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My five-year-old son is currently wearing his army uniform costume we bought him for Purim nearly three months ago.
Since then, he has taken every opportunity given to him to wear it. Little religious boys wear their suits on Shabbat.
Not my son.
He wears his chayal (soldier) costume.
It has been nearly two weeks.
Somehow time has managed to crawl by and speed past.
We have been living in a weird alternate reality.
There isn’t any routine. School is still not functional.
Rockets are still falling. My kids discuss how many ‘booms’ they have heard each day.
On the drive down to Kibbutz Sa’ad, I alternate between gazing out the window and trying to get the Homefront Command app to work on my phone. It’s November 5, the first time in a month I’ve left the environs of my city in central Israel, save the five-minute visit to my son on an army base near Jerusalem.
If you ever drive southwards towards the Negev, remember to look just ahead of you, because there, flying very low, you may see a spectacular sight of buzzards; they might have even been eagles. Hooked beaks, so clear in view, and wings spread wide as they glide in unison; a surreal embodiment of the primordial.
And further down the road, an encounter with a low-flying flock of pelicans must be one of the most breathtaking sights I have seen in my life: white bodies with wings waving gracefully through the air. They seem to swoop you up and carry you with them heavenward.
When a woman I didn’t know in my neighborhood WhatsApp group asked for volunteers to launder blankets for soldiers, I immediately responded. In addition to the PR efforts I’m doing for Israel (but, frankly, who isn’t?),
“We’re not from around here,” I say, displaying a facial expression that seems half facetious, half tongue-in-cheek. Ariella cracks up. “Of course you’re not from here! Now come here to the storeroom, I want to give
By Daphna HorowitzRaanana, Israel24 October, 2023 Day 12 – Holding joy and pain at the same timeEvery morning I wake up and for a split second, before I’m completely awake, while my mind is still a
They say the night is darkest before dawn. It certainly is very dark right now. I pray that dawn is coming soon. It better be. Because the darkness is bleak, palpable, encompassing. As I write
Just got up. Have not checked the news yet. Rumblings in the distance were like thunder all night. Since Jerusalem is a no-fly zone, any aircraft that comes near is military. I am sure they have
Note from the author: What we have lived through during the last days is still incomprehensible in its scope. Each day we learn of new horrors and are fearful of which names we will hear next.