Day 355: Two opposing ideas
Thoughts on living parallel lives and retaining our ability to function
To borrow F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous quote, Israelis these days aren’t only holding two opposing ideas in mind while retaining the ability to function, but are holding two parallel lives in hopes we can retain a bit of sanity.
In one life, we lived chained to the news, aware at all times of the whereabouts of each member of the family (or at least, the kids that are not yet serving in the army,) and check once more that we closed the iron curtain of the window of the shelter for when S gets home. Before leaving for school, confirm there’s no change to the guidelines in the area, and that our city hasn’t been added to the long list of municipalities where schools are closed, as is the case of more than one-third of Israel especially after a day of more than 300 missiles and rocket attacks . And once in the car, rush back home to get the yellow lapel pin we forgot next to the keys because even if the 101 hostages are no longer making headlines, we can’t possibly forget their plight.
In the other life, we start reading a new novel and make menus for the three-day holiday next week, and smile when S uses Canva to design a “save the date” for her Bat Mitzvah next year. We arrange carpools, go to PTA meetings, call the technician of the water dispenser and even (gasp!) buy tickets to an Ishay Ribo concert (not without preempting any feelings of guilt that it’s not really a concert but more like a Selichot evening, because his songs are mostly modern adaptations of prayers and liturgical poems.)
On good days, we are able to multitask and switch from one life back to the other without damage. On most days, we let one life spill into the other, and as a result, we spend most of our waking hours feeling stressed or guilty or stressed about feeling guilty — and above all, exhausted. We laugh at the latest meme about Nasrallah (my favorite so far is the one that mimics a LinkedIn profile with a purple “hiring” badge under his pic) but then sigh because we know that war is no picnic and that the margin for error is so infinitesimally small that things can change very quickly. And when we start the day with the ring of a regular alarm clock and that of a missile we are grateful (and if we needed a reminder, over a million people had to run for shelter after Hezballah launched a ballistic missile towards Tel Aviv this morning.)
A Concert
Last night, S, A and I drove to Ashdod for the Ishay Ribo aconcert in an open-air theater near the beach. As expected, he sang his greatest hits and added a few additional liturgical songs. But surprisingly for a concert with 4 thousand people, there were no instructions over the loudspeakers on what to do in case of a siren (maybe because, given that the city is less than 40 kilometers from the Gaza, missile alerts were a almost a daily occurrence in the first months of the war, and “everyone knows that when there’s a large gathering, it’s best to lie down where you are, covering your head.”) Still, chatting with fellow audience members, it was clear many of us felt nervous.
As expected, Ribo made several references to the war (asking whether there were evacuees in the audience, and calling for peace and a permanent end to hostilities, and for the return of the hostages.) But I wasn’t expecting the dialogue with the audience, who brought notes and stickers and flags with faces of hostages and fallen soldiers and climbed down the sides of the amphitheater to hand them directly to the members of the orchestra and to Ribo himself, who draped them around his shoulders, like layers of prayer shawls.
So yes, life goes on, even large concerts… or so we thought. The largest concert of the season, Noa Kirel in HaYarkon Park in Tel Aviv, was scheduled for tomorrow night, with tens of thousands of tickets sold.
Just a few minutes ago, organizers announced it’s being postponed to a later date.
A Modified Holiday
Much has been written recently on how to mark and celebrate (can one even use this word during war time?) the High Holidays this year. On one end end of the spectrum is the view that “nothing” should change —not the festive tunes in many of the prayers, not the holiday dinners and lunches, and certainly not the customs around dancing with the Torah on Simchat Torah— and on the other, the conviction that nothing should, can or ever will be the same.
But the vast majority of people seem to fall in the many gradations in between. Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Succot will obviously feel different this year— just like every Shabbat has felt different for the last 12 months— even if no major changes or additions are made to the regular order of the day. But how to mark Shmini Atzeret/Simchat Torah deserves deep thought, given the fact that it’s the day of the Oct 7 attacks, and that there are still hostages in Gaza, and that there are still families in mourning, and a multi-front war going on. There are differences between private and community events, and private and community mourning rites, and the overarching idea that whaterver is decided upon this year won’t necessarily fit in future years. There are multiple halachic considerations, as well as local customs and opinions. And there is the fact that Judaism has always added and changed and adapted to whatever was going on, balancing between the current moment and the unbroken chain of traditions, some spanning hundreds of years, and many, over two thousand years.
So who decides? The people. As with many other communities, my synagogue is having a special set of round tables next week to hear everyone’s thoughts. And while I’m sure that the final “program” for Simchat Torah won’t represent all of the views that everyone brings in, the most important thing is that we all get to process it together.
How will we get through the coming holidays, the October 7 anniversary, the multiple commemoration ceremonies? I don’t know about the others. For me, it’s hanging on to the hope that next year there our focus will no longer be on an ongoing war, but on the work of healing and rebuilding and of processing what it means to live in the day after.