A Thousand Feelings of War
There is so much I want you to know about life now in Jerusalem
What do I want to tell you? A thousand feelings of war.
I am sitting here in Jerusalem and the Judean mountain winds have risen, the day is cooling down. There are builders hammering and drilling, and birds singing the evening’s praise. My favorite are the blackbird’s songs. And we are at war with Iran.
I wrote this earlier this week. How to tell this long story which began a week ago? And now it’s just before Shabbat. I will leave my cellphone on. Because there is no peace.
Over 623 days of war. Since October 7 we never know what we will wake up to. What we will be woken up by.
How to hold it all? How do I tell you what it’s like to awaken to the first emergency siren, Friday 3 a.m., longer and louder and shriller than the normal siren. The alert that is meant to be for earthquakes, my friend tells me.
I could not go back to sleep, for all the wonder, what it all meant, retaliation, more ballistic missiles? What it means to be a Jew.
I want you to know I felt the whisper of our ancestors blessing each Israeli plane, each action, each direct hit. Protect our children. Protect our one Jewish homeland. Protect our future.
We are the children of Holocaust survivors and a million displaced people from North Africa and the Middle East. We cannot afford to be naive. We cannot afford to be victims anymore. Israel is the country of our ancient prayers. It is the poetry of Psalms. It is the heartache of our prophecies. Our feet bear the blisters of the long desert trek.
How are we so brave and strong?
We have never left our story.
I couldn’t sleep the night Israel preemptively struck the Iranian Regime. All I could think about was that I needed to bake challah bread for Shabbat. I needed to say the challah blessing before missiles came.
Why?
I found it calming to pour and measure and mix the flour, water, sugar and yeast. This is what my foremothers have done for centuries in preparation for the Jewish Sabbath, baked khubez, flat Iraqi bread with the challah blessing. The biblical blessing of separating challah in this weeks Torah reading in the book of Bamidbar - Numbers 15:17-21. It is not for eating it is for burning. It is a symbol of tithing when the Israelites came to the land of Israel. The biblical commandment that a portion of bread is for God. Given to God’s priests for their sustenance. A symbol that nothing is all ours.
Whilst waiting for the yeast mixture to rise I visited the moon. Earlier that evening it had been a bright strawberry moon, large and luminous, at about four in the morning it had reduced to a high white pearl. Still bright.
I added eggs and oil and the 11 cups of flour and 6 teaspoons of salt, and kneaded the dough in my mixmaster. How ridiculously grateful I felt as I separated a small piece of dough from the batch to say the blessing and burn in the oven.
I felt ridiculously grateful to be alive in the quiet of the night. Where did such gratitude come from?
For me the burning is a symbol of what is sacrificed in order for Jews to live and eat our bread. It is a symbol that we need to bless the bread we bake, and share it.
As Jews, so much has been sacrificed in order for us to bake and bless bread.
I began baking Challah when my son joined the IDF. A blessing for his service. For his sacrifice and all the young men and women who carry this small nation on their shoulders. Die for this nation.
After October 7, the blessings became more urgent.
I cannot say enough blessings to protect my sons.
The challah dough rose as I watched the sun rise on Friday morning. The birds were my dawn companions, and I thought why don’t I watch more summer sunrises? It is so beautiful, this sky, the eucalyptus tree, even the bare, dry ground was beautiful in the early crisp air. The single new, yellow rose blooming so precious. How short this life is, I thought, how beautiful.
And now the war is so big. I have lost count of how many missiles as big as mega buses have landed on high rise apartments in the middle of Israel, in the South on Soroka hospital, all over this tiny country that is the size of New Jersey. I can’t tell you how our dog Ace whimpers and cries, and unless I hold him and stroke him he runs wildly, eyes wild, tongue lolling with each boom and bang as the missiles and drones are intercepted by the Iron Dome, or not.
My dog’s fear is a symbol for all our fear. For our children’s fears and anxieties. My youngest son also strokes Ace, and as he strokes him I hope he is stroking and comforting some of his anxiety too. He does not want to die. None of us do.
This war is big. How big are our hearts to carry such a war?
Yet, I want you to know that there is so much joy on the streets of Jerusalem. Simple joy— a sunning cat. The local coffee shop open for a few hours. Colorful pansies blooming in a green wheelbarrow.
I want to tell you that the streets are quiet, and in between are parents walking their kids, dogs, babies in carriers and prams. Cautiously, not too far from home, but for fresh air, to go to the corner shop, to buy a pint of milk. These are the small blessings you appreciate in war. The sound of neighbors kids playing basketball like there is peace.
I want you to tell you about the heroes of this war. A Filipino told me about four Filipinos who were injured in Bat Yam in the missile attacks. Why? Because they would not leave their elderly charges for the security rooms, but rather stayed with them under the stairwells.
I want you to know that I spent a night in the emergency room at Hadassa Ein Kerem with my husband whilst a siren went off, and all the sick people, Arabs and Jews, secular and ultra orthodox, doctors, nurses gathered in a secured corridor all together. Shared human fragility.
Fifty percent of Jerusalem does not have safe rooms, including me. That’s the cost of living in an old building. But I also want to tell you how welcoming the community shelters are. My neighbor tells me I should come to my street shelter because it’s so lovely to meet the neighbors. Many of these community shelters have been cleaned out by caring neighbors and kitted with tables and chairs, coloring pencils and paper, and hot water urns, even wifi. Where the children sit and draw and their pictures are hung on the wall, and all different types of people who live on the same street but have never met, meet and share their stories. The secret of our resilience - we have each other.
(We don’t go to our community shelter because my elderly in-laws are stuck here with us because of the war, and cannot manage in the panic of screaming sirens to reach it safely.)
Most of all I want to tell you we don’t know what will happen tomorrow but I love my people. I love all Israelis who believe in our Jewish State as a refuge for Jews, for all minorities who call Israel home — like the Druze, like the Christian Arab Border Police Head, Ashkar whose office is adjoined to the Western Wall, and where he has hung above the window a Hebrew sign from Psalms - If I forget you O’Jerusalem let my right hand be forgotten. Like the Muslim Arab border policeman I met at a checkpoint soon after October 7, who said with a broad smile, when I asked him what he wanted the world to know, “B’Sof Am Yisrael Chai - In the end, the People of Israel Live.”
Sarah
Notes: Instagram Post Links to Ashkar and Arab Muslim Border Policeman -
For more about me and my writing visit my website www.sarahsassoon.comTo support my work please consider buying my children’s books, the award winning Shoham’s Bangle, and my latest This is Not a Cholent. My mission is to spread and educate about Jewish Middle Eastern culture.
Read my free online, award winning poetry collection, published by Harbor Review - This is Why We Don’t Look Back.
Note - My Substack will be fortnightly. Maybe more often… I appreciate all comments, all conversations, and all sharing.
Further - All mistakes are proof that I am human, and this is not an AI publication.
Thank you for sharing Sarah. It was so needed. Shabbat Shalom 💙🙏🇮🇱🎗️
This is beautiful Sarah. Shabbat shalom🧡