This piece is part of our Wit­ness­ing series, which shares pieces from Israeli authors and authors in Israel, as well as the expe­ri­ences of Jew­ish writ­ers around the globe in the after­math of Octo­ber 7th.

It is crit­i­cal to under­stand his­to­ry not just through the books that will be writ­ten lat­er, but also through the first-hand tes­ti­monies and real-time account­ing of events as they occur. At Jew­ish Book Coun­cil, we under­stand the val­ue of these writ­ten tes­ti­mo­ni­als and of shar­ing these indi­vid­ual expe­ri­ences. It’s more impor­tant now than ever to give space to these voic­es and narratives.

When every plat­form on my phone dings and rings, bleeps and burps, I know Fri­day the 13th will be ominous. 

From my first cousin in San Fran­cis­co who vis­it­ed Israel in April I read: Sor­ry for what is like­ly an inter­rupt­ed night’s sleep for all. Hope you are safe.

From my Israeli friend who lives near my moth­er in north­ern California: 

חושבת עליכם ומקווה לטוב 

From my French friend in Paris: Où êtes-vous? com­ment … don­nez des nou­velles, on pense telle­ment à vous et au courage du pays, notre coeur est avec vous. 

From Mar­cia, one of my best child­hood friends, en route to Tel Aviv to cel­e­brate her six­ti­eth birth­day: We turned around after 3½ hours… land­ed back at LAX… get­ting off the plane. You guys okay?

A year ago, when she asked me if she and her hus­band could vis­it this June, I’d hes­i­tat­ed. How to explain to an Amer­i­can what it’s like to be Israeli right now? To focus only on this moment since no one can fore­see the future? COVID was one thing, but Octo­ber 7 and every­thing that has ensued over the past 600 some­thing days has ham­mered home the ambi­gu­i­ty of this time. 

Since return­ing to the coun­try where my French hus­band, Philippe, and I met and mar­ried in 2011, I fol­low a strict news diet: only read on a need-to-know basis. The night before, a par­tic­i­pant in my yoga and book event in Raanana asked if the event was still hap­pen­ing due to the new secu­ri­ty restric­tions, and a friend at the US Embassy advised me to can­cel it and stay close to shel­ter. My hus­band and I had gone to bed sens­ing impend­ing dan­ger. Thanks to heavy-duty earplugs, used simul­ta­ne­ous­ly to block his snor­ing and the flight path above us in Tel Aviv, I slept bliss­ful­ly, unaware of the may­hem in the sky. Unaware of the new dimen­sions of the wretched pow­er strug­gle with some of our neigh­bors. After four­teen years in this coun­try, I am still ill-pre­pared to respond to the flur­ry of mes­sages from afar, to the ris­ing anx­i­ety in my chest, to the news head­lines: ​“War Against Iran,” ​“Inside Israel’s strike,”“Israel launch­es Oper­a­tion Ris­ing Lion.” In bed, I shiv­er, know­ing what awaits us, feel­ing the echoes of last year’s Iran­ian bal­lis­tic mis­sile strike in my bones. 

My daugh­ter-in-law and grand­daugh­ter spent the past two nights with us since our son has been abroad. When they wake in the morn­ing, I update her about the expect­ed attack and Ben Guri­on Airport’s com­plete closure. 

Once again, we are sealed off from the world and sur­round­ed by ene­mies; our only way out of this volatile region, blocked. 

I urge our youngest daugh­ter and her boyfriend to come over, since they have nei­ther a mamad (a room with rein­forced con­crete walls and ceil­ings) in their apart­ment nor a mik­lat (pub­lic shel­ters, often under­ground) in their build­ing. None of our kids do. Most apart­ments built before the First Gulf War in 1991 don’t have any form of shel­ter, a shock­ing fact for many.

When, mid-morn­ing, a Red Alert warns of an incom­ing mis­sile, we enter the stair­well, wrong­ly believ­ing that our build­ing is for­ti­fied like a bunker. When it rings again dur­ing din­ner, I’m sure Shab­bat will not be rest­ful. I also feel sure that human­i­ty is reach­ing the end of a cycle — begin­ning with us.

The week­end is a blur of unwel­come alerts, dis­rupt­ed sleep, and ear-split­ting booms. As time ticks for­ward, we lose track of the cal­en­dar. Pass the baby from one set of arms to anoth­er. Take cur­tailed walks in our neighborhood.

One late after­noon, Philippe and I help a friend cel­e­brate his birth­day, sip­ping wine and eat­ing apple cake on his sun-drenched bal­cony. His girl­friend, a psy­chother­a­pist, sens­es my foul mood and invites me to have a pri­vate moment with her in their mamad.

“This is a safe space for you to say any­thing,” she says, set­ting a sev­en-minute timer. ​“Can you tell me some­thing good that hap­pened today or yes­ter­day? Anything?”

I hes­i­tate. ​“My grand­daugh­ter is adorably wide-eyed and curious.” 

“Good. What else?”

“My daugh­ter-in-law cooked a deli­cious fish lunch.”

“Good.” She hands me a throw pil­low. ​“Now I see you’re strug­gling. I want you to let it out. All of it. Don’t let those feel­ings get trapped in your body. Vent, scream, cry, bang, squeeze, curse, go!”

As a long­time yogi, this sen­ti­ment res­onat­ed with me deeply. I squish the pil­lows sides. ​“Philippe enrages me. He won’t go into the stair­well with the girls and me, instead stay­ing in our unsafe mamad. Dis­count­ing my fear. Like he did dur­ing the First Gulf War, when we were new­ly­weds, wear­ing gas masks in our sealed room. I feel lone­ly liv­ing with some­one who can’t step into my shoes, who leaves me to be the strong one with our girls.”

“Keep going.” 

I thrash the pil­low. ​“How can this tiny coun­try han­dle all this trau­ma? How can any­one deal with so much loss — of sons, daugh­ters, moth­ers, fathers, sib­lings, friends? How can we have enough first respon­ders when mis­siles wipe out neigh­bor­hoods, leav­ing those who sur­vived home­less while search­ing for those who didn’t?” 

Tears cas­cade down my snot-filled face. 

“Good!”

I reach the end of my diatribe. 

“Okay, now look around the room and tell me one thing you like.”

I scan their space — the wood desk, swiv­el chair, sofa bed. 

“The fridge cracks me up. So out of place.”

“Good. Do you feel better?” 

“תודה רבה,” I say while lean­ing in for a hug. 

But the light­ness doesn’t last. A mid­dle-of-the-night siren shrieks like a witch. Going to bed becomes ter­ri­fy­ing, but so does wak­ing up. 

Since day­time seems safe, my daugh­ter and I go out to get air and exer­cise. Side­walks that are usu­al­ly burst­ing with tat­tooed locals, ener­getic tourists, sun­tanned surfers, and mul­ti­lin­gual for­eign work­ers now feel like a ghost town. We tip­toe around shards of glass and see bro­ken win­dows on a redone his­toric build­ing, a mini mar­ket, a chic bak­ery. We stop to acknowl­edge the destruc­tion, build­ings crum­bled and bent beyond repair. 

My mom video calls. The phone shakes from her benign tremor. ​“What’s new?” she asks in her chip­per voice. 

I don’t want to tell her what it’s like, how vul­ner­a­ble I feel.

If I could leave, I would. 

But no one’s going anywhere. 

For the third night in a row, we are up and out the door at 12:02 a.m. 

Most­ly it is just vital busi­ness­es like food mar­kets and health­care clin­ics that are open. But some cafes, restau­rants, and wine bars defy these orders so peo­ple can gath­er, drink cof­fee, and just feel nor­mal somewhere. 

I meet a friend at a close-by cafe. We talk about the mun­dane (our new pro­gres­sive glass­es frames) and the mean­ing­ful (where would we live if we could leave) until anoth­er friend joins. She is US based but comes for extend­ed stays and arrived before and stayed after Octo­ber 7 and again now. Some­thing about this place makes some peo­ple feel more alive — like their pres­ence mat­ters in a dif­fer­ent way.

Night after night, I pop a dif­fer­ent pill — a mix of home­o­path­ic pills and CBN-infused gum­mies from across the world. I won­der: Will I ever be able to sleep on my own again? 

Final­ly, our son secures a flight from Athens to Aqa­ba, Jor­dan, along with an old friend from his army unit. Togeth­er, they will cross the bor­der into Eilat and ride a bus to Tel Aviv. 

But who knows when. Red Alert. In the stair­well, the booms undo me, unglue me. My daugh­ter-in-law hands my grand­daugh­ter to me. When I think of the world we are hand­ing to our chil­dren and their chil­dren, I shudder. 

“Let’s go to the park­ing lot,” Philippe sug­gests. ​“We won’t hear any­thing.” He joined us after I begged him.

On the first floor of a four-lev­el garage under our com­plex, I am sur­prised by the scene: peo­ple of all ages and col­ors, shapes and sizes stand, sit, and wait. Alone, together. 

After the all-clear alert, we trudge upstairs. 

I doom scroll. ​“US struck three nuclear sites in Iran.” What if Israel’s Oper­a­tion Ris­ing Lion trig­gers World War III? 

I com­plete the US Embassy forms for evac­u­a­tion and EL AL res­cue flights, then ask my hus­band if he’d leave with me.

“I don’t feel the need to go.”

“Who do you love more, Israel or me?” I ask, not for the first time in three and a half decades of matrimony.

“That’s unfair. This isn’t the time to judge each oth­er. I’m not judg­ing you if you go, but you can’t judge me either for staying.” 

Friends and strangers have called me brave. A word I do not asso­ciate with myself. Until now. Now I feel it in every cell: If I can go, I will, even if alone.

Our son arrived in time for the last twen­ty-four hours of mis­siles. Reunit­ed, we ran to the park­ing lot at 5:44, 6:23, 6:39 in the morning. 

In the min­utes lead­ing up to a cease­fire, four were pro­nounced dead in a direct hit on an apart­ment in Be’er She­va. May their names nev­er be for­got­ten: Eitan Zacks, his moth­er Michal, his girl­friend Noa Boguslavsky, and their neigh­bor, Nao­mi Shaanan. 

Just because we haven’t lost a loved one or expe­ri­enced dam­age to our house, doesn’t mean we are okay. Just because we are safe, sound, and unscathed doesn’t mean we are okay. I am not okay. No one around me feels okay. 

From one sec­ond to the next, the gov­ern­ment com­mands us to act nor­mal­ly. Send kids to school, go to work, return to the gym. But what does ​“nor­mal” mean anymore? 

While Jews abroad feel reas­sured that a full-blown war did not explode, we see it dif­fer­ent­ly. For the past 628 days — and still count­ing — we’ve grown accus­tomed to a dis­traught new nor­mal with occa­sion­al mis­siles, miss­ing hostages, and dying sol­diers. For us, this was a war with­in a war.

Mes­sages from well-mean­ing friends flood my phone: 

• Update please! Hope­ful­ly you’re breath­ing easier?
• What’s the vibe there?
• Do you approve any more of Netanyahu than before? Do you for­give any of his oth­er fail­ures and actions bc of what he did in Iran? Curious.

Since their flight returned to Los Ange­les, my friend Mar­cia has been check­ing in dai­ly: My heart goes out to you on ​‘get­ting back to nor­mal’ or ​‘abnor­mal’. I can’t even imag­ine the transition 💔.

The tran­si­tion is jar­ring. Our ner­vous sys­tems ache from the whiplash. The fall­out will take months for us to unfeel in our bodies. 

Am Yis­rael is here but changed. Those of us who endured this attack are as shat­tered as the win­dows. How long it will take to mend and feel whole again is impos­si­ble to know. Because when it comes to the future of the state of Israel — of the Mid­dle East — no one knows. 

The views and opin­ions expressed above are those of the author, based on their obser­va­tions and experiences.

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