I apologise that it's taken me so long to respond to everyone who's gotten in touch to see how we are doing. I think many others have probably answered this far more eloquently than I have, but I also know that many of you don't know other people in Israel, so I'll try to give my take.

I don't even really know how to answer that because what do I say, yes, it's uncertain, frightening, stressful to have the martyrdom obsessed IRGC lobbing ballistic missiles at you? But also thank God we're all home, we're together, our home has it's own (tiny) shelter, mostly we're just discombobulated from constant alerts and sleep deprivation and gah, kids are back to covid era style "remote learning" and zoom school while adults are trying to work from home.

The first answer sounds like we're in terrified panic mode (we aren't, concerned yes, but we've been living with wartime for years now). The second answer sounds glib, making light of a very serious situation (we're not, but we know to count our blessings and see the dark humour in this as well)

And really both are true to different degrees, considering the severity of the situation most Israelis, us included, are getting on with getting on as best we can. It doesn't mean it isn't scary, but it also doesn't mean that everything is frozen because of the war.

Uncertainty is always difficult, just as we saw during the lockdowns and ever change regulations during the pandemic. There is something of that same feeling of constantly having the rug pulled out from under our feet.

For example this week we were meant to be attending several weddings, but with restrictions on the size of public gatherings due to the risk of missile attacks, all of those weddings had to be reduced to about 50 close family and some of the young couples' friends while everyone else attended remotely by live stream. In some cases the young couple even postponed the event because their parents or other close family are trapped overseas, unable to get home to Israel or drafted on emergency call-ups. I know in the scale of the horrors of war this sounds trivial, nothing compared to people who's homes were hit, but it's just one measure for how people's lives have been turned upside down by the ripple affects of the missile and drone war.

So how are we? Back on the rollercoaster? Well, to state the obvious, our country has been targeted by Iran and it's proxies so many times in recent years, from Hamas rockets and assaults from Gaza, Hizballah missiles and attempted incursions from Lebanon, Houthi missiles and the blockading of Israeli shipping through the Red Sea, missiles and drones from Iranian backed militias in Syria and Iraq and more recently direct missile and drone assaults from Iran itself. To paraphrase one of Israel's most well known singer-songwriters (think an Israeli Bob Dylan) "We survived Pharoah, we'll get through this too."

That is kind of the meta mindset though, the big picture of huge events happening around us, news flashes and on the grand scale, the unimaginable awfulness of war.

But all around that is the day to day lived experience of what in Israel is known as "emergency routine", otherwise known as trying to live life as normally as possible with the impossible happening all around.

An elderly relative has specialist appointment at a hospital in another city scheduled months ago, he needs this appointment, but do you risk another family member to drive him when there have been a lot of missile attacks in that area and there is a real risk of falling intercept shrapnel on open intercity roads where there are few options to take cover? Do you risk transporting an elderly person knowing that if the siren goes in an open area there is no way he will be able to quickly exit the vehicle, maybe climb over a highway barrier, certainly not get down flat on the ground?
What about the kids? On the one hand they have grown up with the threat of rockets, of shelter drills and sirens. The last three years have been the most intense, and the war with Iran in particular has included some of the most time we've spent in shelters, but still, it's part of the reality they've lived with their whole lives. 

And still, more than fear I think is the frustration of their lives being turned upside down and so much put on hold all over again. Like my current high schooler says, they had a rough deal through covid, then came October 2023 and just as things seemed to be becoming more "normal" again, came this war, and once again school is out, exams, including matriculation exams, are postponed (there was an attempt this week for them to sit some of the exams in a shelter but fortunately common sense prevailed that we don't need a class of kids sitting for a three hour exam in a shelter, especially with the odds that they'd been woken several times during the middle of the night by alerts). 

It's been crazy busy, everyone home, everyone is always hungry. I need to put together a recipe/food shopping guide for what to feed kids in shelters, specifically in shelters in which there is no room to move once everyone is inside and considering that it's just a few weeks to Pesah. The entire country pretty much is sleep deprived, our bodies constantly on alert to dash to a shelter if necessary. Every car engine and whine of a household appliance sounding too similar to the wail of an air raid siren or the cacophony of the phone's emergency alert noise. People are exhausted from constantly feeling wired, they are exhausted from sirens at all hours of the night and day, they are exhausted from the need for constant readiness, never being able to stand down because someone could be firing something at us at any time. But with that all we are a people and a country with a long view of history. We know who we are, we know why tragically sometimes we have no choice but to fight and we are determined to defend our homes. More than anything we are resilient and resourceful, we have a high level of social cohesion, meaning that while we argue and debate all the time, we also deeply care about the people around us and will go to great lengths to help our fellow Israelis, of any creed, whether it's supporting those who've lost their homes to Iranian missiles or volunteering in everything from clearing missile impact sites to doing farm work to cooking meals for our soldiers and first responders. These are difficult times, but we have faith that tomorrow will be a better day.