We thought we’d be safe in the North, at home.

It’s Rosh Chodesh Iyar, and I’m packing again. Again.

Weekday clothes, Shabbos clothes. Summer? Winter? I forget where we’re up to.

The last seven months have been a haze of packing and packing and packing. I can’t even say I’ve ever properly unpacked.

There’s a war raging in Gaza. A prolonged, difficult, impossible war. A war where we try to decapitate a monster that grows new heads every time we turn around.

And yet. The south of Israel shows small signs of regrowth after the evil razed it, razed us to the ground. Families are returning to Ashkelon, to Sderot, even to the Gaza Envelope.

See?

We will never let them win. We will never surrender. We’ll replant our seeds, rebuild our homes.

But what of me? And my husband? And the members of our community up in the Galil, sent into an exile with no end date? How can we replant seeds and rebuild homes that haven’t been destroyed?