The days and nights are blurring together, I find myself repeatedly checking my watch to figure out if it’s Friday yet.
Maybe on Shabbat I’ll be able to sleep. Maybe on Shabbat I won’t soak my pillow in tears.
I wouldn’t say that I’m afraid, or even anxious. My husband and I already held our little family together through several thousands of rockets that Hamas fired to Be’er Sheva over the last ten years. We feel God’s protection, we’re grateful for the IDF and Iron Dome. It’s not that.
Instead it’s a soul-crushing sadness. A pit in the stomach that won’t go away no matter how much you starve it or try to bury it in distraction. It’s the unbearable fact that we lost 1,400 precious souls, and that their last moments were filled with horror. It’s the awareness that 224 beautiful faces are sitting in Hamas chains. It’s the children, the babies.
And when each siren goes off, and each time our hearts race as we grab our kids and run them into the bomb shelter, we’re hit with a stark reminder. A regards from Hamas. We hear the explosions, listen for direct hits, and remember that only a few kilometers away there lives monsters.
An absolute darkness from the deepest pits of hell.
I’m ashamed that I let them into my head, and wake up from nightmares where I’m holding down the bolt to our bomb shelter and screaming as snake-headed terrorists pry the metal window open with an axe.
My kids know that many people were killed and kidnapped. They have friends who heard the gunshots. I’m hoping they don’t learn more than that.
My husband and I took them to Ofakim to help out in the soup kitchen. They’ve never been to a soup kitchen before, and this one wasn’t operating as usual. The day the war broke out, their standard hundred guests a day turned to thousands of families in need. Rabbi Shneur Kenig, who runs the kitchen, had to quickly change strategy.
Boxes were everywhere, floor to ceiling. Hundreds waiting to be folded and packed; some with non-perishables, and some with fresh produce. In the freezer sat 1,000 prepared meals, ready to be delivered in the morning.
Rabbi Kenig told me about his lists, and how much they changed since October 7th. Two volunteers were gone. Several recipients too. They were killed by Hamas. In their place, a much longer, expanded list of people who were now too afraid to leave their homes, or struggling to pay the bills since their businesses were forced to close.
The terrorists came from a side road, avoiding the new neighborhood built for police families. Instead they went to the old and more disadvantaged edge of the city, and waited next to the public bomb shelters. This side of Ofakim was built long before missiles from Gaza were a thing, and so the apartments and small homes don’t have protected rooms. When the first siren went off at 6:30am, dozens of disoriented people ran out of their homes towards the bomb shelters, where terrorists sprayed them with machine gunfire.
The tiny battered city of Ofakim lost 48 locals in just minutes. Hundreds more were severely injured, and the street battles lasted for nearly two days.
My husband and kids folded, taped, and packed boxes. We heard about families who are now too afraid to go outside, and about the wonderful volunteers who come to help at the kitchen every day.
That’s how we are—Israelis, Jews, good people. That’s what we do here; when evil knocks down our door we drown it out with light. The moment the war broke out, an avalanche of people jumped to find what they could do. When I told my husband’s cousin, Chayli Fehler, about Ofakim, she and her clan of volunteers jumped in headfirst. These are people who don’t even live here, and never experienced a siren in their life, but they ran to the 45-second zone to help.
My inbox gets flooded every day with kind people asking how they can help. “My community gathered boxes of quality toys for kids in bomb shelters, who should we give it to?” “We fundraised money to help moms whose husbands are on reserve duty, how do we arrange it?” “Do you know a unit that needs tactical gear? My friends want to donate.” “Can I buy Tefillin for soldiers who want to put them on?”
Entire university building wings have turned into volunteer centers, where people pack boxes of clothes, toys, necessities. Volunteers fill busses to farms whose workers were killed or kidnapped, and spend days picking the produce before it goes bad. Professionals offer free services to displaced people and reservist families. Parents gather kids in bomb shelters and take turns playing comforting games with them.
It’s the stark fiery contrast between a blinding light of unity and pure desire for good, against a dark that the world doesn’t even want to believe exists.
The days are blurred, my watch says it’s almost Friday, soon it’ll be Shabbat. Maybe this time the light will overflow and obliterate anything that resists its glow.
©2023 Bruria Efune