Simchat Torah is every Jewish person’s favorite holiday, you can’t convince me otherwise. Feasts that would put the Beauty and the Beast’s feast to shame, uncoordinated dances in synagogues and living up to true joy. It’s the greatest conclusion to the other holidays, and it’s almost as if Sukkot was just warming the stage for the singer, you actually paid to listen to. The evening before; so pastoral and somewhat idyllic.
Waking up the next morning, I only noticed the bright blue sky. For some reason I forgot to close the curtains, and as the sirens went on, I was in this euphoric state – not knowing who I am and what year it is. The sky looked as if the sun was about to rise, and in the seconds of snapping back to reality I found my legs running straight to the shelter. What a beautiful morning, sitting with my half-asleep brother on the floor and making jokes about angry Arabs. This feels mental to write about, trying to normalize life in this State. When you’re used to death, people going missing and rockets under your rooftop, when you’ve been born into war and know safety protections since before you could speak, then maybe you’re allowed to normalize immorality and madness. So, we sat there, in the dark, no electronics or the news straight when the rockets hit, saving the pure and honored Shabbat, telling each other dreams while living in a nightmare.
In these moments, the line between reality and the script of a horror film had begun to diminish. In these moments, I was concerned about the ordinary teenage girl issues, my skin became bumpy and I felt sad about losing a friend of mine over the summer. I was thinking about the book I was reading, and what were my plans for the arriving week. Little did I know, nothing of that mattered. In the following weeks, no one made silly remarks on my skin because I couldn’t have left my house, I didn’t see the friend I was scared to confront, the book I was reading seemed to interest me less than whatever there was on the news, and all my plans were cancelled. Just like that, tests and conferences disappeared, and my daily routines were exchanged with staying in bed that no one could force me out of, except the rockets and my mother.
Thinking back, I miss not knowing. These days information run faster than gossip, everybody knows everything and nothing at the same time, drowning in the stray of consciousness. However, when you’ve sat in the dark, you really can’t paint the whole picture in your head. While we pictured a failed operation, people were being slaughtered. An infinity of names went extinct, with no one to tell their stories or say Kaddish over. Unheard, the Jews of the Gaza strip were slaughtered, same as their unheard ancestors back in Auschwitz. Once again, with no one there to save the innocents, bring the child back to its mother, and the wife back to her husband. Murdered is a fine word compared to the state of the towns located near the Gaza strip. Butchered, beheaded, burned alive feels a bit more appropriate. Inside homes, bedrooms and kindergartens.
A community who once lived. Behind every number of deaths, there was a whole world. Behind every burnt house, there was a family creating memories. Dinner time with aunties, movies with mom on a late afternoon, boyfriends coming to meet the father of their loved ones and countless other sincere experiences, locked within the wrecked walls, screaming to break free. People walking down the streets, teenage girls meeting up with classmates on the weekend before a test for a quick study session in the local library, endless silent conversations hidden between book pages. In a sharp transition, from a state of harmony and peace, the people living inside the community who once lived transformed to a portal opening a classic horror film, in which there is no final girl. Nameless bodies abandoned from left to right, in the same streets where people once walked on their way to something important. Blood staining the bedsheets inside a pink cradle, and the remaining of the head you can find in the kitchen’s oven. The smell of rotten blood strangles the oxygen away from your lungs, and just by the sight you won’t fall asleep for months.
When God blessed me with a loving family in those dreadful hours, he took someone else’s. When God blessed me with a safe place to live, he allowed someone else’s house get torn apart. It’s not my fault, it’s everyone else. But why do I feel so guilty living safely with a loving family while strangers risk their lives to keep my reality? I usually find myself judging the privileged Americans with their parades against us, without fully knowing what they’re parading for. But in this reality, I’m the privileged. At least I’m thankful, I suppose. I pray every morning for the safety of people I never met; soldiers and policemen, putting their effort of keeping me safe. I know how it all ends, so I have hope for the people I never met. However, it’s hard staying hopeful when the ground is flooded with dried blood, and people are considering situations like third exile and the end of days.
Israel is mostly described in religious studies as, “The Nation of Eternity.” And recently there’s something in the atmosphere that brought me back to the middle age and before, when the nation of eternity thrived under Judah’s kingdom. Nothing makes sense, but there’s a sense of shared grief mixed with faith amongst the Jewish nation. Since the massacre, everyone gave their everything to each other, until everyone had everything they needed. Wives and mothers gathered in military bases with homecooked meals for hungry soldiers. Central Israeli residents donated used clothes, toiletries and cosmetics for the southern family who lost all their former property, from underwear to kids’ puppets. Giving is beautiful, it’s the main characteristic of being Jewish. Most people expect things in return, which is understandable at some points. Considering the situation, giving is what will keep The Nation of Eternity alive and thriving.
Hours go by and the sun continues to rise and fall. Identification of the bodies rises by the hour until the Twilight Zone. When the sun turns to a thousand shadows of red, you can finally congratulate yourself – you made it. You survived the purge, the Ghostface is finally gone, and soldiers are knocking at abandoned households looking for remaining life. Looking for you.
Congratulations! Thirty-six hours in the closet came to an end! No one can hurt you again. You made it to your neighbors’ funeral, you made it to eulogize your parents, siblings, daughters and sons. Congratulations, you live on to tell the horror stories, and now you are officially an Annihilation Survivor.
Thirty-six hours inside a closet was nothing compared to what happens next. Now you must move on as wars upon wars continue to spread, and more survivors wish to reunite with their ghosts.
It all began to feel like a faded memory – life before the Annihilation. The war is so familiar, it was almost as if it was always here. Maybe there wasn’t a world before, since the moment I was born, rockets were shifted to hit me, and Arabs became people to fear instead of coexisting with. I cling onto moments of happiness like the evening of Simchat Torah, calling it the world before, when clearly this new reality wasn’t all strange to me. This is Israel, young and beautiful, like a premature baby – trying to live another day. Maybe when we get older, the threat of life and death will cease to be this familiar.
