My Mishpacha column is due in two hours; I am trying desperately to finish it but am disturbed and troubled by the news of hundreds of rockets falling all over Israel. But life goes on and the column is overdue. I am alone at my desk and because I write better while listening to classical music the good music station is on playing Beethoven’s Ninth. And there is nothing better than good old Ludwig to get the creative juices flowing. 

The phone rings: A mother from America whose son is in yeshivah here in Jerusalem. She is frightened she wants him to come home but he does not want to leave. Would I please talk to him? I understand her worry especially since she is not in the best of health and try to calm her fears telling her that things always look worse from a distance and that the media often exaggerate the crisis atmosphere. Nevertheless I promise to call her son and chat with him about the situation. 

I call him. He is quite calm but his mother is unnerving him. He wants to stay; he feels that he is in a holy place and this is where he wants to be in a crisis. He asks me to call his mother and to calm her. I call the mother back we have a long discussion and I assure her that her son is fine that life in Jerusalem is quite normal that the crisis here is nothing new and that with G-d’s help all will be well. If she insists on it her son is ready to return. However I suggest that she wait several days to see what develops. She agrees to wait. I call the son back and inform him. He is relieved. 

Back to my column. Now there is less than an hour before deadline. The music plays on. It is majestic. No wonder it is considered the pinnacle of classical music. It contains everything: power pathos melody passion sensitivity. I continue writing. Maybe I will yet make the deadline. The doorbell rings: the vaad habayis chairman. He wants to know if we have stuff in the building shelter. They are clearing it out “just in case …” Well they might. Last Friday night when the alarm sounded in Jerusalem all the men were in shul and the women at home found the shelter almost uninhabitable filled with the detritus of all the residents. So they spent the time together in the stairwell of the building. 

Back again to the column. I write sentences delete them rewrite revise abbreviate search for the right adjective the precise word. It is going nowhere. To add to the pressure an e-mail arrives from my editor: Please send in the material. 

The Beethoven is in its last movement rousing and uplifting. In the midst of the music a voice interrupts: “Tzeva adom /Red Alert for Ashdod and Ashkelon” repeated several times. The music continues. Then that voice again: “Red Alert.” This is not quite how Beethoven envisioned his symphony would be heard. This last movement is based on Schiller’s poem “Ode to Joy.” The refrain which forms the climax of the Ninth is “alle menschen werden brueder — all men are brothers ” and there are 

references to the fields of happiness in Elysium. Every few moments a new Red Alert. The music is interrupting the warnings and not the other way around.… 

Alle menschen werden brueder except that in my part of the world some so-called menschen are dancing in the streets when their rockets and missiles strike the civilian apartment buildings of their brueder and kill women and children. Because alle menschen werden brueder — as long as they are like me exactly. All men are brueder — except for Chinese versus Japanese Sunni versus Shia Islam Irish versus British Russians versus Georgians Islamists versus all other societies. 

The ironic mixes are too much for me. I cannot absorb simultaneous Beethovens and Red Alerts. Visions of the brotherhood of man while rockets are killing fellow Jews do not compute. I cannot assimilate the disorder the mishmash the incoherence. The symphony has become a cacophony. 

And now there is another Red Alert this time for Jerusalem. I give up. I’ll never get this column done.