Hard Personal Day 10/26/23
Yesterday was A DAY. I started writing this blog in the morning, but abandoned it by noon. There was such an onslaught of news flooding my inbox that my words were outdated before the post was complete. This feeling was a harbinger of things to come. I surrender to the drama of this entry and am posting it to my blog, in the hope that it’s cathartic. It is deeply personal, about the rollercoaster ride all Jews are on. I promise to be more pragmatic next time!
Another teacher at our private Jewish school was called to the reserves and left for Israel. He works in middle school with my kids, though I have never met him. He’s a normal dad, a teacher, who's going off to war. When reserves depart, the school bids them a formal bon voyage on their last day. The children and teachers flank each side of a long outdoor corridor, in a send-off filled with cheers and praise. Hopefully his spirits were uplifted; mine were scattered. As I retreated to the parking lot to wait for the kids’ dismissal, I wondered if other parents were also having a private freak-out in their cars; a raw moment before we went about our regular lives of carpooling and homework. And I wondered how our kids were really processing things: they see so much and cop to so little.
As I’m exiting the school, a burst of messages from my 6th grade chat group comes in. A lone soldier from the neighborhood had been killed in action. A lone soldier refers to the Jewish kids that serve in the IDF without parents or potentially other family in Israel. The mom who updated us has a son, thankfully alive, who serves in the same platoon. We're in Miami, not southern Israel! This kid was young and handsome–I couldn’t stop staring at his picture. On top of Oct 7th, this is who’s dying, more of our future leaders? Yes. It’s a battle of survival. It’s not a regular war (if that’s even a term!) where there are winners and losers, followed by negotiations and treaties. If Israel loses, we’re talking about its extinction, along with its Jews. His name was Captain Avaraham Henkin, may his memory be a blessing.
In other dramatic news, my husband's remaining family left France this week. I say left, but I really mean fled. They no longer felt safe in Paris or Marseille and weren't waiting for the toxic situation to crescendo into violence. One cousin is flying to LA to stay with her son. Another decamped to Mallorca with his wife and sister in tow. The rest are flying to New York and Montreal. I learned this news as I sat down to a "normal" weekday family dinner. As the kids banter about basketball tryouts and today’s horrible cafeteria lunch, I’m processing the last remnants of our family leaving Europe. I already had zero family left there after the Holocaust, but now my husbands was leaving too. Just like that, our footprint is gone! Maybe they’ll come return when the local protests abate, or whenever this war resolves, but maybe not. Maybe after hundreds of years in Europe, after this week, our family’s tenure is officially through. Other than the old Yeshiva and Orphanage in Salonica that still bear my maiden name, there’s nothing to document hundreds of years of living in exile there. We don’t even have the centuries of markers from my family’s graves in the Jewish cemetery. The Nazis dug them up and used them to pave roads in Thessaloniki. People are still driving on their headstones.
As I was barricading myself in the bathroom, wasting water so the kids wouldn't hear me cry, I got a text from my husband's cousin in NY. She wanted to know if she could stay with us in Miami. Her daughter attends Cooper Union and had just escaped a Pro-Hamas rally that turned into a mob. Her roommate was still hiding in a locked library on campus, waiting for a police rescue. There’s a viral video of these Jewish kids huddled together inside the library as the angry mob beats on the doors and walls, trying to break in. I understand that the building had a lot of windows, so it was particularly noisy. And scary. Hearing this reminded me of Kristallnacht, all that glass they were trying to break. Those kids are already in a Krav Maga class this morning, fighting the feeling of helplessness with something physical and empowering. So far, there's been zero consequences for the rally attendees. Our Universities are supporting terrorism by not banning pro-Hamas rallies. This is not free speech, it's hate speech. These people need to understand that they are on the wrong side of history.
As for school in Israel? Some kids returned this week, depending on the school's facilities, not staff. My three nephews in Middle School have a staggered schedule: the safety room on campus can only accommodate so many and they need to ensure everyone has a spot. So, some kids will go to school Mon and Tues, and other kids on Wed and Thurs. Fri is normally a short day and a scheduling headache, so they will simply Zoom. What a mess: school is dictated by the amount of bodies they can cram into a shelter.
I typed this note at midnight, in the dark, on my iPhone. I was restless and didn't want this insidious anxiety to leak into today, which is my eldest daughter's birthday. So, I will table my angst and act "as if". We'll open birthday gifts, order sushi and likely take a ridiculously long shopping trip to Sephora. All the while, I’ll still be thinking: did all that really happen yesterday?
Am Yisrael Chai