My Thoughts Erev Shabbat
August 11, 2006
Our home is just above and to the right of this block.
Listen to two 'Insrael Insights' OURadio interviews with Linda
The best thing about an email is that if you don't want to read it, you just delete it. That's it – all gone.
The worst thing about this war is that I am never going to be able to delete it.
I'm writing my thoughts to you because it's very important to me that you - my friends, relatives and others, some of whom I haven't even met - hear from me personally how my life has changed over the past month. Thoughts like mine will not be described in the media, because ostensibly, there is no drama – no one has been injured or killed, my home is still intact, my children and grandchild are fine, thank God, and that includes my son, Elazar, who has been fighting in Lebanon for the past two weeks.
But I am living my own personal drama – Tzfat, the beautiful town nestling up in the hills of Galilee that we chose as our home 26 years ago, is hurting badly; 80% of her citizens have left; Katyusha bomb scars can be found in almost every corner, people have been injured and killed, but not enough to warrant a newspaper report of any real interest. The town is empty apart from a few shops that stock necessities. Instead of the throngs of visitors, tourist buses, and groups of youngsters that usually fill our historical Old City in the summer months, you now hear the sound of silence. Last Friday our synagogue was damaged from a Katyusha bomb that landed a few yards away – just think of it - aimed a few millimeters to the right, and a few hours later, we would definitely have been a news item… But after all, nobody was injured, only a few stained glass windows were broken, only a little bit of shrapnel embedded in the outside wall – who cares.
At least 5 bombs have landed within a 50 yard radius of our home over the past couple of weeks, and what could have been, wasn't – so nobody knows about it. I think of the hundreds of bombs that have landed in Tzfat alone and think – what if…?
Yitzchak and I have stayed in Tzfat the entire time, and now I find myself preparing for the 5th Shabbat of the war and writing to you with such a heavy heart.
So far we have been fortunate that bombs have not been aimed at us during the night time, so we have been managing to sleep. But the days, especially this past week, have been horrendous. With one air raid siren after another, the “swoooosh” of the Katyusha right over our heads and the crash; the instant thought “where has it landed this time?” – I don't know how long even I, with my apparent resilience, can go on living this way. And then I look with wonder at our people in Kiryat Shemonah, and I stop this thought in its track – they survived much worse for so much longer, and I know that I too will survive, with the help of God and our wonderful soldiers, including my own two sons.
I think I have to stop now – or this will get out of hand. If you haven't deleted this yet – I wish you all a quiet and peaceful Shabbat.
