 via the underground parking lot.

We opened with Shalom Aleichem (Peace be with You), followed by Kiddush and Hamotzi, enjoying the fresh warmed challah dipped in a bean and garlic dip made by one of my guests.

Conversation ranged from issues facing us as tenants of this complex to cancelled travel plans (a multigenerational family bicycle trip to Austria) and how our kids and grandkids both in Israel and abroad are dealing with the missile attacks on Israel, the hostage crisis and war in Gaza. A lot of wine was imbibed.

There was a lively conversation about The Netanyahus, a book many of us had read. We drew the parallels between the arrogant, brilliant father and the well arrogant, brilliant son. One of us went to Cornell and remembers BenZion Netanyahu as pretty much of an outsider on the college campus.

The Islamic Guard enabled us to finish our meal, but just before dessert, our phones let loose with the blood curdling buzzer from the Home Front command ordered us all to seek shelter. Seven of us crammed into my saferoom. I brought in a bottle of cold soda water and turned on the fan. We heard muted booms and those of us who use their phones on Shabbat were monitoring the situation on the group’s behalf.

While waiting out the missile barrage, people started talking about their health issues which is what happens when more than one 70 gets together with friends. Two began describing recent back surgeries. I asked them to back off because such graphic details make me queasy.

Instead, I pulled out my neglected ukelele which one of my guests plays. He tuned it and serenaded us for a while. After 10 minutes there was still no all clear so I crept out and gathered up seven spoons and the Ben and Jerry’s vanilla ice cream. Dessert in the saferoom.

The Shabbat mood was subdued as we learned that a number of neighborhoods in the country had sustained significant damage and maybe fatalities from the Iranian missiles which had slammed into residential buildings.

We, who live near the promenade  from which we look east to the spires and mosques of the Old City,  speculated how Jerusalem had thus far escaped most of the targeted missile attacks.

“Because of the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa Mosque” I said. “We live ten minutes from one of Islam’s most sacred sites. They wouldn’t dare.”

“Which is to say,” quipped one of my neighbors “that the Golden Dome is more effective than the Iron Dome.”