Now we’re not so sure about Trump anymore. There’s talk of tension between him and Bibi; he signed a ceasefire with the Houthis behind Israel’s back; described a potential archenemy, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa as, “an attractive, smart man;” and a bad nuclear deal is on the horizon.

We wonder: Is this all the normal ups and downs in a normal relationship, or are we falling out of his favor?

I think it’s a friendly reminder from the One in Charge that we shouldn’t be putting too much faith in anyone but Him.

He sent us another friendly reminder recently — don’t rely too much on the Iron Dome or THAAD or the Arrow 3 Interceptor — when a ballistic missile got through and landed in an open area next to the airport.

Not on any of the buildings nearby, not on the congested highways, not on a plane on the tarmac.

In an open field.

I’ve observed how sure we’ve become that all the missiles will get shot down. So many of us no longer do the hishtadlus of running to safety, whispering Tehillim, or singing songs of emunah as we huddle in our fortified rooms.

I was on a bus on the highway during a siren. The bus driver didn’t want to pull over so we could all get out and lie in the ditches on the side of the road with our hands over our heads. A loud argument broke out between the passengers, those who wanted to stop and get out and those who didn’t. I advocated for stopping (seeking shelter seems like a reasonable hishtadlus to me), but most of the cars on the road continued driving.

We discussed it in the office at my work. A colleague reported that she was on a busy street and saw that people just rolled their eyes and continued their shopping as though a ballistic missile coming their way was as annoying as the threat of rain.

Another colleague put it, “We say, ‘Oh, those crazy Houthis, they get so antsy during heatwaves. Pass the salt, please.’ ”

A third marveled at how when there was a threat of snow in February, our office had backup plans if staff couldn’t get to work, and set up remote working options for those with a distance to travel. But on the day of the second Iranian missile attack, we all stayed late in the office to finish up a major project, threat of missile attack notwithstanding.

So… snowflakes we can’t handle, but shrapnel’s fine?

I thought about our reliance on the Iron Dome on Lag B’omer when I was at a cousin’s farm in the Negev desert, in an area defined as shetach patuach, where there are no shelters, no sirens, nothing but cowsheds, sheep pens, and wooden huts. We were eating kebabs by the bonfire, Bar Yochai and booms from artillery fire in Gaza in the background, when my husband looked up at the sky and said, “What’s that?”

Something yellow streaked across the night sky, rising higher and higher until it disappeared. “Probably a missile,” my husband joked.

Then the news came through: A missile is on its way from Yemen. What we saw was probably the interceptor making its way into the atmosphere. There was nothing for us to do, nowhere for us to go, so we just looked at the sky, hoping that the interception would be successful, that the world wouldn’t explode over our heads and rain debris over us.

We’re entirely in Hashem’s Hands. There is nothing and no one to rely on but Him.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 945)