Those Sirens

Random flowers in Israel

This war has some Israelis staying home more than usual. Others go about their lives, hardly deterred lest a siren suggest they move to a bomb shelter. Most comply with the sirens. Although we have had few casualities, relatively, nobody wants to be one. 

But people who have lived here for decades, maybe their whole lives are out swimming at the clubs, traveling to see friends in other cities, even touring. They have become accustomed to pulling over on the road if a missile warning goes off, ducking into the nearest ditch. This is not something I think I want to do. 

These are tough people. I don't think the Iranians had any idea.

Missiles give me pause, being new here.  Not that I don't go out, I do, just as long as I know that I am not over a ten minute walk to the nearest public bomb shelter.

Only once did I break that rule, went out on foot with FD to shop for Passover. Of course there's a siren and of course we don't know where the nearest shelter might be. Suddenly even the birds have made themselves scarce. 

We knock on somebody's door, people let strangers into their shelters. This time, however, our would-be hosts had already locked themselves down, couldn't hear us through the steel door of their mamad leaving us to watch the skis from under a carport. We saw nothing, and ironic though that may be, I felt disappointed (I hear this is common). We waited for the all clear and went home, shaken.

Did that traumatize us? It traumatized me, I'm still talking about it.  Do I have Acute Trauma Disorder? (It is too early to diagnose PTSD). I'm not sure but I don't think so. I'm depressed on and off, and if it weren't my nature to not be depressed on and off, we might say so, but my feeling is that the blues are from feeling confined. Being confined. .

It is cabin fever, not getting out much, no socializing with friends (although there's no reason not to, really, they all have shelters). I take these short walk, back and forth within the ten minute from a shelter perimeter I set for myself. Does this careful, obsessive watch over the distance from a shelter should a siren go off constitute Wartime OCD? Oh, yeah, for sure. But  Home Security would approve. And like most OCD symptoms, it is functional. 

What's really functional is doing what I would tell any client to do when I get that down feeling that like a new self took over where my old, happy, cheerful self used to live. Using the tools I've spent 40 years teaching at work literally works, thank G-d. They make the blues go away. (There is a song in that) so it is time to get serious and share them. This may seem very obvious but it is easy to let a mood take over a day. Such a waste. So...

My top three beat depression hacks. They work for some, not everyone. That's all the caveat you get. But they can't hurt. 

(1) Music 

(2) Exercise

(3) Music and Exercise Together. 

Today I chose door number three and it worked like a charm. My Apple HEALTH app tells me that I walked 5,341 steps, which isn't enough but it isn't nothing and I stayed within my self-imposed perimeters. As I walked I listened to Israeli songs from Eurovision contests going back to 1975. Those were great songs! 

I came home in a great mood. 

I am sharing a picture. Taking pictures also makes me happy, make that No. 4. This one, above, is a hedge of flowers. I see a flowering bush every ten feet (I am an American, still have trouble with metric conversion but my guess is that's about 3 meters). They call my city the original Gan Eden, Paradise. I cannot argue.   

Oh, and fruit trees, lemons and oranges drop to the sidewalk. I'll have to get you a pic of those.

To resilience! To happiness! To peace, quiet.

Oh, here's a link to my favorite Israeli Eurovision entry, Liora (not Liora Yitzchaki) singing Amen in 1995. When it comes to the war, let it be over soon. Amen.

https://youtu.be/LJkGfeletR0?si=B_HC0Uti3N4f8uMr

therapydoc

What War

I understand that March came in like a lion in the Midwest (USA) where I come from. I feel for my friends and relatives who are still dealing with it. I know someone who can't wait to get planting his vegetable garden. But if I asked, Are you guys cold, they would say: There is no bad weather, only bad clothing.

But  being highly cold averse this has never been my jam and I'm glad I didn't have to be there last winter, glad I didn't have to wear bulky clothes or shop for duds bragging newer, lighter, better insulating fabric. Nothing ever really warms me up, I feel like King David must have felt. Nothing like skin on skin.,

When it gets chilly here a simple down jacket is like a fur coat so I'm not complaining. They are everywhere. Israelis start wearing them when it gets down to sixty. 

What I'm trying to say is What are a few missiles compared to weather.

I used to close my eyes in Chicago, imagine the beach, try to feel the sun. It is difficult to make that happen, but imagining what milder climes might feel like is better than focusing on the cold.

Truth be known, it hasn't become hot yet but it will, and it will be very uncomfortable. We are in the  seventies, it can hit 80 (sorry, I still think in Fahrenheit. 

When I go outside I'm blinded by the sun and the color, so many flowers. The pink guys below are not flowers but leaves. Tiny white flowers are tucked inside, gifts of the Old Mighty. 

I'm hoping that posting this, doing the research, I can point to the Monet while out on a stroll and say to a friend, that's a. . . a . . . a . . . and the name will come to me. 

According to my buddy Chat:

That’s bougainvillea — a very common and beautiful flowering vine in warm climates like Israel.

#keepingsane

therapydoc

Not My Secret to Tell

 This being a therapy blog, we touch upon things that make us feel badly and look for a hack to stave that off. Why should we feel bad when we can feel good? There is so much to feel badly about. I tell people in therapy to limit the amount of media they watch. The news will destroy your soul. 

Making a social faux pas is one of the things that makes me feel terrible. I will do anything to avoid hurting someone's feelings and tell patients to please scream at me if in any way that is happening. It can happen, however, that we hurt others if we are privy to information and share it without first checking with the person who shared it with us--is this public knowledge? 

Oddly enough, without that caveat we assume we can, even should share information. If nobody says, Not for common consumption, seems like fair game. 

What do they say about the word assume? (parse it out) 

We can, but we are sure to shoot ourselves in the proverbial foot when we tell a secret, even if we didn't know it was a secret. Once the words are out we can't take them back. 

It used to be that we had to work to share information but with WhatsApp and other social networks we can share to hundreds of friends and relatives and they will share to more. With a few simple words our voices shout out, Hey! This happened. We don't do it to flex our fledgling egos, not usually, but because we think people really want to know, or should know. 

Then, the pronouncement accomplished, we get a text from the person who shared with us initially to say, TAKE THAT DOWN PLEASE.  SO AND SO DOESN'T KNOW! ie., grandchildren of someone who passed away, the parents of an injured soldier. That sort of thing. 

You get it.

Anyway, don't shoot me. I'm just the messenger.

therapydoc

Wartime and Holidays

If you live in Israel and you talk to folks from your native country, they all say, Stay safe! And I repeat it back, You stay safe! Because the world is a crazy place. 

It is March 15, the war with Iran began on Saturday, February 28. 

February is a short month so if we do the math that brings us to a 15 day war so far. 

Two weeks and a day. Feels longer. But honest, except for an occasional missile from a hostile country, you would never notice. (Why so hostile?!) Israel has a few war songs, but nobody's singing them now. Most of our songs are about the love of the land, our beautiful, bountiful land. As they sang in the movie Milk and Honey, 

We want it green and so it's green for us. 

We also worked it. By we, I mean Jews. For hundreds of years, under other peoples, it lay fallow, produced mostly rocks. Come here. You will think you are in a first world country because you are.

But back to the war.

It feels inconvenient, is all, or so it feels, not dangerous, not by war standards. I picture Vietnam and napalm, horrible mayhem, mass slaughter.  Life Magazine photos. This is not that war. 

A week ago if you talked to Israelis they might say they felt that the conflict is winding down. Maybe, but that's in the Old Mighty's hands. Or in the hands of Her representatives. We all hope it is almost over, I mean, the holidays are coming. Everyone has a holiday in the spring. I'm not listing them all, ask your buddy Chat. But for example,. 

There's the East Asian Qing Ming celebrates ancestors, sorry, no pic, it felt like adding a picture of people objectified unnecessarily.

And the Japanese Hanami about memory, renewal and nature

Cherry blossoms for Hanami

Hindu holiday Holi-colors and joy, good over evil

Passover matzah: Jews couldn't wait for the bread to rise! Matzah on the run from Egypt so it looked like this

Muslim Eid-al-Fitr

Christians celebrate rebirth, sacrifice and redemption with Palm Sunday, Good Friday, and Easter

Muslims have Ramadan,  month of reflection and charity that ends with Eid-al-Fitr 

Should be a happy time, no? 

And yet the world feels upside down to many of us. We have to b e ready for anything, and I don't just mean in Israel, all over the world. 

News flash: terrorism is not the work of the Jews. We didn't invent it, aren't into it.

Living with uncertainty, tolerating uncertainty-this is a life skill, it is something we teach in therapy. Breathe, watch happy shows, laugh at comedians on Facebook and Instagram. Do what once made you happy. It probably still will. 

therapydoc

The Hostages

I ask Chat:

What are the different Hebrew words for hostages?

Hostages, some still in Gaza,  חֲטוּפִים 

 

 חֲטוּפִים, שְׁבוּיִים, חבל 

It isn’t that I don’t know the word. Living here and not knowing the Hebrew word for hostage would mean I live under a rock. But my spelling is atrocious, so I ask to make sure it is correct. For you. 

Correct spelling in Hebrew makes a world difference.

A nanosecond reply:

Transliteration: chatufim

Meaning: Kidnapped people, abductees 

•  or שְׁבוּיִים

·       חָטוּף (chatuf) – male singular

·       חֲטוּפָה (chatufah) – female singular

·       חֲטוּפִים (chatufim) – plural (mixed or all male)

·       חֲטוּפוֹת (chatufot) – plural (feminine)

 Often used for civilians taken by force, e.g., on October 7 

I stopped saying thank you to Chat when my daughter AI-shamed me for thanking a computer. 

On a roll, I ask for the names of the חֲטוּפוֹת (females) and חֲטוּפִים (males) in Gaza. 

The robot directs me to the Chabad website for a more complete list. Chabad is an international organization dedicated to serving the Jewish people and bringing those who have lost their way or who never had a map—back to Judaism.

It is 6 am. Why ask now? So that I can pray with more intention (I am sharing here). It is one thing to have the hostages in mind. It is quite another to name them. 

Names, as my good friend Raya told me years ago, are important.

I read that there are 54 hostages still captive in Gaza. 

Fifty-four people, some young, some old, still captives, stolen from families and country, some mutilated, some raped, all starved, either dead or languishing in tunnels, alone. It is almost 2 years since their abduction on October 7, 2023. 

Of the 54 about 24 may be alive, 30 are confirmed dead.* 

How does that happen? How are deaths confirmed and by whom? Why do the dead matter so much, anyway? They are gone, no? Shouldn't we concentrate on the living? 

I ask why do the dead even matter, a rhetorical question, with more than a twinge of guilt. I know they matter. I am part of a big club. Members of the club have all lost someone, seemingly for eternity because that person went missing, never to be found again, likely murdered, kidnapped, or drowned. A human who left and never came back. 

We got our body back. It was not pretty.  

When he went missing 52 years ago I felt, albeit with the naiveté of a teenager, a glimmer of hope that he would come back alive, that he could come back, not as a גוף a body, the container of the soul, but as a living, breathing human being. 

It is denial to say (and I like denial very much) that it is the ones who are alive, the living that we  really do need, that we need to bargain for, need to get back at any price, the living more than the dead. 

But in Chicago, standing in front of a bronze plaque with our brother's name on it, the son of our two parents with bronze plaques next to his, I pause and give honor, shake my head. There is no feeling quite like this. It shatters denial with only a thud.   

But still, even though I know the answer, almost to test Chat GPT I type in: 

Why is burying deceased hostages in Israel so important ?

Introduction: 

Burial is deeply important, says Chat (not making a pun intentionally with the word deeply) not only emotionally and nationally, but also religiously and culturally.

There are five reasons that burial is important:   

1. Jewish people have a religious obligation. They are commanded to bury the dead promptly, decorously, an act of kindness that cannot be reciprocated. 

Deuteronomy 21:23: “You shall surely bury him the same day.”   

Before we die, when we are very much alive to hear the Old Mighty's commandments, we hear a commandment to be holy, this in our lifetime.קְדוֹשִׁים תִּהְיוּ (Leviticus 19:2).

 A commandment to bury on the same day is an affirmation of the body's sanctity even after death. It should not become as bodies do after our hearts stop beating.  

2.  Seeing to the return of the deceased to Israel is a moral and national duty.  

It provides closure and honor to the victims of terror, the captives. 

3. Burial in Israel restores identity. 

No longer a statistic, the life has a name and all of the honor that name affords. The body's proper caregivers are family and friends. 

4. Burial in the land of Israel returns the deceased to the ancestral homeland of every Jew. There is spiritual merit in this. 

It is why the Jewish dead are flown to Israel via El Al Airlines for burial. No matter where in the diaspora a person dies, that person symbolizes a link in an ever-growing chain of national and historical continuity. From ancient prophets to modern heroes, a Jewish person, dead or alive, is one of the people of Israel. 

5. Returning a body delivers a blow to terrorism. 

It is one swift kick in the uh, psyche, especially today, to sociopaths who resort to this tactic, using the dead as bargaining chips, such unconscionable objectification. Bringing them home is resistance, active protestation to foul play. 

There we have it, five neat categories. And Chat didn't even mention that feeling I had at the bronze plaque.

So add the sixth and we have an explanation, cogent reasons why we need them all. Every last one of them. 

therapydoc

*From Times of Israel reporting (24 hostages alive: 22 Israeli, 1 Thai, 1 Nepali):

Over a week aga a cry rang out with the news of the death of a young soldier, Yisrael Natan Rosenfeld. The nation, memorializes him, classes are dedicated to this beautiful young man. The shiva in a small tent, standing room only, 500 others. People in Israel travel all over the country to pay respects to people they do not know. This is what it means to give honor. More assassinations followed last week. 

Yisrael Natan Rosenfeld

 

 

  

The Kindness of Strangers

 War! What do we even do it for? Absolutely nothing—say it again.

That's Edwin Starr singing the original song WAR. He's railing against the war in Vietnam back in 1969. 

I wore a black arm band. 

Because genocide is a problem

The war in Gaza, the war with Iran, the war with Hezbollah in Lebanon—these are defensive wars despite what the media says about Israel's so called colonial, genocidal intentions.* 

Waiting around for a miracle isn't our style, people. 

There are reasons for wars, none less convincing than wishing to avoid genocide. Simchat Torah, October 7, 2023 Hamas warriors invade the homes of sleeping Israeli citizens from across the Gazan border. They murder innocents in their beds and over 2,000 celebrants at a nearby music festival. 

Our enemies relish attacking us on holidays. It is a thing. 

No small band of marauders, either. This is a rampage of cold-blooded murders, rape, sliced genitalia, body parts, decapitations, the crushed skulls of infants, all in a very short time. The young and the old are captive, still held hostage, starving, traumatized. The words BRING THEM HOME are on the mouths of the lips of every Israeli every single day, many times a day.

Yesterday I started to write about the hostages, the חטופים (cha-too-im) and couldn't. We had an event we needed to get to in Jerusalem and the trip included a trip to Bet Shemesh to pay respects to a friend who lost his wife. We had to get going.

Then something happened on the road, a testimony to the kindness of the people of Israel and I changed course.  

New words 

For some of you, new words: 

A new Israeli citizen is an oleh chadash (male) or an olah chadasha (female). 

FD and me as a couple? O-lim chad-shim. עולים חדשים

2 stories.

1. An upper-middle-aged couple in a mall for the first time, new Israeli citizens. 

Maybe you've been there, stressed in a new or foreign country. You don't speak the language, not intelligibly, and you have a problem. Maybe it's a lost wallet or phone, a missing child or mother-in-law (joke!). You don't know what to do and ask a random stranger who shrugs because of the language barrier. 

That doesn't happen here. That doesn't happen in Israel. They don't shrug. They take a minute to try to understand, to help. Especially if you say you are a new immigrant, olah chadasha. Magic words.

The two of us are lost in an unfamiliar shopping mall, very green, exhausted having circled the mall several times in search of the right parking lot. Apparently there are several. We are hot, thirsty, and loaded down with packages. A new toaster. A coffee pot. New cut glasses (very nice). 

We ask people and they inevitably point us to the wrong lot. We can't find an information office. 

I break down in an elevator, so tired, almost in tears. I say aloud: Is there anyone here who speaks English who can help us find our car? There is and she does. She accompanies us to our vehicle.  Hugs and kisses.

Easy enough, but rental cars, driving on the hills of Israel, needing service for said car, this raises the ante. 

2. FD wants to take the scenic route from Bet Shemesh to Jerusalem. I'm driving the S-curves on the hills, a good sport but not enjoying myself. I do not like the car, a Picanto. A few years ago we had rented a Picanto with a bad transmission and on our way up north for a double Bat Mitzvah the car stalled near an Arab village about an hour before Shabbat. This, the second stall. It felt fatal, terrified my grandson in the backseat on the lookout for terrorists, but eventually the car started up and we made it to our destination, thanked the Old Mighty with feeling. We took a bus home from my nephew's little Israeli village and I still have a touch of PTSD when I think about that day.

And here we are again. In a Picanto and it stalls, again on a hill. The motor cuts out completely and it is not starting up. My heart is racing, cars are honking. FD lifts the emergency brake, I hit the flashers.  His 100-year old mother in the back seat remains where she is cool as a cucumber.  

He jumps out of the car, takes my place at the wheel, tries again. Nothing. He tells me to order a taxi, take it to a gas station, we aren't far from Jerusalem. Bring back a can of gasoline.  

But a car pulls over on the shoulder, a beautiful car. There is a beautiful person inside we will soon find this out. All I can think is that this is good.  Why would someone pull over if not to help?

I get out and rush over. He has lowered his beautiful windows. In Hebrew I say we are olim chadashim. We are new immigrants. And we are out of gas! 

FD figured that part out. 

Let me help you. 

I'm thinking FD should take over for me. Israeli men like to speak with men, not women. It is still a thing. I wave him over from his perch directing traffic and step back. 

They talk for a minute, I'm told to hop in. This fellow will take me to a gas station. We will bring back the petrol.

An angel, this guy. 

I tell Amnon (this is his name) multiple, multiple times, that he is a malach (mah-lach), an angel. He keeps waving this off. Any Israeli would do the same thing. 

No, only one Israeli did this. 

We argue over who pays for gas and Amnon ends up paying for it. He tells me that I am taking away his mitzvah if I pay,  taking away his good deed. And, he has an app, whatever that means. The gas is cheap. 

There is nothing I can do. 

On the rides to and from the gas station he asks many questions. Why now! Why would we come to Israel during a war? Israelis are leaving, he tells me. I explain that my daughter and her family took the first flight they could get, this a few months before the war, to fulfill their dream of becoming Israeli citizens. We followed the following year, as did one of her brothers, our son and his family, all of us unafraid of the war. All of us fulfilling our dreams. And now a second son is coming this summer with his wife and kids, 4 school age children. His wife visited Nova on a mission to Israel following the October 7 massacre and came back to say: We are moving to Israel.

Amnon is blown away. You come, replenish, refresh our nation. 

I tell him that the summer we arrived another 600 Jews from all over the world made Aliyah, too. 

He did not know this. Unbelievable, you have no idea, you give us so much hope, you cannot imagine. Jewish people are still coming here. Really?

Really.

Welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.

He's thanking me!

therapydoc 

*Jews are forever complaining that Israel is butchered in the media, the reputation of my country has suffered, has always suffered, a complete public relations fiasco. The poor victims, the Palestinians, the world has their backs. This after Hamas takes their humanitarian aid, has stolen it for years to buy weapons. This after Hamas gets them into the war with a lion. Write, people. Talk. Reverse the PR. Many drops in a bucket fill up a bucket and it doesn't have to take long, either. 

What a Ceasefire Really Means

What does a ceasefire mean to the average Israeli? 

For some it means not getting caught in the shower when missiles are headed their way. 

For me it means I meet a neighbor on the street, a kid that I had sheltered with regularly for 12 days, and we take a moment to talk for the first time, exchange words of hope, some of them in French! 

We both hope the ceasefire lasts forever. 

You know, right, that there's an 8-hour time difference between Chicago and Tel Aviv. Israel 8 hours ahead. But it does not get in the way of love, talking to the people we love with FaceTime or WhatsApp. It all works. Not as great as being physically together, but the next best thing.

My brother and sister-in-law (sister, really) talk and I feel their anxiety, the anxiety of the entire extended family back home.*

Sometimes they call and I'm working because of that time zone thing. I write:

With a patient, will call later.

When I call back I'm under the false assumption that we will be celebrating the ceasefire between Israel and Iran. But no, the reports in the US have successfully polluted my family's interpretation of events. There is pervasive worry that the American bombs did not 'do the job.' The explosion did not take out the uranium, is what I am hearing, appalled. Iranians can still develop their bombs, and worse, they may even have a few nuclear weapons stashed away somewhere in them thar' hills. 

Maxar photo, B2-bombers, 6 holes on the nuclear reactor site

Being a doctor, I am quick to respond. The problem is that you caught a virus, I say.

Iranian propaganda is virulent. What do you guess Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is telling his people? Is he going to tell them that the Americans obliterated their nuclear program? Is he going to say that Iran has effectively lost the war? 

Uh, no. That is not how dictators communicate. Honesty is not their strongpoint. What Khamenei tells his people goes something more like this:

We won! We brought the Israelis to their knees! They begged for a ceasefire. 

LOL. 

Adorable. 

This, as Israeli planes fly overhead in Iran, booming jets piercing their atmosphere. The IAF, the Israel Air Force, still proudly owns Iranian airspace ya' see. Although I hear they left with the ceasefire. So there's that. Victory for Iran, right?

IAF over Iran

The truth is that the mishigas (mish-ih-gahs, craziness, nonsense, Yiddish but also Hebrew) about how American bombs failed their mission is poppycock (come on, people, the USAF unleashed 30 tons of warheads made out of steel, aluminum, radar absorbent metal, tritonal, all kinds of alloys to make things go boom at  that nuclear site). The protest, the lie, is to save face, it is political. Tell the Iranian people that they won. that there is no substantial damage, no set back. Even if they don't believe it, the Americans surely will. 

I tell my family that it is all good, too, because Iran will not want to break the ceasefire, the lie in place. Breaking the ceasefire would mean that they did not win, that they have to keep fighting. But they won, so everyone in the Middle East can shower in peace now.  

They want you to be afraid, I tell D and T. 

In Israel the cultural spirit is courage, not fear. We respect fear but look it in the eye. This is a Zen idea,  too, honor your fear but be ready to pull out your light saber. 

Israelis have done and continue to do what our forefather Jacob (Yacov) did over 3000 years ago. 

Yacov is about to meet up with his brother Esau (Genesis 32:21). Esau a powerful, violent guy most likely intent upon revenge, wanting to kill his younger brother for having grabbed the birthright, finding the nearest camel, and hitting the sand dunes. 

Yacov is afforded lots of time to come up with a three-pronged plan for when he meets up with his brother again. When faced with annihilation, a powerful enemy:

(1) don't forget to placate him with gifts, first,  to soften him up. Everyone likes presents.

(2) but prepare for war

(3) and pray  

We pray, as should everyone, that the war is over, that no more lives are lost (7 Israeli soldiers, only yesterday in Gaza). So no, we are not celebrating, we mourn and we pray for the return of those still in captivity in Gaza, the hostages.

Our dear hostages, you are not forgotten, 22 Israeli, 1 Thai, 1 Nepali

7 gone in Gaza yesterday 

* home for a Jew is Israel, that is our tradition. But we all have second homes, right? Jews are all rich, aren't they? 

Namaste,

therapydoc