(How are you?) מה שלומך?
(What’s up?) מה נשמע?
These simple, innocent questions that we automatically use at the beginning of an interaction with someone we know have, since October 7, 2023, become loaded in Israel. With every phone call or conversation with my work colleagues or friends since October 7th, there has been a hesitation before answering this simple question. It’s as if you can hear the internal debate – do I tell the truth or just provide the accepted and expected answer “I’m fine”? Until about a month ago, most people I knew ended this internal debate with the answer “I’m fine considering the circumstances.” Now, most choose a more honest truth – “No, I’m not doing so well.”
Why are we not doing so well? On one hand, there is pride in what the army has accomplished in the last month – the beeper attack and the assassination of Nasrallah. For many in the north, it feels like the army and the government are finally paying attention to our home. On the other hand, it is a year since this war began. There is no end in sight and our hostages are still not home. The escalation in the north has led to more and more people being affected directly from the war. More rockets falling across larger swaths of the north, forcing schools to move online for a week from Haifa to Tiberias and north. Personally, the escalation caused me to move a work retreat to an online format instead of meeting physically so my staff would not need to travel from the north.
And of course, there was the missile attack from Iran on October 1. Lior and I already knew on the afternoon of October 1 that Iran was preparing for a missile attack due to reports in the news media. When we received alarms directly to our phones, we were not surprised. We grabbed the kids and ran to our safe room, which is my son’s bedroom. My husband managed communication with the family and I kept the children calm, as it was already the third siren of the day. The first one was while they were at school, the second one was a half an hour earlier while one of my daughters was in the shower. She had to run to the safe room dripping wet in a towel, crying. We were in the safe room for about 30 minutes. We spoke with my mother-in-law, I read stories, and we kept reassuring the children they were safe and gave many hugs. In the background, we could hear the nearby explosions of the Iron Dome intercepting the missiles. After about a half an hour, we left the safe room and continued our evening – finishing dinner, brushing teeth, reading stories before bed. My children all chose to sleep in the safe room and my little one refused to go to the bathroom by himself.
The next day we received reports that a missile fell on an abandoned building in Hod HaSharon, causing damage to hundreds of houses nearby. No one was physically hurt.
As I tell my children, we are lucky that Israel cares about its civilians unlike Hamas and Hezbollah; we have the Iron Dome, safe rooms, bomb shelters, and accurate warning systems. However, there is a psychological cost that our children and we pay despite being physically safe. It took three nights before my daughters returned to sleep in their own room. My son constantly tells me he is scared to go to kindergarten because he misses me despite having a great time. All my children, as well as myself, are on edge and go from calm to angry in a second without thinking. We can’t make any definite plans – all is contingent on the war situation. One of my daughters is heartbroken that the start of a long anticipated extracurricular activity keeps being delayed because of the war. This is the mental situation of my family who are lucky – we are safe (relatively) in a comfortable apartment in the center. We are parents with education and means who are home with our children. We are surrounded by family and a supportive community. I can only imagine the situation of other families who are dealing with constant rocket fire and sirens, who don’t have a safe room, who don’t have constant work because of the war, who have lost a close loved one, or where the father is being constantly called up for reserve duty. This is why we, as a country, are not ok.
As we face the year anniversary of the October 7th massacre, the start of the war, and the evacuation from our beloved home and community, I want to end with what I wrote to my staff in honor of this day:
A year has passed since we woke up and had our lives shattered at the personal, college, community, and country level.
May we remember and honor the heroes that we have lost while they were defending the innocent, especially Ido Shani, Keren’s brother who fell a year ago.
May we mourn for the innocent lives lost on all sides of this war and the destruction it has brought.
May we pray for the safety of our soldiers who are currently serving to protect us – they are our husbands, wives, sons, daughters, and students.
May the hostages return home.
May we pray for the social workers, psychologists, teachers, volunteers, parents, and all who care for others to have the strength and energy to carry on their work.
May we find inspiration from each other and those around us who, despite uncertainty and challenges, continue to make the world a better place.
Thank you, my staff, for being my inspiration for this past year, and may we serve as an example of how this country is and should be.
Shalom,
Liz Dovrat
Elizabeth Dovrat is the daughter of Barbara Dudley, Jewish Community Relations Council chair. She occasionally writes for Jewish News on life in Israel with her family.