When Home Is Under Fire — and You’re Not There

I live in the United States, but Israel is home.

Lately, that simple truth has felt anything but simple.

Life here keeps moving—work, meetings, daily routines. And at the very same time, my children, my grandchildren, my brother, my two sisters-in-law, my nieces and nephews are running to shelters.

Not figuratively. Literally.

This isn’t abstract.

It’s my family.

They are running to shelters.
I am off to my next meeting.

I don’t hear sirens. I’m not running anywhere.

How do you go through an ordinary day when the people you love are living a completely different reality?

I keep coming back to one question: can we actually feel someone else’s reality? Not care about it, not follow updates—but truly feel it?

Knowing is not the same as living it.

If we can’t fully close that gap, then the question becomes:

What are we supposed to do about it?

Doing nothing feels wrong.

I tried something small.

I searched for the Home Front Command alerts in the app store and downloaded it.

Now, whenever an alert goes off in Israel, wherever I am, I stop.

Just for a few seconds.

And I say a few words of prayer.

Prayer helps. I know it to be true.

I’m not being woken up in the middle of the night to run to shelter.

But I am connected.

Maybe that’s the point.

Maybe we are not meant to fully understand what others are experiencing.

But we are meant to respond.

To interrupt our day—sometimes even our sleep.
To be present, even from afar.
To refuse to live as if nothing is happening.

Because Israel is not just a place.

It is our home.

And when your home is under fire, distance doesn’t remove responsibility.

I don’t have a perfect answer.

But I know this: being far away doesn’t mean we are absent.