Six mothers whose sons are deployed in the Israeli army share the sounds of war from the intimate perspective of a mother

W

ith the siren’s first wail on Simchas Torah morning, the Jewish nation was catapulted into an altered reality of shock, horror, and dread. In the ensuing days and weeks, as millions of Jews across the globe acclimated to a new — utterly abnormal — normal, a select demographic embarked on an altered reality all their own. They are the mothers whose sons donned uniforms and military gear, and, in the morning hours of Simchas Torah, headed to battle.

Rosie, Mimi, Ruchie, Penina, Nechama, and Leora live in the same cohesive religious Anglo community in Central Israel. Each has at least one son or son-in-law serving in the army; most have more. On a late Wednesday afternoon, they gather at Penina’s home to share their encounter with mothering under fire.

Simchas Torah morning unfolded with uncanny similarity for these women.

“We were walking to shul, and suddenly we hear the booms, and we say, okay, something must be going on. And then the next thing we know, someone’s standing on the street and says, ‘Tomer was called up!’ and it became very clear that something was happening,” begins Nechama.

“We have five boys, bli ayin hara, and four are currently serving as combat soldiers,” Leora shares. “All of them were called up, but at that point on Simchas Torah morning, I didn’t know that. All I knew was that one son was the senior officer in charge of his base in the south, on a kibbutz adjacent to the Gaza strip,” and here she pauses, “together with his wife and child.”

Nechama interjects, “Leora, you still knew something, I saw you at the shul kiddush and you had a look… I still remember that look.”

Nechama continues, “But then in our shul, one after another kids start showing up in uniform and saying, ‘Goodbye, Mom.’ ”

Rosie picks up the thread. “We were in Yerushalayim for yuntiff, and while we were in shul, a guy runs in and says, ‘You guys are sleeping! Anyone who’s in miluim, run home and get ready!,’ ” she recounts, her disbelief still evident. “And then we go out, and we see lots of young married men getting in their cars, saying goodbye to their wives and babies, and going!”

Leora witnessed the same incongruousness in her neighborhood: “I was outside, and the only cars I saw were young men in uniform or young men wearing white Shabbos shirts, driving away,” she says. “It was like the Yom Kippur War, which I remember, because I was here as a young child. That’s what the feeling was, something terrible is happening.”

“People started walking into shul and calling, ‘I have to go, I have to go!” Nechama recalls.

Watching hordes of young men heading for battle, acutely aware their sons and sons-in-law were going as well, made the tension unbearable.

In less than 24 hours Leora confronted the impossible reality of mothering multiple soldiers. “My third son, the one in charge of his base over yuntiff, was shot on the first day of the war,” she begins. “He’s baruch Hashem okay, but they went through an absolute nightmare. My daughter-in-law and granddaughter were in the command center on the base, listening to the terrorists on the roof above them while my son was outside fighting. By eight in the morning he’d been shot, but he couldn’t stop. He had the members of the kibbutz, his soldiers, and his wife and young daughter to protect.” She pauses for a moment, remembering. “We didn’t hear from them until many hours after yuntiff. It was terrifying.”

Leora and her husband couldn’t afford to linger at their injured son’s bedside, post-surgery. They raced from the hospital to pick up son number two from the airport; he’d flown in from America to join his unit, leaving his wife and children behind. Yet another son immediately joined his reserve unit; her youngest was sent directly to the South.

“It’s a feeling of absolute terror,” Leora says. “I don’t think anyone who’s not involved firsthand can comprehend it. Everyone can feel the feelings of horror when hearing the stories secondhand. But the terror of not knowing where your child is at any moment, even more so multiple children….” She shakes her head. “And this has been ongoing.”

Mimi adds, “The reality of religious families with children in the army is that you don’t have only one child in, but several, because we have more kids!”