Expecting to make up sleep, I pushed off going to sleep in order to enjoy some private down-time after the night meal of Shabbat/chag. At some point between midnight and 1:30 AM, I heard and saw a show of firecrackers coming from a Muslim-Arab neighborhood.
At the time, it puzzled me because ever since the Israeli authorities cracked down (finally!) on them shooting their fully automatic machine guns into the air, the Muslim-Arabs there now celebrate weddings, Muslim holidays, and the last day of school with setting off fireworks.
I didn't hear any music, wasn't aware of any holiday, and it certainly wasn't the start of summer vacation.
It also ended pretty quickly, like they just shot off some fireworks, and that was it.
At the time, I wondered whether they were trying to disturb us on our holiday.
But seeing as it isn't a well-known holiday among non-Jews and it was so short and at a time when most people were sleeping and wouldn't notice it, it didn't seem like a real attempt at harassment. Also, at that time of night, shooting off firecrackers for no reason would bother their own clan members — not something that would be tolerated.
Someone I asked later suggested it may have been a signal.
It also could've just been young people fooling around (although it's weird they'd risk provoking their own for the sake of fun).
It could also be there was some kind of celebration, undetectable from where I stood.
But now, seeing as it occurred mere hours before the horror at the Gazan border, I can't help wondering whether they knew savage plans were already underway and were celebrating that.
Does anyone know or have any idea?
Simchat Torah Morning, 5784
After listening another few moments to verify whether it was a real siren (as opposed to the wind or a child imitating a siren in play), I shouted the name of my 8-year-old (and youngest) while stumbling out of bed.
That was to wake him up. Fortunately, the siren woke him too and he immediately darted into the safe room, which also is used as the guest room and housed our 24-year-old married son, his lovely wife, and their 6-month-old baby boy.
Except I didn't know my youngest had done that.
I still stumbled across my room, a little disoriented, and kept calling his name, to which he answered "What! What!"—which was a relief, but I wanted him to go to the safe room, so I kept calling his name, to which he kept answering "What! What!" and "I'm here!"
But I didn't know where "here" was.
Finally, my brain kicked in enough to ask which room he was in, just his older brother and his wife called out that he was with them.
"Okay, good!" I said and head toward the netilat yadayim sink, figuring I had enough time to do the morning ritual hand-washing which removes nasty spiritual impurity.
Sure, I know the 60 or 90 seconds we officially have between a siren and the actual strike of the rocket aren't exact. Plus, I didn't know how much time had passed nor did I even know what time it was. (Later, I found out that first attack occurred around 8:20 AM.)
But like most Jews in Eretz Yisrael, I got used to relying on miracles because hundreds of rocket attacks often leave no causalities. Even injuries aren't nearly as common as they should be.
But as I was on #3 of a speedy 6-step handwashing ritual, I head a boom.
Oh, I thought. I guess I misjudged the amount of time.
Shuffling into the safe room, apologizing to my daughter-in-law as I did, but she was very reassuring.
I felt bad for her because she's a very frum and modest young woman (her husband, my son, learns full-time in a respectable kollel), and our 8-year-old apparently just burst into their room without warning (except they knew we'd all converge on them when they heard the siren). Yet there she was with her hair tidily covered and her blanket pulled up under her chin, with her smiling face peeking out.
I headed over to the window to close the sliding thick metal cover, but my older son had already done that.
(By the way, while reading this makes it seem like a lot of time went by, it actually all happened within seconds. Reading it takes longer than doing it.)
My older son was also looking a little disoriented, despite remembering to close the metal cover.
He'd woken up a minute before the siren and had been trying to figure out how he missed waking up on time to get to the minyan he wanted and where he should go daven now.
And then the siren went off.
I figured we should all sit on the beds (a small room, it was crowded) so we don't get knocked over if something falls too close.
My son closed the heavy metal door and we looked at each other in the faint crack of light between the metal window cover and the thick metal frame.
"Is this everyone?" said my son.
I thought for a moment, then cried out the name of the 19-year-old, on leave from his army base for this holiday.
The older son ran to the younger son's room and got him into the safe room too, then shut the door.
I guess I won't win any awards for Mother-of-the-Year. I forgot him because he's usually at the army base and not home, and also because even when he is home, he often goes out at night to meet with friends and doesn't always come home by morning.
(You can read more about him here: some-slice-of-life-stuff-about-our-younger-son-joining-nachal-charedi.html.)
Anyway, that was everyone who was at home that time.
If you're wondering where my husband went, he got stuck doing a job over Shabbat/chag (offering religious services), and couldn't switch. We'd joined him for the first chag/Shabbat of Sukkot, but so many of our children wanted to be together at our home for the second chag, I gave in.
That may not seem fair to my husband, but I'm not crazy about the place he was in, and in hindsight, it's very min haShamayim that my children insisted on come for this chag/Shabbat because I would really have hated to be in a public bomb shelter, especially first thing in the morning, including getting my son and I in pajamas (probably, I'd send him running out the door while I hopped into a robe over my nightgown) out into a bomb shelter with dozens of other people.
Anyway, we spent that first attack joking about the situation. Not intentionally, but that's just how it panned out.
The boys discussed what the people attending large shul across the street might be doing now. (It's a Litvish Ashkenazi shul popular with all different charedi types, and where the older son davened the night before.)
Seeing as the shul's safe room also served as its kitchen, the boys joked about how everyone was probably crowding into the kitchen, eating kugel as the siren blared. (Later, we discovered they sent the children to the kitchen/safe room while the men continued with hakafot.)
We waited the extra 10 minutes after the siren ended (with my 19-year-old trying to leave before then because he ran out of patience).
We managed to restrain him that time, but then...
Things Get Oddly Worse
So we all parted ways, wondering how the other married son and his wife were doing (they live a few blocks away from us and ate the chag/Shabbat meals with us without sleeping over).
The 19-year-old went back to bed.
The older son contemplated where he should daven, his wife tried to go back to sleep, and the 8-year-old and I ended up with the baby so she could sleep.
While the 8-year-old entertained his nephew in the stroller, I dawdled out of the kitchen into the living room with a delightfully large cup of strong Turkish coffee.
Before I could sit down, another siren blared.
As I whirled around to set down the coffee so as to take the baby, the 8-year-old shot off toward the safe room, his head meeting my elbow and Turkish coffee spilled onto the floor in a grainy, brown splash.
The 8-year-old laughed and kept on going, I set the coffee down, and started wheeling my grandson toward the safe room when his parents came out to pull him in.
The 19-year-old came bouncing in on his own this time.
We started joking around again, then I realized we should really be davening. Hearing booms helped me come to this realization, though my daughter-in-law pointed out we didn't know whether the booms were strikes or sonic booms in the air or the Iron Dome blowing up rockets in the sky.
So I started davening and the 19-year-old laughed and said, "Saying Tehillim? Uh-oh, now it feels heavy and serious!"
He was right and I realized that's why we were joking until now, because no one wanted to feel the mounting tension.
Also, it shocked me to hear a second siren immediately after the first because that never happened before in our area.
We left the room after it seemed over and after asking my daughter-in-law if she needed anything, she sweetly quipped, "Um, I'm actually hoping to get more sleep."
I laughed and said, "You're right! No problem."
Taking both my son and hers, we left the room, closing the door after us.
As the 8-year-old entertained his nephew, I sat down to enjoy what was left of my coffee.
But then it happened again.
All in all, it was 3 sirens between making the coffee and actually finishing it.
At one point, the older son decided, in a cheerful confidence-inducing way, to assign the 8-year-old the task of wheeling the baby into the safe room each time. This helps a person feel useful in a stressful situation, preventing a traumatized response in the present and preventing PTSD later.
(The older son got a lot of these ideas for helping children deal with stressful situations from Rav Shlomo Hoffman's books. See here: how-one-man-worked-on-his-middot-when-everything-stood-against-him.html.)
My daughter-in-law gave up trying to sleep and came to join us in the living room.
Feeling responsible for his wife, child, mother, and little brothers, my older son decided to daven at home in another room.
Then we heard a boom with no siren preceding it.
My daughter-in-law and I looked at each other.
At that moment, the baby was in my arms and the stroller near her.
"I think we should go," I said.
"But there's no siren," she said. "Maybe it's the Iron Dome or it hit somewhere else."
Then the siren went off.
So off we returned to the safe room.
At one point, the older son gave the youngest the title of "chazan" (cantor) and had him lead us in saying the couple of Tehillim/Psalms the child had memorized. (It was too dark to read and anyway, we were too distracted to read.)
Sorry I have nothing heroic to report about myself. As you can probably tell from the narrative, the repeated bombings caught me emotionally unprepared. Never having been in such a situation, it felt surreal.
My daughter-in-law and I discussed how now we know how people in the South feel, and we can empathize better with them now. It's important to feel the pain of a fellow Jew.
We also found it emotionally exhausting to keep returning to the safe room.
Venturing out into the sukkah-decorated porch during a break in the bombardment, we saw white smoke rising from a Muslim-Arab neighborhood behind our charedi Jewish neighborhood.
It's not uncommon for Gazan terrorists to hit their fellow Muslim-Arabs when they meant to hit Jews.
But for some reason, no one cares about that.
And Worse...
It only took a few minutes before the older son came out looking pensive.
After another few minutes, the older son approached me, beaming with confidence and reassurance and declared that the 19-year-old had been called up and needed to leave immediately.
Totally clueless, I protested.
"Why did they call him up on Shabbos when it concerns the air force?" I argued. "They don't need combat soldiers for rocket attacks, and certainly not the charedi units, especially a unit that didn't even finished basic training!"
(The 19-year-old's unit was only a couple of weeks away from completing basic training and becoming fully fledged soldiers. However, as I was told, they don't send any of the charedi units to man the borders, "just" internal assignments.)
The older son continued to behave in a confident, reassuring manner while insisting that it was fine because it was indeed pikuach nefesh.
I argued it wasn't. (Little did I know...)
But they continued to move forward despite anything I said. And I didn't understand why.
The older son stuffed an entire challah in a bag and recommended I prepare a container of grapes for the way.
The two continued to act so breezy, as if everything was fine—and even amusing.
The older son insisted on making kiddush for his younger brother before he left.
Adding to my consternation, I hadn't laundered his uniforms and socks since he came home.
He'd spent the first day of Sukkot on the base, returned home toward the end of chol hamo'ed, when we try not to do laundry. Though I asked him if he needed any laundry before the chag, he'd given me a confident "no." So I didn't think anything of it.
No one did, actually. Though my oldest son, who served in a non-combat position, told me that combat soldiers need to be ready at all times. This meant I should always do his laundry the moment he comes home.
But he never said that and many times, I ended up doing laundry Saturday night when he came home on leave Friday morning, and nothing happened. So how was I supposed to know?
And anyway, I didn't think the child in basic training in a charedi unit was a combat soldier.
Right?
So I watched in consternation as he and his older brother proceeded to stuff the army bag with smelly socks and uniforms, the 19-year-old chuckling the whole time.
I felt like a failed mother. (Army uniforms and socks used for a week smell REALLY bad. I hated the thought of him having to wear them.)
Furthermore, I fussed over how it seems we were under rocket attack.
I felt angry at the IDF for calling up a non-essential soldier to come in the middle of a rocket bombardment.
This led to the two brothers joking about swerving between the rockets.
Then we gave him instructions on what to do if he heard a siren on the way. (As if he didn't already know.)
He picked up his rifle & motorcycle helmet, slung the bag over his back, then walked out the door straight to our neighbor's door (which faces our door separated by a yard).
He asked their teenage son for the keys to his motorcycle, which he gladly gave my son.
As the two brothers made their way out of the apartment building, a Litvish neighbor was coming home from the large popular shul—indeed, he carried a generous pan of kugel—and when he saw my armed & uniformed son swinging onto the motorcycle, the Litvish neighbor paused to call out, "My Hashem protect you! And may He grant you blessing and success!"
And he was gone.
Praising Hashem While Bombarded by Rockets
I knew this holiday of Shemini Atzeret & Simchat Torah was a holiday of love, a celebration of the tremendous cherishing love Hashem holds for Am Yisrael.
(Please see here: the-netivot-shalom-on-how-to-use-the-loving-joyful-power-of-simchat-torah-shemini-atzeret-to-support-you-throughout-the-darkest-times-of-your-life-all-year-long.html)
Sure, it felt funny to praise Hashem for all His Kindness, Compassion, and Chessed while under rocket attack & to daven the famous prayer with the joyful melody: "You have chosen us from among all the nations, You love us and desire us," but I figured this was the best thing to do under the circumstances because praising Hashem while suffering is very powerful.
It is also what many Jews did in many shuls—in fact, they behaved with wonderful devotion and courage, by dancing as they davened throughout the sirens.
Mi k'amcha Yisrael? Who is like Your Nation Israel?
Weird Stuff
There was a feeling of it being over, yet we remained hypersensitive about noise, like a neighbor's door slamming shut or children clattering on the stairwell or an upstairs neighbor dropping something on the floor, asking each other, "What was that? Is that a boom? Oh, it's okay, it sounds like the neighbor's 3-year-old probably just bounced a ball."
I continued to fret over my son leaving while my daughter-in-law gently said, "You know, we don't really know what's going on. This was an unusual amount of rocket attacks for this area. It could be something more than what we're seeing."
No, her husband hadn't told her anything. She's just a highly intelligent young woman who was born and raised here, so she understood there was more to the picture.
On either side of noon, we heard and saw an army helicopter go by.
"See?" said my daughter-in-law. "That means something."
At around 1:30, our other married son and his wife came over.
They hadn't heard a thing.
In fact, they made a leisurely walk out the trek to our home, chatting and cracking sunflower seeds all the way.
They used their thick-walled safe room as a bedroom and other buildings surround their tiny apartment, so maybe that was why?
"But I always hear the Shabbat siren just fine," this daughter-in-law insisted.
They initially didn't believe us, suspecting we were playing a sick joke on them, even though we aren't the types to do that.
So that son went to his younger brother's room and saw his bag and rifle missing, combined with our insistence, so he ended up believing us.
Then I remembered how this younger daughter-in-law told me how she loves spending Yom Kippur at shul, how she loves the davening and, being a good faster, she doesn't get weak or headachey or hungry. She said every year, she looks forward to Yom Kippur.
Isn't that beautiful and special?
So I suggested that in the merit of her unusually spiritual attitude toward Yom Kippur, combined with her heartfelt prayers, Hashem spared her and her husband the distress and hassle of dealing with sirens and rocket attacks.
Even now, no one understands how they slept through all the booms and sirens. They don't understand it themselves.
So I think her merit remains the only possible explanation.
Lulled into a False Sense of Positivity
That reassured me this was a "regular" albeit uncommonly intense rocket attack. After all, here come the aerial fighters!
The younger married couple went home after the meal.
The older son went out, then came back to report how people continued with hakafot and davening throughout the attacks.
I felt positive all this helped. After all, the rocket attacks ceased just after saying Mussaf, the final chance to get in last-ditch merits for the new year!
As Rav Itamar Schwartz explained: "The main yichud with Hashem takes place at Tefillas Geshem [Prayer for Rain] at Mussaf (on Shemini Atzeres), and that is when the message of one’s verdict is handed over in Heaven."
[Simchas Torah Q&A, Bilvavi]
So I felt certain everything was fine and was still miffed about my younger son's call-up.
Finally, the sleep-deprived daughter-in-law got her well-deserved nap while the 8-year-old and I spent luscious quality time with the baby.
The older son went to daven.
We had a nice Third Meal together, though the older son seemed distracted despite his pleasant demeanor.
Throughout all this & despite our reassurances to the 8-year-old, the mere mention of his 19-year-old brother's name caused him to clamp his hands over his ears and hurry out of the room.
Then the older son went off to daven again while the rest of us chatted together.
After Shabbat/chag ended, the phone rang & I saw the younger married son's number on the screen.
The Horrific Truth Finally Dawns
"What?" I said.
"Pachad mavet," he replied. Deathly frightening.
His unusually dramatic answer combined with his tone of voice made me realize my daughter-in-law was right: We hadn't known what was really going on.
Then he started telling me about border-invasions, town-invasions, abductions, mass murders — and what was this about an army base being breached and its soldiers slaughtered?
I couldn't absorb it. I thought I was misunderstanding his words.
Sending the 8-year-old to play in another room, I told my son I was putting him on speaker phone so my daughter-in-law could hear too.
But she also thought she wasn't understanding correctly.
That's when I realized we had comprehended everything.
Yet in addition to the horror of it, it didn't make logical sense to me.
After all, a son's friend served on the Gazan border—at exactly one of the spots breached.
I knew how stringently the military supervised that fence. (He was flabbergasted when he heard about the incursion.)
I also knew the caliber of state security intelligence. Why was this ongoing atrocity such a total surprise? How could that happen?
And I didn't understand why it took 5 hours (or more?) for reinforcements to arrive.
After all, the State of Israel is geographically smaller than the state of New Jersey.
It might take 5 hours to drive from the upper North to the South.
It should not take 5 hours to mobilize forces from the South and Center to get to the South.
After all, the main tzanchanim (paratrooper) base, which comprises mostly combat soldiers, lies near Be'er Sheva—the South.
Israel's main (and huge) air force base also lies in the South.
The South hosts many combat soldiers and reserve soldiers on leave during this last chag.
As dread and disbelief continued to intensify, I asked if he knew where the 19-year-old was.
"He's at his base," came the answer. "And don't worry, the army won't send his unit out to fight." Again, this mostly because his unit has not yet finished basic training.
I felt massive relief because, unlike the breached base, his base contained extremely well-trained & top-class soldiers, plus a couple of exclusive units. And everyone maintained heightened guard to do the horrific situation.
Then the older son came home, looked at us and said, "You know, don't you."
That's when he revealed that when his younger brother's commanding officer called, the officer explained in brief about the invasion, murders, and abductions.
That's what they were whispering about in the other room.
They decided not to tell us to protect us and let us have a normal chag.
And I'm grateful for that. I think my daughter-in-law, youngest son, baby grandson, and I needed to a relief from the distressing morning (rocket attacks, plus the son being called up for military duty).
For me, it remains a nourishing & soothing memory, a lull in the middle of an increasingly horrifying storm.
Family Round-Up
Initially, we heard the first married couple's city was closed, so we welcomed them to stay longer, but then their city opened. The younger married brother drove them home. And with public transportation either non-existent or erratic, he also picked up his father and took his wife's brother home from yeshivah.
Since then, we've all maintained frequent contact with the son in the army.
We spent an hour saying Tehillim, the 8-year-old and I saying chapters together based on recommendations by the Chida, like 70 and 83 for war, and so on. (See here: the-full-list-of-segulotuses-for-all-of-tehillimpsalms.html.)
After this, plus a lot of reassurance about the 19-year-old's safety, the 8-year-old finally relaxed when hearing his brother's name.
Later, my Moroccan-born husband confided that on Hoshanah Rabbah (Thursday night), he dreamed the late Rav Ovadia Yosef was crying.
After that, my husband woke up with a bad feeling that pursued him all day and into Friday night, and he woke up around 3 Shabbat morning with a bad feeling, just a couple of hours (or less) before the atrocities started.
All Saturday night, we heard planes rushing overhead. This continued until Sunday evening, when we only heard them sporadically.
(BTW, I have more than the children mentioned here, but this post focuses on this specific time and who was there then. Baruch Hashem, other family members live in parts of the country unaffected by invasions or rockets.)
Being Real
And this was written as honestly as I could, even though I don't think I come off well. After all, in hyper-focusing on the youngest & most vulnerable son, I initially forgot another son during the first rocket attack.
And it's admittedly weird to lose track of how many attacks we underwent, yet to know the exact number of rocket attacks it took to finish my morning coffee. (Three.)
And despite normally handling crisis situations well, I dropped the ball here. After waking up to a rocket attack (which has happened to me before), I never managed to re-orient myself, remaining in a partial daze & feeling out-of-focus until the horrific news arrived Saturday night.
Nor did I experience any special intuition of anything being atrociously wrong.
In writing this, I realize how many indications I missed of a much larger disaster in progress.
But I think (hope?) that also serves a purpose.
After all, when people write only about the times they're heroic & intuitive, it creates the impression of heroism and accurate intuition as the norm when really, disorientation and other less ideal responses are also completely normal (albeit undesirable).
I'm also left with this uncomfortable dichotomy of feeling tremendous gratitude for personal salvation (especially with regard to my son's less-dangerous position in the army) while feeling distress and heartbreak for all the terrifying suffering of everyone else.
There is more to say in a general sense about the situation, both from a security standpoint and a spiritual one, but that's for another post.
One thing I hear said with heartfelt desperation, and something I feel too, is that we need Mashiach NOW.
May the Final Redemption please come NOW with revealed compassion.