Once Again, Onto the Neck

For most all? of my childhood, I wore a star of David on a necklace. I varied them--silver, gold, rounded edges, or sometimes, a chai.

It felt critically important for me to have a visual sign to the outside world that I was Jewish. "This is who I am!" I proclaimed proudly, even when my Dad suggested that perhaps I was going somewhere where such a symbol might not be warmly welcomed. 

The necklace was a part of me, in a similar way to my wedding ring today. A commitment. Part of me.

Sometime after 2009, when I made aliyah and started a life in Tel Aviv, I took off my necklace. My Jewishness was so obvious, it didn't need to be stated. The same way I didn't wear a sign reading "I breathe oxygen!" I didn't need my necklace. I lived in a place where the air was Jewish, the streets thrummed with anticipation every Friday afternoon, where the local convenience store had shabbat candles next to the cigarettes.

And then, in 2023, after That Day, we moved back to the US. 

And today, July 1, 2026, I fished out my star from deep in my closet, and clasped it to my neck once again.

Once again, I feel a need to shout my identity.

This time, I'm not an angsty teenager, desperate to identify, but rather, a suburban working Mom in her 40s. Hardly the picture of revolution.

I love my necklace, and my people. But putting on this necklace feels...deeply sad. It's all of it, the last couple of years, and those before it.

It's losing my favorite podcast when the hosts embraced Hamas, with no words for our beloved redheads, or the others brutally murdered that day. 

It's the idiots holding Palestinian flags and shouting in the middle of the only suburb with a sizable Jewish population, as that population heads to pray on Friday nights. 

It's Scott Weiner being attacked, and Josh Shapiro's house being burned, and the Temple my grandparents founded in Toronto, and the one my best friend's grandparents founded in Detroit and the woman arrested by the FBI for sending crypto to terrorists yesterday.

It's every Jewish board meeting when we have to budget for security again, when we'd rather spend on popsicles or literally anything else. It's every single person who talks about "antisemitism and Islamophobia" in one breath, even though Jews are attacked 5x than any other religious group.

It's the absolutely cruel and moronic government of the state of Israel, tearing the reputation of my beautiful country to shreds.

This Jew is exhausted, but I am not afraid. I am proud, and I will not step down. And I will not take off my necklace.

 "It's a great day for the democratic party!" That's what my Dad wrote in my card on my 18th birthday (along with a normal-ish message) in 2001. 

Our family has been proud democrats for generations. I was raised on a constant rhetoric of helping the less fortunate, of how lucky we were to be the ones helping, and not those who needed help. Paying taxes was part of our responsibility. Women's bodies belonged to the women themselves. Racism was bad.

I was the most loyal of soldiers. I took unpaid time off to volunteer for President Obama's first campaign, worked for Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, knocked doors and ran from dogs.

At our wedding, we hired only vendors who were LGBTQ friendly, and I started talking about how Black lives matter after a summer interning at the Children's Defense Fund in Washington, not when it hit the news.

I would say that other people followed sports teams, and I was a loyal fan of the democrats.

And here I sit in 2026, politically homeless. 

I am a traitor to the left, and to the right.

The left wants nothing to do with me, because I am a proud Jew. I believe that the Jews are not less than any other people, any less deserving of a state of our own. I am a Zionist, having referred to myself as "the last secular Zionist" since 2009, when I made aliyah. I lived in Israel, had my babies there, built a full life in the glorious bubble known as Tel Aviv.

I wish for a Jewish conspiracy like they imagine, because then we could probably at least agree on something. These days, the old "two Jews, three opinions" feels quaint, as it feels like every thoughtful person I know carries at least three opinions on their tired shoulders.

The right wants nothing to do with me, because I am deeply ashamed of the current Israeli government, because I deplore the innocent lives being taken in the West Bank, by people who also claim Zionism as theirs. My family protested Bibi's government for many months, every single week. I was out three days before giving birth, and not long after.

People who have never rushed their babies to a bomb shelter accuse me of not being enough, as if they know the fear of a baby at the breast as rockets fall. The Rashid Khalidi on my bookshelf is heresy, the Herzl and Gordis and Golda Meir count for nothing. So I speak Hebrew to my children. So what?

I started writing this weeks ago, and then stopped, without any idea how to end it. The truth is that there is no end. Since I started, the democratic party of Maine nominated Graham Platner for the senate, despite his Nazi tattoo. The bad news is endless, and the good news, hard to come by.

I feel gutted, torn, abandoned. So does everyone I know.

On Israel.

You do not simply move across the world at age 25 to a country with a foreign language you do not speak, whose bureaucracy is famous, and whose people are known to resemble a cactus that is sharp on the outside, and sweet only on the inside.

You do not simply force yourself to learn that language, answering over and over again in Hebrew even when people make it clear that their English is better than your Hebrew, sitting through professional meetings and coming out with a headache from the level of concentration needed.

You do not give birth three children in that country, figuring out not merely the maze of pregnancy, but of gestational diabetes and contractions and pain and epidurals, all in Hebrew.

You do not sit through years of ceremonies for fallen soldiers, sick to your stomach that you will one day cheer your children as they enter that same army, praying to a God you may or may not believe in that they will return home.

You do not bury your beloved father without your spouse and children, who are thousands of miles away, and fly 12 hours during a pandemic to get back to them, just days after you buried him.

You do not do these things.

You do not, unless you are mad. Madly in love, passionately enthralled, entirely overly optimistic.

My love affair with Israel is the longest one in my life, having begun in early childhood. I love Israel the way I love my children—beyond all reason, without logic, simply because it is mine. Israel is my home, the beat of my heart, the steps I take, and the glasses through which I see the world.

And just as if my children were to commit terrible crimes, I would take them to task, not with any less love, but because of that very love, so too do I criticize the state of Israel and its nightmarish government.

My Israel is an entirely different one than the one portrayed in the media today, and I worry that it is under deep threat. That specific level of fear and my love for my children are the only things that would move me from the place I love so deeply. The fact that I have left is a devastating loss I’m not sure I will ever fully recover from.

But none of that is the point.

The point is this: none of this matters if we become the terrorists.

October 7 was a horrifying day. It was a nightmare. I ran down two flights of stairs to the communal bomb shelter with my kids, baby at the breast, multiple times. We debated if we were safer downstairs in the safe room (potentially terrorists could get in?) or in our apartment (potentially rockets could get in?).

I panicked when I realized my host sister—an 18-year-old I had known since her first birthday—was living in Sderot. Videos of terrorists roaming the city left me short of breath. I waited, heart racing, for confirmation that she was safe.

I learned that my friends’s son had been murdered in his own home, and tried to figure out what on earth to whatsapp her.

I functioned like some sort of zombie that day, and in the ones that followed. How could such things happen? How could the world be silent, as our babies were murdered, families butchered in their own homes? HOW COULD THEY?

When just a week later, we left Israel on literally eight hours’ notice, arriving at the airport with no idea where we were going, only that we were on a flight, with four suitcases total, I continued on. What choice was there?

And in the weeks that followed, as we debated and wanted to be wrong to have come to the US, and decided to stay, my heart broke, and broke, and broke.

Leaving my home. Leaving my friends. Leaving Itzik, the man who stands outside his shop and we pass on the way to school every day. Leaving the scones at La Maison, perfectly fluffy and served with a different dose of friends walking by each time. Leaving the place where everyone raises each other’s children, where the air is ripe with shabbat on Friday afternoons, where I feel at home.

I tell you this only because I need you to understand the depths of my love for Israel.

Because what I am going to say is more painful to me than you can possibly imagine, and I need you to know that this pain only comes from love.

We are becoming the ones we hate.

Hamas is torturing the Palestinians, and we are their partner.

Before I go further, a reminder of my credentials: I have an MA in Government, specialization in counter-terrorism and homeland security, from Reichman University in Israel. I studied abroad in South Africa, learning about apartheid, restorative justice, and how communities break, and heal. I have written about the international laws of war, and studied criminology, finally understanding that different people and cultures respond in varying ways to crime. With a degree in philosophy, I can talk utilitarianism versus deontology until I’m blue in the face.

And I lived 14 years in Israel. I worked in the non-profit sector, with friends who were ultra-orthodox wig wearers, and proud Ethiopian Jews. My friends with tattoos outnumbered those who kept shabbat but when I sat shiva for my father for one day, and more than 80 friends came to visit, they were wearing and not wearing kippot, skirts, tattoos. They had voted for the left wing, and the right. They came from the West Bank, and from Haifa, and from Jerusalem. I was proud of how many friends I disagreed with. I still am.

We are becoming the ones we hate.

October 7th mattered to me because Jewish lives are important. But Jewish lives, as much as they matter, aren’t the only ones that do.

The Israeli government is currently taking actions against Palestinian people that undermine both Israel and the Palestinians. They are illegal, and they are disgusting. They are stupid.

After October 7th, the violence in the West Bank reached new heights. If you haven’t listened to this episode (link in comment) of This American Life, do that now. It will make you sick. Do it anyway.

After October 7th, when we were full of rage and righteous anger, we could have built an alternative. We could have imagined and built a secure future, for ourselves and our children. Of course we had to take down Hamas. Of course not all Palestinians are Hamas. Israel should have built up the Palestinians who oppose Hamas—and let’s be real, when Hamas was elected in 2005, the majority of today’s Gazans were not yet born.

And the government did the opposite: the NY Times published a scrupulously researched, devastating takedown (link in comments) of Israel’s massive governmental failures and the way the extreme right has come to power.

Between the podcast and that article, you will learn of children regularly stoned by settlers on their way to school, of masked settlers attacking Palestinians at home in the middle of the day, of murders of Palestinians and destructions of their home with absolutely no consequences for the masked Jewish terrorists perpetrating them, hiding their faces like the criminals they know they are.

Being Jewish does not make you incapable of being a terrorist.

Murders of innocents in broad daylight. Brutality against children. Unprovoked terror. October 7th, or the West Bank on a Tuesday? Writing that question makes me want to throw up.

None of this is even getting in to Gaza, and the absolute and sheer Hell being lived by millions of people. When they tried to rise up, when they protested the government elected before they were born?

Look at Odai Al-Rubai. At 22, he protested 18 years of Hamas’ rule in the Gaza Strip. He should have been hoisted on the shoulders of all who want a safe Israel, for wanting better. Instead, “In retaliation, Al-Rubai’s family says, he was kidnapped, tortured and murdered by members of Hamas’s Qassam Brigades. Then his body was dumped in front of the family home.” (Source in comments)

Hamas is kidnapping, torturing, and murdering. Both Jews, and those Palestinians who want something better.

People in Gaza are starving. I don’t care if your definition of starving matches the UN definition or anyone else’s. There’s very clearly not enough food, and I don’t care whose fault it is. If Israel decided tomorrow to get food into the hands of everyone in Gaza, it would be done. Why aren’t we doing it? Why are we letting children starve?

When the state of Israel was created, the Jewish people were the weak ones. After the horrors of the Shoah, Jews desperately needed a place to call home, and our ancient homeland was chosen. We made the desert bloom. We did that. I will never forget the pride of my husband’s grandparents. He barely survived Auschwitz, and they married in a DP camp, coming to Israel with less than nothing and building a beautiful family and life.

And now our people, “light unto the nations” that we are supposed to be, is sanctioning the economic, social, financial ruin of a people. We are not listening to our own army, (link in comments) whose soldiers are increasingly refusing to fight a war that’s become indefensible.

Our soldiers are literally dying by suicide in record numbers (link in comments). The war is starving them, and poisoning us.

We are hitting a point of no return.

I don’t have a catchy end to this. I don’t know what the solution is. I’d truly love to be proven wrong on anything I’ve written here. There are people who know so much more about all of this than I do.

But I know that my heart is aching, and that is why I speak up and out. Not because I do not love Israel, but because my love for Israel demands my voice.

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.

What We're Losing: Ruminations on Reopening, or Not

The thing about sourdough starter--what you use to make the bread--is that you constantly throw away most of it. Every few hours, you toss the majority of what you've made, and add new materials (flour, water), so that eventually you will have something worth baking with. To move forward, you have to get rid of most of what you have.

Maybe that's the reason sourdough is so popular right now (mine is cooling on the counter). It feels like we are tossing out most of what we've got in this world. My question is if what we're left with will be worth keeping, or not.

The other day, I took my kids out for a walk within the bounds allowed by law. We wound up seeing one of my older kid's classmates--she's not someone he's especially close to, though he likes her and pretty much everyone. After just a few minutes of talking with her  and climbing a homemade fort the way five year-olds do, he was GLOWING.

As we walked away, he said to me "what a great day, Mom!" because he got to play with a kid his age. She's a lovely kid, but not one of his closest friends. And no more than five minutes with her absolutely made his day. 

He's a happy kid, he's been mostly ok throughout this period, but it broke my heart that he was so desperate for time with kids his own age.

All he wants is to play with his friends. And he's 5. I should be able to give him that.

He will only get to be in kindergarten once, and he is losing that, day by day. 

For weeks after this started, my three year-old would ask "is there preschool today?" and we'd have to tell him there wasn't. I'm not sure what was worse--hearing the question, or hearing him simply stop asking.

I know kids are resilient and they will be ok, but this feels like a lot to ask them to recover from.

In the debate about when and what and how to try to maybe reopen our society, there seem to be two extremes: OPEN NOW and KEEP CLOSED. The thing is, no one is actually at the extreme. None of us think we should shut everything down and go to military lockdown for months (or years) until we have a vaccine. What kind of society would that protect? What would it do to us, and to our children?

So it's a question of how we reopen. And none of us think we should just go back to the way things were, because we can't bear the consequences. We need only read what has happened in Spain, Italy, or New York to know that we must avoid that, too. Movie theaters aren't an option right now, for even the most optimistic (or ignorant?).

We're talking about our jobs, and the economy. Those things are important--critical. We need to be able to pay rent and buy food. But the thing is that in all of this, we are losing some calculation of the other things that matter, too--the soft things that make us live, rather than merely exist.

Five year-olds playing tag and running in the park with their friends. Three year-olds singing songs with their friends. Family dinners beyond the nuclear family. Nights sharing cocktails with friends. The long weekend I was supposed to have with my Dad, across an ocean. Are we tossing too much of the world that we've built--accidentally throwing out too much of the sourdough?

I don't know what the right way is to do any of this. No one does. But our kids--even the happy, well-adjusted ones with two loving parents and enough of everything--even they are starting to be Not Ok. And at some point soon, even for the science-lovers among us, that might just outweigh the fear.

Purses, Parties, Conferences: On Mourning the Little Things During a Pandemic

There's a purse I ordered about three months ago; it fits easily over a suitcase, it's nice-looking, and it came recommended. In the first year in my job, I flew abroad for work seven times. The bag was my reward for a job well-done. It was functional, without being too much. An indulgent gift, at just the right level.

My beautiful (I imagine) bag sits in my parents' home, untouched. I wish I could have it, even though I don't really need a work bag these days.

Yesterday was my son's best pal's birthday. He turned six. It should have been a really fun day, with a party to look forward to, and even the little brother excited. Instead, we took a quick video of my boy wishing him a happy birthday, and that this corona passes soon, so they can play together once again. I wish they could play together, now.

I was supposed to go to Austin in March, and my (wonderful) manager offered for us to check out some SXSW events. It would have been a great opportunity to grow, personally? Professionally? I'll never know. The trip, where I would have picked up my bag, was canceled. I also missed the (canceled) wedding of a dear friend. I wish I had been at the wedding, wish I could have picked which SXSW sessions to attend.

None of these losses are huge. My job is safe, for now at least, and we have enough resources. No one in our family has so far suffered major loss from this plague.

But somehow, every time I hear someone expressing pain about a loss--it is always cast as "not worthy". 

What I want to say, with absolutely no authority, is this: pain is valid. It doesn't have to be the worst pain in the world to be valid. You are allowed to mourn the little things, even now, when a global pandemic rages. 

It is ok to miss the trip you couldn't take, the meal you couldn't go out for despite making reservations. I give you, and me, permission to miss the little things as much as we miss the big ones. We as humans don't just mourn the big losses, even when we've experienced them. I can wish I could have my bag, even though I've been through things one million times harder. You can hold multiple truths at the same time. We all contain multitudes.

I leave you with this observation from the brilliant Meg Keene, commenting on a question someone sent in on her wedding advice website (her writing is worth reading, whatever the topic). The letter writer's husband had almost died at their wedding, and while she was glad he was alive, she was also sad she missed her wedding, a relatively "small thing":

"We actually had a big conversation in our office about the terrible-ness of the suffering olympics when this question came in. When my dad fell WALKING HIS DOG, and got a terrible brain injury, and I had to drop everything to care for him (while caring for two kids and running a business) for three months, and then he suddenly died anyway from hospital mismanagement I kept like I needed to say like, "Well it could have been worse."

WELL LIKE YEAH. EVERYTHING COULD BE WORSE. That's what survivor's guilt is. Even people who survive the worst atrocities known to human kind are like "it could have been worse, because I survived and other people didn't."

And I feel like we're in this place in liberal feminist culture where we feel EXTRA responsibility to disclaim all of the reasons that things could be worse and we have privilege at every moment. And those things are true. And we know those things. And in big picture political conversations we should really consider them. My dad had insurance. I want everyone to have insurance. California has paid family leave. I want everyone to have paid family leave. I can go on and on.

But there is a time to put that aside I think, too. It's call grief, and grieving, and we're all human and we all deserve to have it in it's pure rawness. My dad DIED and he should be alive right now playing with his grandkids and talking politics with me and he's NOT. The LW's husband almost DIED and it was horrific and traumatic (I've been in those asthma attack car rides with my son, and they are trauma that will live in my soul forever.) And she should have had a WEDDING and she didn't.

So fuck all the mitigating circumstances right now, fuck the "who has it worse", fuck the "I'm so privileged that I even have this problem." FUCK ALL OF IT. Something terrible happened when you should have been experiencing one of your greatest joys, and I am SO SORRY, and we see you, and please just let yourself feel whatever you need to feel, and not pick yourself back up till you're ready and then do LITERALLY WHATEVER you and your partner want to do.

I'm sorry sister. The world is a hard damn place, and I'm sorry this happened to you, and I see you."

Being an Expat Parent is Hard on the Best Days. These Are Not the Best Days.

More than 10 years ago, when I decided to make aliyah--to pick up my wonderful, happy life in the US and move to Israel with the intent of building a life and a family here--my parents and I had a discussion. They would visit Israel twice a year, I'd fly to the US just as often. We'd never go more than a few months without a visit. If you've met my parents, this is not a surprise. They're fantastic.

Today, I have no idea when I will see my parents next. I've been through a lot of hard things in the last 10 years, but this massive question mark around my next trip to Rochester--this is what's keeping me up at night. We've had some health struggles in the last few years, and my ability to jump on a plane at a moment's notice is what has kept me sane until now. Being an expat is hard.

And being an expat parent is hard, all the time. It's hard when I can hardly help my kid check out his book from the library on a Friday morning, because I never learned to write block Hebrew letters. It's hard at pr-school birthday parties when I don't know the songs or traditions. It's hard on holidays, when the songs I associate with those special days are only sung in our house, not in my kids' schools. There's no 'I have a little dreidel" in Hebrew.

Sarah Tuttle-Singer captured it so beautifully in her piece about so-called "mermaid mothers" when she observed: "I can speak Hebrew. I can spend the whole day in Hebrew. I can spend the whole day and even find my way back home again and order a fucking glass of whisky in Hebrew. But I’m not smart in Hebrew. I’m not funny in Hebrew, I’m not INTERESTING in Hebrew except maybe as novelty and a “Oh, why would you leave America?” or ARGH “What do you think of Israel,” and then I have to hurry up and say it all before their eyes glaze over, and I’m just standing there with my strange feathers and fins, my funny weird voice and the quieter I am, the louder the difference, and the conversation turns into something that I can’t follow, and so I sit there with my hands clasped, drowned bird, flailing fish."

But today, it feels harder than usual. 

I'm not just dependent on Israel properly managing this crisis to drive across town and see my parents (though it will be great to do that and see my in-laws again). I'm dependent on the US managing it.

We aren't debating our Passover trip to see my parents--it's canceled, without so much as a discussion. 

And suddenly, somehow, the country where I birthed my babies, built a hi-tech career, really grew up, if I'm being honest, all feels so much more foreign, with me the outsider again. 

This week, I had a fever and a cough, so Dan (rightfully) ordered me into isolation in our bedroom. As I fought the authorities to figure out if I need a test for Coronavirus, I felt like a new immigrant again. The words stick in my mouth, though I now know how to discuss quarantine and shortness of breath in Hebrew. 

This time is challenging for so many. I am so lucky to have a stable job I enjoy, an apartment with a balcony, a husband whose competence is incomparable, and children whose energy is matched by their need for sleep. I know all of that.

But right now, this just feels hard. Brutally, incredibly, never-endingly hard. Here's to better days ahead.

I'm an American, an Israeli, and a Mom. Here's why I'm voting for Hillary Clinton.

There have been a couple of pieces recently, about why specific Jews and people who claim to love Israel are not voting for Hillary Clinton in this election. I'm not going to talk about her opponent, because it's clear that he's an embarrassment to his party, but I am going to tell you why I'm voting for Hillary Clinton--gleefully and full of joy, and because given my identities, I have no other choice.

I'm an American. That was probably my first identity and though I moved away from the US in 2009, I worked in the House of Representatives for a year, cried when President Obama was elected, and brought my pocket-sized constitution with me when I moved to Israel. I love a good hamburger, though I hate apple pie, and I love the country that welcomed my ancestors, allowed my father to build a successful business, and gave me opportunities that I never would have had in so many countries. The Fourth of July always makes me teary as I think about the beauty of the United States, and even though America is already great, I want it to be even better.

That's why #imwithher. There are a lot of articles that are more effective than I can be, so I'll leave it to them to describe her power when it comes to the domestic issues that matter most to me--a woman's right to choose, children's rights to education, stopping the absurd gun violence, equal rights for all LGBT Americans, having a wonk in the White House who can actually read, understand and act on policy briefs. You know, the basics.

I'm an Israeli. I chose this country nearly seven years ago and choose it every single day, as I watch my son learn Hebrew as his first language, delight in the challah everywhere on Fridays, the quiet that descends with Shabbat, and the reality that unlike when I was growing up (and I had an amazing childhood), here I have no need to explain anything about my Jewish identity. Trying to explain my love of stuffing is another story...

If only it were that simple, right? Hillary Clinton understands what it is to be Israeli, and that the US-Israel relationship is not as simple as "send us a big check". (Campaign site) It started in the 90's when she was First Lady of Arkansas and started collaborating with us on a program to help children at-risk, and continues with her support to this day. Did you notice that Israel was the only foreign country in her convention speech? She understands that a two-state solution is critical, that a one-state solution is not an option, and that our being in the settlements is certainly not helping the peace process. She gets it that in every war, they sacrifice their children on the front lines for headlines while we build missile defense systems to protect ours. Hillary gets it. She's worked with the left-wing and the right-wing in this country, and been praised by both. She's not just the best candidate in this election for Israel--she's the best candidate ever. That's why #imwithher.

I'm also a Mom. To an Israeli little boy. In the last war, I could protect him, because he was inside me. When the sirens went off and we ran down the stairs in the middle of the night, I knew he was safe. I can't know that in our next war--and there will be a next war. I do know that with all likelihood, in just over 16 years, he'll go off to the IDF to protect our great nation, just like his father, grandmother and grandfather, great-grandfather, and uncles did before him, 

I have skin in this game--fair, redheaded skin, to be precise. I have a boy who loves peas, and hates pizza (I know it's temporary). A boy who thinks things are "awesome" and loves his stuffed blue bunny.Voting for Israel means voting for the best interests of Israelis like me and my family, and that means voting for Hillary Clinton. I'm an American, I'm an Israeli, and I'm a Mom. 

And this November, with tears in my eyes and a pen on my absentee ballot, I will prove, once and for all, that #imwithher. I hope you will, too. 

Today

I keep trying to come up with something pithy to say about what's happening--a sweet analogy, something to bring out a tear, something to help you understand what it's like to be here, now, how I'm feeling. That the ground has shifted, that I can't focus, that I'm irrationally angry at small things.

And I keep coming up empty.

Because before, when things happened, I wasn't a Mom, so I was scared, but it had its limits. I could run, I could hide, I could protect just me.

And now I'm a Mom. There's a tiny redheaded being who counts on me to pick him up in the morning, give him lots of hugs and kisses, nurse him morning and eve, and most importantly, keep him safe, all the time.

And I'm terrified that I'm going to fail at that. 

When we walk to daycare in the morning, I talk to him about the day (he will speak perfect English, he will speak perfect English, he WILL speak perfect English), but now I'm distracted on our three minute walk. 

How fast could I run with a stroller? What if I had put him the wrap--could I run faster?

Every person we pass, I ask myself "is that a knife in their bag?" or "do they look suspicious" or the question I hate asking myself most of all, "is that an Arab?"

I hate so much of what is happening right now. I hate my fear, I hate that it's well-grounded, I hate that my Israeli friends, colleagues and neighbors are just as freaked out. 

But I really, really hate that I feel I need to cross the street when I hear Arabic--just to be safe, because the only people attacking very white, clearly Jewish women are Arabic speakers.

I hate it, because Hebrew is my language, but the language of this country is "shukran" as much as it is "todah", "chalas!", as much as "dai!". I hate it because a country is in so many ways defined by how it treats its minorities, because I voted for Meretz and hope for two states, because I want my child to study Arabic, because I'm damn proud that 25% of this country is not Jewish.

But there's this little boy, waiting for his Mum to come and pick him up. And right now, only Arabic speakers are going after people who look like his Mum. So I cross the street, check people out again and again, don't eat lunch on the busiest street near my office. 

I ask myself if I can safely take my kiddo to the park, I log onto Facebook to see what's happening, what other Moms are doing about the park, what my friends in America are saying about the people who are trying to kill me and my little redhead.

And the silence is deafening. 

I get it, what's happening here is hard, maybe you're processing, too. It's far away, I know. And it's always something, here, and it's so hard to understand. I get it. 

But here are some distinctions you can draw:

They are sending their women and children to stab us. Un-uniformed, going after civilians.

We have an army, in uniform. They may make mistakes but they only go after military targets. Our children would never, ever be used as tools in our fight.

They are stabbing us--any of us, all of us. Their religious leaders are calling for it.

We're singing our national anthem outside the bus station where minutes earlier one of them tried to stab a 70 year old woman. 

We're debating borders, how much of Jerusalem is too much to give up. They're coming after us in Tel Aviv, Afula, Ra'anana. 

It's late. I'm tired. and I have nothing pithy to say. Tomorrow, we get up, and we do it again. 

Beth

Rosh Hashanah was always my favorite holiday. Other kids liked Chanukah, or Pesach. There was never anyone else who liked Rosh Hashanah. I used to relish Rosh Hashanah in Israel. I loved the way everyone would wish me a sweet new year, everywhere I went.

This year, I want to scream.

"Don't you know that Beth is dying?" I want to ask. "Don't you get it? Rosh Hashanah was my favorite holiday, and Beth was such a huge part of that."

But Beth is more than Rosh Hashanah--she's Chanukah and the Bruners famous party, with a pinata and sugar cookies with multi-color frosting to decorate, and chicken to eat and a Chanukah party important enough that I flew my infant son to the US so he could be there, at least once.

Beth is Sukkot, with freezing cold weather, always, but the warmth of her hospitality masking it. She brings out piping hat matzah ball soup, discussing with me the merits of hard vs. soft matzah balls.

She's Pesach, a season of renewal, Beth and Josh perpetual guests at our house. She brings a fruit platter, but instead of being mostly melon, it's full of the good stuff--berries, mango, pineapple.

Beth is in the audience at every play I'm ever in, her snorting laughter telling me she and Josh picked tonight as I wait for my cue.

She's with us on a boat at their cottage, loaning me a sweater, since as we always joked, she was my "real" mom, with matching hair and body types.

She's grinning away at my wedding, even though after a debate of who to ask to give a blessing, I asked other wonderful, close friends, rather than them. She's cooing at my baby boy, giving him a soft blue bunny, complimenting my mothering skills.

Beth is in the air I breathe, the holidays I celebrate, the Chanukiah I light, a gift when I graduated...college? High school? She's solid advice when I spend days in the hospital at the side of a loved one, she's hot tea and a visit, even though she's not feeling so hot these days.

Beth is important enough that when I learn she has advanced cancer, the fact that I don't, in general, cry goes out the window as I spend a solid hour sobbing on the stoop of the building where we've come to visit friends. There is not a week that goes by from then until now without my worrying about her.

Rosh Hashanah will never be the same. Pesach, Sukkot, Chanukah...I will never be the same. I've never known a world without her--I'm sure she came in to it at some point, but I know her as I know my blood relatives, from forever, through traditions and meals and hugs and laughter and most of all, love.

I will miss her more than I have words to say.

The Thing I Can't Talk to You About

Dearest Beens,

We talk all the time. I tell you about my day, my past, my friends. We talk about the weather, what's happening in the news, why things are the way they are. I talk to you, so you will understand, so you will speak proper English, so you will figure out the world around you. I talk to you all the time, about everything. One day, you'll talk back. For now, our conversations are mostly one-sided.

Today, I started.

"Beens," I said. "It's going to be Yom Hazikaron."

And then I stopped.

A lump caught in my throat.

I couldn't do it. I couldn't explain this day to you--tell you about the fallen soldiers and heroes we remember this day. I couldn't tell you of the tragedy, the unbearable losses. I couldn't, because this day becomes more painful by the year, as slowly, I become more Israeli.

It started years ago, when I came to visit your Dad, my boyfriend at the time, and a war broke out. Instead of spending our days together, I was alone in his apartment, and he was in a bunker. I saw him in the mornings and the evenings, before and after he came home from working long, hard nights.

It continued when I made aliyah, and chose to make my emerging "Israeliness" official. I learned to love not just your Dad, but his brothers--your uncles. I feared for them, too--a new level of Israeliness. I prayed that your youngest uncle, serving in a combat unit, would be out of active service before another war broke out--even though I don't really know if I believe in God. I spent last summer terrified that one of your uncles would be sent straight into the conflict.You see, at some point, they became my brothers--and not just "in-law" as we say.

I met your cousins, learned to worry for them. They got called up last summer, and I kept my phone nervously on my desk, in meetings, always on, afraid of a call. It came--a cousin of your cousins was brutally struck down weeks before his wedding. I didn't know him but your Dad and uncles did. Too close. Too real.

And then you arrived, last Rosh Hashanah. All 4.170 kilos of you. You learned to smile, then laugh, then giggle with glee as we kiss you. And now that Yom Hazikaron is here, I am forced to imagine pain I cannot even dream of, because now I am a mother. I have reached a new level of being Israeli. Gone is my need to go to the national ceremony and experience other people's pain--to hear mothers tell of their losses. I hope more fervently than I have ever hoped for anything that this day will never get closer than it is now.

I think of our neighbors, the ones who lost their son last summer. I don't know them, probably never will. I think of their tremendous loss, of the son who won't sit with them for dinner, tonight, tomorrow, or any other night.

And I am so grateful. So very grateful. To those many people who have given their most precious gifts so that you could be born into a beautiful, free, Jewish state.

Because it came at a cost--a high one.

And we musn't ever, ever take that for granted, my sweet boy.

But all of this? It's a lot for a boy who's not yet seven months old. So for now, sleep, my sweet child, and know that your making me ache on this day is a gift I couldn't have imagined you would give.

Much love,

Mummy

Gestational Diabetes and Me: I Fought the Sugar, and I Won!

I always thought I was really, really open about everything; I don't really like secrets and try to live by the rule that you shouldn't do anything you wouldn't want your mother to know about. (In all fairness, that's not a very limiting rule with a mother like mine.)

But when, at 30 weeks pregnant, I was told that something in my body had gone wrong and I had gestational diabetes, I panicked and wanted to tell no one. It felt like I had failed, like I had let down my body, my baby, and myself.

It didn't matter that my doctor assured me I had done nothing wrong, laughing when I asked her if it was my fault.

I was thrust from the world of low-risk, easy pregnancy, into a high-risk clinic with a rotating cast of characters, a dietician, and finger pricks. I was told it wasn't serious--as long as I did what I was told. And I was told to gain no more weight.

Instead of eating what I wanted, when I wanted, my diet was regulated: eating specific foods, in specific amounts, every 2.5 hours, and checking my blood sugar by pricking my finger four times a day. I figured out that walking after meals helped my sugar, and all of a sudden, I was eating seven times a day (every 2.5 hours), checking my sugar four times a day, walking three times a day...and none of it with any flexibility. That was 14 times per day that I had to think about a condition I didn't want.

It was awful.

Eight weeks later, I've not only survived, but actually thrived; rather than my sugar getting worse, it's gotten better, and I've avoided going on insulin--a great sign. The baby's growth rate has slowed and he's now the perfect size, growing beautifully.

At my last appointment, the doctor made jokes--there was nothing for him to say, as it was clear I was managing. All signs are a go for a normal, healthy baby, in a normal, healthy delivery.

I may not have done anything to get gestational diabetes, but I've done a lot to manage it. Since I haven't read any posts from anyone I know on the topic (seems to be very hush-hush), I wanted to write my own--since I'm sure I know other people who have been, or will be, in the same boat. From my very non-expert opinion to you, how to handle gestational diabetes (um, it should go without saying that I'm not a doctor and this is not medical advice, but this is the internet, so I'll say it anyway. When in doubt, ignore me and go with whatever a doctor tells you!):

1) It's ok to complain. GD totally sucks. Bye-bye, chocolate, hello, hunger. I'm hungry a lot. You probably will be, too. In my third trimester, I've gained basically no weight, while the baby has gained weight--that's not a lot of fun. You can totally write to me and complain--I get it. I also was dealing with a war, running to the bomb shelter, and it was August in Tel Aviv. It was horrible. You officially have my permission to cut off anyone who tries to tell you that it's ok, it's not so bad, at least it's temporary, etc. Being hungry day after day stinks. Callouses on your fingers stink. I get it, sister.

2) Listen to your doctor and nutritionist, 110%. This means no cheating. None. I was/continue to be (now I have a little leeway, but didn't for several weeks) totally neurotic about this--if I need to eat at 8:00, I eat at 8:00--not 7:45, and not 8:15. I also weigh/check everything, and we dictated to my in-laws what I could eat at Friday night dinner (thank God, they were amazing about it). Half cup of rice? Break out the half cup measure. 100 grams of pasta? Same deal. If you're told your bread needs a certain amount of fiber, check for it. It's not your fault you got GD, but if you don't listen to your doctor and it gets worse? That IS your fault.

3) Figure out what works for you--be your own advocate. My sugars were rising at one point, so I googled the heck out of GD. Turns out, many people have success with walking, about half an hour after a meal (I test an hour after meals). It worked like a charm for me--and then I added it to the list of rules. I stood up from the shabbat dinne table, I walked on the elliptical even when I had friends over, I excused myself from meetings where I needed to. Which brings me to my next point...

4) GD is your priority. A couple of weeks ago, someone I considered a friend did something nasty to me. I freaked out about it, was up most of the night, and my sugar sky-rocketed the next morning. I was told one time was ok, but if it happened again, I'd have to come in and we'd talk about insulin. I HAD to learn to compartmentalize--not to think about that, or anything else that made me stressed. My baby is my priority--which means my health is my priority. Everything, everything, everything else has to take a backseat.

5) Finally, boring is good. This one is tough if you, like me, love food. I now eat the same thing, every single day. It's not interesting, and not particularly satisfying. It's my last few weeks before I become a Mom, but given all the points above, I stick to my diet, basically fanatically. Toasted sandwich and a salad? Probably never going to want to look at it again but it works like a dream. Ditto, egg and toast in the morning. And meat with brown rice for lunch. It's the same thing all the time, but my baby is good, I'm healthy, and no one needs medical intervention. We'll get back to interesting in a few weeks.

Ok, I lied, one more. If you are lucky enough to have a supportive spouse, make sure to thank them. As much as it stinks for me to eat the same thing every night, it also really stinks for my husband--and he's not pregnant. Everyone gets that the last month of pregnancy isn't a lot of fun for the woman, but he could be chowing down or complaining about eating the same thing every night, and instead, he comes home, kisses me, and chops a salad. I tell him how lucky I am to have him--make sure you do the same.

That's it--if anyone wants specifics of my diet and how it works, feel free to be in touch.

PS I figured out that having a dance party in my living room to iTunes Radio's Pure Pop or 90s Dance Party works as well as going for a walk. Feel free to take from my wisdom--at 38+ weeks pregnant, I dance around my apartment on the regular, giggling to myself at how silly I look. You've got to laugh at yourself, right?

They, Who Kill Children

It's just after Shabbat.

It's the day after Shabbat here, our third since the war began, so I have some time.

Time to write, time to reflect.

This has been quite the week. A week full of moments, you might say, each of which could be a blog post unto itself.

The moment this week when I rushed home to meet a friend, and there was a bus just where I usually park, a police officer directing traffic, people everywhere, and signs indicating someone had died with information about the funeral and period of mourning.

I parked somewhere else, and went to buy peaches, asking the storekeepers what had happened, hoping against hope that someone much beloved but old had passed away--a grandmother, say, or a well-loved but worn uncle.

It was a soldier who had died. The bus was taking people to his funeral.

He was just a kid. He lived near me--where I park every day, closer than the closest bus stop.

I burst into tears in the small supermarket, unable to contain myself. I begged them to take money from me, in case the family came to the store, needing anything. Enough that they have just gotten the worst possible news, but they should have to pay for essentials? He wouldn't take my money, but as he refused, there were tears in his eyes.

He was just a boy, my neighbor. And now he's dead. He was a soldier--a legitimate target in a war--but that doesn't make my heart hurt less.

You know who else was just a boy? Jallal, the young Palestinian child from Jenin who I became incredibly close to more than seven years ago when I was a volunteer in Haifa's Rambam hospital. He had cancer at age three, and the religious girls doing their national service wouldn't play with him since he was Muslim, with a mother fully covered, though her tired eyes were exposed.

Somehow, I became deeply attached to Jallal, even though he and his family spoke no Hebrew or English, and I, no Arabic. We would play together for hours--he was the kind of boy who, handed a puzzle, would start chucking pieces with a mischievous grin. I loved him and came back time after time, even once I left Haifa.

When I brought friends to meet him, his deaf father, with so little money to spare, came running up with a pita full of falafel and as many toppings as he could fit for my friends and me; it was all he could do, but he wanted them to know how grateful he was for the love I had for his child.

When Jallal had a bone marrow transplant, his doctor, nurse, mother and I were the only ones allowed into the room.

We sang the itsy bitsy spider approximately one million times, I even have a video (though I won't post it, for the privacy of the boy I hope is now 10, and has forgotten me and ever being sick) of him doing the motions with me.

How many Jallals are dead?

How many sweet boys and girls of Gaza will never again sing?

But there is a fundamental difference between the two sides of this conflict, one that has been carrying me through.

Because it's been a long week.

A week of figuring out what to leave in the box outside the grocery store, designated for soldiers, that will tell the troops I support them wholeheartedly, but won't melt in the sun?

A week of going to order our crib and dresser, and on the way home, having to stop on the bridge and kneel near our car, since I can't lay on my stomach these days, but rockets are being intercepted above.

A week of deliberations about whether or not it's appropriate to pay a shiva call to someone you've never met, whose loss breaks your heart.

But the difference is between us and them--the protectors of children, and their killers.

No one wants children to die.

But we are taking extraordinary measures, on our side and theirs. The bomb shelters, the camps taking kids to the north where there are no sirens, the red alert song designed to calm anxious little ones--those are the steps we take for ours. There is, quite literally, a ping-pong table in our bomb shelter, which was checked by the authorities last week. It's in good shape apparently.

And there are the steps we take for theirs--knocking on roofs to warn people to get out before a bomb falls, clarifying over and over again with a hospital that no one injured is inside before firing at the terrorists firing rockets from within, stopping targeted assassinations when the targets (terrorists) surround themselves with children to stay safe.

They're storing rockets in multiple UN schools, to protect their rockets at the expense of their children, since they know we won't take out a school without a very specific reason.

You know what we store in our schools? Art supplies. Desks. Blue and white crayons, and songs about peace.

They're using children to dig tunnels, and those children are dying, digging tunnels so they can kill our children.

There are those who treat Jallals, who want them to grow and prosper. And there are those who kill, who see children as their best defensive weapon.

And for all the money in the world, for eternal life, for anything you could offer?

I wouldn't switch sides.

Do you need me to die?

Dear world,

Do you need me to die? That sounds like a silly question. Of course, you don't need me dead. Please God (funny, coming from me), in two months, I'll bring into this world a son, and teach him to be a good, kind man. I spend my days fundraising for an organization that aims to end racism and discrimination in the land in which I live. I vote in elections. I tip right, I follow the rules of the road. Why would you want me dead?

Here's the thing: every time I read the news, there's a casualty count: X Israelis dead, several hundred Palestinians.

Therefore, they're right, and we're wrong. Because more of them are dead.

So I ask again, do you need me to die?

Do you need my blood to justify Israel's reaction to rockets falling everywhere?

It's clear that my fear is not enough. My friends sending their husbands off to fight, my husband's family sending his relatives, my leaving a robe and shoes next to my shower in case Hamas sends a rocket while I shower, that's not enough.

It's not enough that I sleep with pajamas on that would be presentable to the neighbors, or the fear that ran down my neck last week when I was driving and a siren went off and I had to run for cover.

You see, dear world, I don't run so easily these days. My belly is swollen with child, and so I would think perhaps my fear would be enough to satiate you.

Do you need me to die? How many of us would justify our response to the rockets raining down? The sweet child who lives upstairs with the curly hair--the one who's always attached to her mother in the shelter? Or the little girls who play ping pong as we wait for the booms? What about the awkward pre-teens on our floor? Do you need our whole building to die, before you'll get it?

We're not dying because we've built a society designed to help us LIVE. We've created an Iron Dome to stop rockets, and ensured that there are shelters or safe spaces nearly everywhere. We're not dying because we and our leadership have chosen life, despite the PR death would certainly bring. In the nine years since Israel pulled out of Gaza, Hamas has chosen death.

I am devastated for the people of Gaza. They, too, deserve shelters from attacks. They, too, should be able to prevent civilian casualties. It's not fair. I shouldn't value their children more than their leadership does.

And if you care about them, and that casualty number which is all important to you, you should be ANGRY.

Angry that their democratically elected leadership fire missiles from their homes, making them legitimate targets for war. Angry that they don't value their children enough to tell all parents to take children to safe spaces. Angry that they would plant missiles in a school.

But you're not angry, dear world, not at the Palestinian "leadership" of Hamas.

You're angry at us--Israel. At me. Because I'm not dead, I'm just scared.

And most of the time, I don't even have to be scared, because I have all those shelters and an amazing army fighting to defend me while not raising that casualty number, and I know that I'll probably be ok.

But I'm not going anywhere. We're not going anywhere. You can trend a hashtag on Twitter with Hitler's name--you've tried before, and you won't wipe us out now, either, despite making my husband's grandfather with memories of Auschwitz run for his shelter.

And I've got news for you. If you're not as angry about what's happening in Syria as what's happening in Gaza, don't delude yourself that you're about human rights. Many more people are dying there, with no efforts to minimize casualties.

So let's call it what it is. You're paying close attention to Israel's action in Gaza with no regard to people being massacred in Syria, or Iran, or North Korea or Sudan. You're trending Hitler on Twitter, and you're publishing casualty reports as though they mean something more than mere numbers.

You hate Jews. You're an anti-semite. If you weren't, you'd care about these other issues--you'd care about people starving, and dying, you'd post about that, too. It wouldn't just be about the Jews, for the umpteenth time. There would be an uproar over what's happening in Syria.

So let's call it what it is, dear world, and then please accept my apology.

I'm sorry.

I'm not leaving.

This is my state.

And if you need my blood to show you that Israel isn't wrong or power hungry or crazy?

That's just too bad. I have work to do--ending discrimination against Israel's Ethiopian community. I have to grow my baby and make sure I eat right. I have to sit in cafes with friends, and go to movies with my husband and eat Shabbat dinner with my family. I'm a little busy.

So you'll have to forgive me, dear world. I have no intent of dying, no matter how badly you might wish otherwise.

On lychees, principles, and why I'd rather be here than anywhere else

I was going to write about lychees.

I was going to say that Friday, my husband and I went to see the hospital where (please, God) I'll give birth, make sure it looked ok.

On the way there (he had a meeting beforehand, so we met there), I walked by a fruit and vegetable store. Something that looked like this:

They're all over Israel, but somehow not near our new apartment and I've been really wanting some lychees. If you've never had a fresh lychee, they're amazing--sweet, and sticky and they taste of summer. They're my favorite and when we lived near the market I would buy them by the kilo, finishing them off in two days.

But, anyway. Yesterday. I was walking to the hospital, saw the lychees, and decided to pass--I'd get some later, I figured, and walked on.

Just as I walked into the maternity building of the hospital--I mean, as I literally crossed the threshold to wait for our tour to begin--the siren went off. I was quickly ushered into the ER which doubles as a shelter, and a few minutes later, life continued.

It's a good thing I didn't stop for lychees.

But that's not the post that I need to write. You see, I've been writing about how things are hard and scary, and there are rockets falling. People are empathizing and feeling sorry for me, and for us.

The thing is, I'm a bit of a liar. Because about 98% of the time, things aren't hard and scary. They're filled with lychees, visits with friends, delicious Israeli breakfasts, our need to figure out where to hang paintings in our new apartment, and nice cool air conditioning at home.

I got an email from an old friend in the US whose sibling is coming here on Birthright, wanting to know if it was a good idea. And here's the thing. It's not a good idea. It's a GREAT idea. Now is the PERFECT time for you to come see Israel--my Israel. Ok, ok. It's a little warm. Pack some tank tops.

You will hear sirens (unless we end this thing soon, please God), and stand in a safe room for a few minutes. Big deal. You don't live here, you'll get over it. Notice how no civilian has died on our side? We take care of our people. No need to worry.

You know what else you'll hear?

You'll hear gratitude--from waiters who are pleased that you've come to their shop when others were too scared.

You'll hear the Mediterranean lapping away at a beautiful sand beach, with matkot (sort of like ping pong without a table or scores...) paddles going non-stop.

You'll hear Israelis wish you a quiet evening when you buy something, you'll hear guards explain where to go and implore you not to run if there's a siren.

You'll hear the silence that envelops you on a Friday night, as we sing Shalom Aleichem, and you'll hear small children shriek with joy as their Dads throw them in the air, more involved than anywhere I've seen in the world.

Worried you might see an explosion?

I don't know about that. I can't make promises.

But you'll see us--a people under attack, and a people strong. YOUR people. The ones who send our husbands and our fathers and sons and brothers off to defend the land that will be here if you ever need it.

You'll see us laugh in those bomb shelters, as we trade jokes--if you see someone twice, in Hebrew you say "third time, ice cream!" and you'll hear that same exclamation in the shelter, even as we say "God forbid" in the same breath, and head off to the rest of the day.

You'll see our beautiful, resilient children, who giggle when they guess how many booms there will be, and our teenagers, as difficult and obnoxious as anywhere else in the world (I actually happen to love all the ones I know personally but we're dealing in generalities here).

You'll witness our amazing history, going to Yad Vashem and coming out to a vibrant, full Jewish state.

You'll see our state of the art hospitals, universities, famous restaurants, and did I mention how good looking Israelis are? We immigrants really bring down the average.

Forgive me, I'm an old-school Zionist.

I believe that people need a place, and this is ours--that nowhere else in the world is fostering Jewish life the way we are.

I believe that the emphasis that exists on family is unique here, and that my children will grow up stronger for it--even though it will mean Facetiming a lot, with a lot of the people I love.

I believe in a land with very little need for machismo. You don't need to prove your manhood when you spent three years in a combat unit, or are an officer in intelligence.

I believe in an army that calls Gazans ahead of time to warn them of coming attacks, even as Hamas wants them to die as human shields, sacrifices to a cause.

I believe in a state that would rather protect me and my unborn child than have the headline that something happening to me would generate. They're coming to check our shelter next week and make sure it's up to code--just to be sure.

I believe that our prime minister, who I didn't vote for, and who I don't support, wants nothing, and I mean nothing, more urgently than for all of his citizens to be safe at night. And that nothing will happen to me for publishing that line.

I believe in a country where the death of enemies is reported on the news, where it's accepted that a celebration of their deaths is a perversion of who we are and what we stand for, and where soldiers were recently sent to jail for their racism, because it doesn't represent who we are, and what is expected of them during their service.

I believe in the most moral army in the world--the IDF. I could link to ten stories about how hard we're working not to kill civilians, how people I know are at risk to make sure not one child dies, and how hard we apologize when we make a mistake.

So should your sibling come here? Should you schedule a trip? Should you cancel your upcoming trip? Odds are, they'll be safer here than anywhere else--even in the midst of this mess. The food is certainly better here (could be a blog post unto itself!), and the sand is warm. The airport is full of souvenir chocolate, balloons and flowers. Come on over--I've been busy with brunch, friends, shopping and work, but I hear the water's warm and inviting. And the lychees? They're a must.

On the value of denial, and the importance of acknowledgment

There are rockets falling all around me.

Last night, I set my alarm for 7:50 this morning (I know, it's late, and I'm spoiled. I get it. I'm also very pregnant and able to set my own hours.).

At 7:58, I was brushing my teeth when the siren went off. I was still in that liminal state--not yet dressed, no shoes on, moving slowly, when I had to hustle to find shoes I could hustle in, something to wear around my neighbors, and get my keys and myself downstairs within 90 seconds.

On the way down the stairs to the shelter, I saw that there was a bus that had stopped outside our building, and people were coming off--one was a woman with a baby in her arms running to the closest building--ours. I opened the building's door (normally locked) for her and we got into the shelter about three seconds after the boom.

Five? Ten? Some minutes later, I bade my neighbors farewell and went to finish (start?) getting ready for the day. I packed my lunch, put on make-up, got dressed, and here I am in my office, about an hour later. That's what life is like, now, with rockets falling.

But in some sense, there have been rockets falling for some time--those of bad news in absurd proportions. I'm like the world's worst broken record these last 18 months or so.

And over that time, I've learned two lessons, which apply as well to actual rockets as to metaphorical ones, sometimes called crises.

1) Denial is a great tool to help you do what you need to do.

2) Acknowledgment of what's happening by those around you is really, really important.

Last August, we got some bad news about someone I love. I literally collapsed into a pile of tears when I heard. The person only wanted cheery messages. I didn't get it--why cheery messages, when bad things were happening? Didn't she understand that BAD THINGS WERE HAPPENING?

Sad messages don't stop bad things. Neither do sad movies. They just make a person more sad, between dodging rockets, when they're trying to handle their life.

Some months ago, someone I considered a friend essentially told me that in the midst of the worst news I had ever received, I should really be acting differently--that my watching sitcoms, reading trash and trying to focus on other things were wrong.

She has no idea.

It's not like if you watch Schindler's List, and Titanic and some horror films, you can negotiate with illness. You don't get a pass out of depression if you read enough sad memoirs, and listening to sad music won't make the rockets stop falling.

You know what does help? Denial. When you're in your car driving home from work and a siren sounds (meaning: rocket, headed for you NOW) for the first time in years, and you have to weigh whether to pull over or keep going, knowing that you move slower now because of your growing belly and the risk inherent to pulling over on the highway, you can let the tears well up for about half a second. You can ask yourself how you will raise your child here, how you will teach him of things he should never learn. You have time to ask that one question. I know, since it happened, the day before yesterday.

Then you pull yourself together, and make a decision. You tell yourself things will be fine and you do what you need to.

Even with rockets falling, you have to get through a day. Offices don't close because a few times a day for a few minutes you stand in a bomb shelter, and the person at the supermarket doesn't give you a free pass because you're living a nightmare she has no idea of. There are no "park close to the store because you've been in the hospital for 12 hours" signs. The pharmacy doesn't have a separate line for the worst time in your life. There is no express lane for crisis.

So you tell yourself it will be ok, and you do what you have to do. You go into the bomb shelter, you get to work, you carry on. You deny, until you can't. I'm not a mental health professional and you have to let down and deal with your stuff at some point, but on a day to day basis, denial works really well to get you from one point to the next.

Which brings me to my next point. Acknowledgment.

I'm trying really, really, really hard, but I'm having a hard time fathoming the people who aren't saying anything about what's going on right now, where I live, in Israel, far from the territories, in a pretty much undisputed area right by Tel Aviv. On Yom Ha'atzmaut, or when Waze is sold, these folks are proud, but now? Or when Muhammad Abu Khdeir was killed, they were horrified, and now, nothing? When rockets are falling on me, and they're far away? A deafening silence.

That's true for crises, too. "I don't know what to say." "I didn't know what to say." So you say nothing. I get it. This stuff is hard. There's no "sorry rockets are falling on you" Hallmark card.

But you know what there is? Whatsapp, where a friend just sent a message saying "I'm really sorry this is happening. It must be so scary." There's Facebook, where you can post messages of solidarity and let me know that you don't think it's ok that people are trying to kill me several times a day, regardless of what you think of the rest of the situation (which, to be clear, I don't like, either).

Acknowledgment says "I see your suffering." Acknowledgment says "I get it" or "I'm trying to get it" or "I'm really sorry I don't get it, but I'm sorry you're dealing with this."

It's not complicated. But it makes a hell of a difference.

Because whether you pull over or keep driving, when you have to make it through another day that's guaranteed to be difficult, whatever--knowing that you're not alone really helps.  You have the ability to deny what's happening, so long as the people around you acknowledge it. When they don't, you can start to feel crazy.

I don't ever want to be a person who's unfazed by rockets falling. I don't want you to be, either. Someone near you is sick? You're getting a divorce? Running for shelter before you've put on deodorant? These things should throw us for a loop. They are not ok.

And you are not crazy. I get it. I feel your pain. I acknowledge you. And whatever it is, I'm sorry you're dealing with it. Your watching sitcoms, reading trashy novels or running for hours doesn't make your tragedy less.

Denial and acknowledgment. The ways I'm surviving the latest round of rockets.