3:00 a.m. The house is dark. Voices from the upstairs study. A faint light under the door.

Aidel’s husband and son — her son who hasn’t been home in months. A son who’s a soldier. A “lone soldier” he’s called. Meaning he has “for the records” no family in Israel.

He has a mother and a father and lots of loving brothers and sisters. But they keep Shabbos and have peyos. He wants to fight wars with his own strength.

His father battles by davening. His mother cleans and lights candles to keep away the frightening darkness.

Aidel tiptoes up the stairs sees the silhouette of her husband and son sitting opposite each other.

Her son’s shoulders are hunched. His hair is short almost shaven but stands up prickly like a cactus.

Even in the dark she sees the deep black circles under his eyes.

Not wanting to interrupt their precious moment she walks back down the steps. She makes a bed for her son and a hot drink. When he comes down they talk in his old room. The fan he always needed to help him fall asleep to block out noise is broken. How will he sleep?

He describes his sleep in the north: “It’s so quiet” he says. “Once in a while a few cows moo. The Golan wind blows in through the window. We’re so tired and it’s so cold in the Golan we take a shower and crawl under the blankets and we’re fast asleep.”

She tucks in her weary traveler and goes back downstairs to sleep or at least try to. Life gets serious in those dark hours of the night.

****

Morning has its healing balms.

Her three little ones in tow schoolbags packed to the hilt Aidel sets out to hike the hill to the cheder.

First stop: the bus stop at the bottom of the hill next to the secular nursery school.

Her daughter’s bus seems to be running late.

A father — Aidel has never seen him before — pulls over in a pickup truck. A little gruff he doesn’t smile to the boy at all. But he takes out two large toy trucks and attaches them to his roof before unbuckling his son.

He starts to walk his son towards the nursery school building. But Aidel notices the boy doesn’t have his schoolbag. Being Aidel she doesn’t know if she should say anything or not. Maybe usually the mother brings the boy and the father doesn’t know about schoolbags. Maybe he forgot it in the car. It’s not Aidel’s way to interfere but maybe it’s a mitzvah. What if the boy’s drink or snack are in there and he’ll be hungry and thirsty all day?

Her motherly instincts get the better of her. “Excuse me maybe you forgot his schoolbag?” she asks.

The father shakes his head. “They give him breakfast” he explains.

Aidel feels like maybe it was a chilul Hashem butting into his business.

The father drops off his son and comes back out to his pickup truck.

Aidel apologizes. “I’m sorry if I … well … ” She doesn’t know what to say. “It’s just that … this is an Ima.”

Suddenly the gruff father breaks out into maybe the sweetest smile in the world. Maybe because it’s so unexpected or so hidden — something about it makes Aidel cry. She thinks about these young Jewish boys fathers and sons being soldiers and how could it be?

****

On the same corner a little boy waits each morning. He’s not willing to let just anyone help him cross the street. Sometimes on her return walk home Aidel sees him there still waiting.

On the other side of the street there’s a guard who watches over the cheder. He’s tall and limps and his face is scarred. He looks kind of scary.

Aidel watches as he eyes the little boy standing waiting across the street.

The boy eyes him.

The big monster-like guard crosses the street towards the boy. The guard stands in the middle of the street stopping traffic. Like a Godzilla.

He holds out his big hand to the little boy rushing him with a concern that’s more than father-like to the other side.

Pintele Yidden! Aidel’s soul screams out. Who knows what this cheder guard went through in his life?

This little boy isn’t afraid of what the guard looks like from the outside. He sees his true colors the reservoir of love on the inside.

****

It isn’t something they buy often. But every once in a while for a Shehecheyanu they buy one. Every time it leaves tiny prickly thorns in Aidel’s hands. But the inside is always the most beautiful color — and the taste is mouth-wateringly sweet.

Aidel has never really understood until this moment how appropriate the term is how the desert fruit is just the exact metaphor for the Jews living in Eretz Yisrael — sabras.