Holding all the Truths at the Same Time

It's been two years since November 27, 2021--the day my Dad took his last breaths and left us. My world changed that day.

And it's been almost two months since October 7, 2023--the day so many took their last breaths and left us.

I feel...numb? I miss my Dad all the time. I miss him like crazy. I missed him today when I went to Costco, and I even missed him when the raspberries fell out of the car, spilling all over the floor, and I know he would have been as upset as I was. I miss him when I eat soup. He loved soup. And when I try to figure out what to do with our lives, knowing his advice would have been both wise and kind. I miss him when I go for walks, and when I read an interesting article. I miss him when my kids are hilarious and he would have smiled so big. He was my Dad. And also, my buddy. I liked him as much as I adored him. I loved being with him, talking, not talking, doing, or not doing anything. I just loved him, so, so much.

He was also 73--not nearly old enough, and not tragically young. And we knew he was dying. And we got to say goodbye. And, and, and. So many blessings in his end. So much love. So many blessings others were denied when they were murdered.

I feel like I am juggling fire. My soul is screaming WHERE ARE THE REDHEADED BABIES WHO LOOK LIKE MY BABIES and at the same time I MISS MY DAD and it's hard to swallow both of those thoughts. 

It doesn't hurt anyone for me to miss my Dad, but some part of me feels guilt for it. Because our babies are missing, and there are nearly 200 hostages and as he always used to say "there but for fortune..." my babies and I would have been among them. 

I know how lucky I am. And I know how sad I am. And today, those are the truths I guess I am trying to hold.

Somehow, a Month

It's been a month since October 7th. One month, and 100 years. So many people have asked how we are. I'm so grateful. 

Here's the truth: we are so very, very lucky, and so very, very Not Ok.

It feels absurd to complain. 

We are incredibly lucky--that's all it is, to be sure. Luck. 

Our kids are alive, and healthy, and don't know what happened a month ago, beyond "there were rockets and there is a war". We had a safe place to go, and a loving school for them to attend. Their camp counselors are the same ones who greet them after school each day. My son raked leaves with his uncle this weekend. When my daughter got a double ear infection, we got the care she needed. We are lucky. Beyond lucky, really.

And we are Not Ok. 

If it weren't for those wonderful children, we would never have left our home. I've never in my life felt so Israeli, so foreign, in the city where I, my Dad, my grandparents, even my great-grandparents were born. The world goes on. I take my kids to trick-or-treat, all too aware that monsters are real, skeletons, far too present.

I cannot listen to the news in English, or even my favorite music in English. My heart beats in Hebrew. I change diapers, shuttle my kids around, make dinner again and again, but my mind is elsewhere. 

Every time I bring my daughter to my breast and she eats, I think of them. The babies, trapped in Gaza. My friend's son, murdered in his home--the same friend who taught me to breastfeed my babies. 

I think of the babies who were burned alive, who were murdered in ways too gruesome to consider. The mothers who were taken, who don't know where their babies are. The mothers of Gaza, held like prisoners by a terror organization that cares nothing for their lives.

I cannot cry, because I fear that if I do, I will never be able to stop. 

I feel the way I did the day after my Dad died--like I barely know how to breathe, to walk, to do the never-ending laundry of a family of five. I am--we are--in mourning. The world shifted under us. 

And none of this is ok.

The Post I Never Thought I'd Write

I've never dreamed the classic American Dream. I don't want the house in the suburbs, with a private yard. I don't crave a second car, even though it would have fancy features my trusty 2012 Honda lacks. I don't really want to live in America, much as I love my family and friends there.

I picked up a beautiful life and left the US in 2009 for Israel because I craved a country that would be mine in a way the US never was--where the air feels different on Friday afternoons, where my kids dreadful "spirit week" comes not before Halloween but before Purim--where they wouldn't hear "Jew girl" snarled at them as I did in fifth grade, when I was only two years older than my sweet son.

I loved the Israel I discovered on my year here after college, and in the years that followed. I loved spending most of my time with secular Israelis, and I loved volunteering in a pediatric oncology ward that treated both Palestinian and Jewish children entirely equally. 

I savored making friends who identified themselves as Haredi and spending a weekend in a Catholic Arab village. 

I saw what this land could be, and made it mine. I worked for an organization whose employees included all kinds of Israelis, and for one fighting for justice for Ethiopian-Israelis. I didn't have rose colored glasses, but I was never an Israeli with a plan to go back. I married a man who felt the same way--we were here for good. 

And now? Today?

Today, I feel disgusted by what is happening in the country I chose. Last night, in response to two Jewish boys--brothers--being murdered, my fellow Jewish Israelis launched a literal pogrom in the village of Huwara. They burned houses with people still in them. And the government is backing them. The head of the National Security Committee endorsed these despicable acts.  

There is a judicial shift underway that will essentially destroy our court system, leaving it to the whims of the government to decide if Israel's Basic Laws stay intact, with no checks or balances. In a government supporting the destruction of a Palestinian village, it isn't rocket science to think what that will mean for the 25% of Israelis who aren't Jewish.

Our Finance Minister committed financial crimes. Our Security Minister committed security crimes. Our Prime Minister? Also a criminal. It reads like a bad movie script. 

And we live in a bubble--a beautiful bubble. Here, on election day, the right wing criminals now in power didn't even show up to canvas for votes--they know that we live in a city where they won't get them. Of course, we are not a bloc--no city is--but by and large our disagreements with neighbors and classmates are about superficial matters, not core ones. 

For now, that is enough. For now, I can keep my children from the news, and teach them how to say "thank you" in Arabic and that we share this country with others. They have neighbors who are religious, who are secular, who are gay and straight. There are friends with skin as pale as theirs, and those whose families come from other places.

But I wonder how long it will be enough. I wonder if I should start thinking about where we would go. I never thought I would ask these questions--and I'm not the only one. Israeli friends, one after the other, tell me in Hebrew that they're asking these questions, too. That they're scared for their future--for their kids and their families. I get it. I'm scared, too.

I don't have a happy ending, though if you care, I implore you to read this piece by some of Israel's fiercest advocates, immigrants like myself. Take their suggestions to heart. Do what they ask. The future of this country literally depends on it.