Day of Shattered Song
| October 10, 20236 accounts of a Simchas Torah at war
Ashdod
Iron Swords, Domes, and Will
Rachel Newton
I
t’s 6:20 a.m., Shabbos morning, Simchas Torah, and I think I hear a boom in the distance.
Living in Ashdod, your thoughts go straight to Iron Dome. Is that…? Was that…?
My husband isn’t home. He’s at a neitz minyan for my nephew’s aufruf.
Another boom.
Yep. Something is going on….
Rise. Fall. Wailllll up and down together with my heart.
Off I go to drag the heavy metal frame across the window. I don’t believe the kids won’t have school tomorrow, curse those terrorists, what kind of day did they choose for slinging missiles at us?
Sad as it is, the inconvenience of it ruffles Ashdod residents’ equilibrium more than the actual danger. We’ve done this before.
Husband is definitely in a shul somewhere. That’s fine. He’ll find somewhere to go, along with whoever else is at the minyan.
We know sirens. We know where to run. We know where it’s safe.
The kids are asleep, the siren tapers away… and picks right up with another one. Up. Down. Kids stretching and mumbling drowsily, izzat a siren? Me shushing them, hoping they’ll go back to sleep.
What sleep?
Simchas Torah, we want to go to shul! To dance, to celebrate the culmination of a month of cleansing our hearts and souls, of drawing close to our Creator as we sit in the security of walls that wouldn’t withstand more than a breeze.
We don’t want to sit at home and wonder when the next siren is going to be (right now, actually), waiting in the ensuing silence for the impact (one, two).
I get dressed, because the aufruf, and how can I miss it? What will be with the dancing, the kiddush, the chassan, the kids. My thoughts go up and down like the sirens, even as I know that we won’t overturn our lives because of them. We’ve done it so many times before.
My oldest will watch the kids, who feel safe enough to stay at home. Promises of the pekelach help sweeten the deal, gastrodiplomacy at its best. I’ll be back soon, I tell them. You’ll go later to the regular minyan for hakafos. My three-year-old is asleep, thank Hashem for that. I ask the seven-year-old if she’s okay and she nods into her pillow. My older son shows me he’s being brave and I allow us both to believe that it is so.
I take my machzor and open to the door… to my husband? It’s 7:10; he should be in the middle of the neitz hakafos.
“I knew you wouldn’t stay home so I came to be with the kids. Everyone okay?”
“I’m okay! What’s going on over there?”
“Well, the minyan is in a structure without a safe room. Half the men ran to a nearby building, the other half stayed put. Shlichei mitzvah. And also… we’re used to it.”
He’s not worried and neither am I.
I go out onto the streets. Not as deserted as it should be, but maybe things are calming down. Safe under the Iron Dome. Still, I quicken my pace, scanning, scanning buildings in front of me. To the side. I can run here. Here.
I meet up with my sister-in-law, the mother of the chassan. We’re not going to let some Gazans decide who goes to shul.
We’re almost there. Siren. It’s so much louder outside. We run into a shul and find a safe room.
Count the seconds. Men in talleisim crowd the stairwell, continue davening.
Leave the shul, start crossing the road. Siren.
Back to that nice safe shul.
Wait it out.
I’m calm — my husband is at home, we’re safe, we’re safe.
Boom! Impact close by. Contrails crisscrossing the sky.
Oops! We could not locate your form.