Nowhere Else I'd Rather Be

Despite the sirens and sleepless nights, Julie Zuckerman feels like one of the lucky ones

This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.

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Photo by Zoe on Unsplash

I am one of the lucky ones. I have a safe room in my house and, so far, my city of Modiin has suffered no direct hits.

But that could change at any moment.

Just now, as I sat down to start writing, there was another siren. Within minutes, we heard the news and were sent videos of a direct hit on Soroka Hospital in Beersheva. Another missile landed less than a kilometer from my office in Ramat Gan. We haven't yet heard estimates of casualties, but there were certainly many.

I’ll repeat a dark joke my friend told the other day: If October 7 and Covid had a baby, that’s what it feels like in Israel right now.

As on October 7, there is a maniacal regime intent on our annihilation. This time, the regime is sending ballistic missiles into civilian centers, but the results are the same: death, injury, and destruction. It’s another existential battle. Again, we find ourselves in a new reality, a historic moment.

I feel that I have lived two lifetimes: my first 53 years, an era that ended on October 7; and my second, everything since then. Perhaps this is the adolescence of my second—the one in which Israel is standing up and taking on the biggest evil actor in the region.

Like Covid, we are hunkered down, close to home. Only essential businesses are open. My 16-year-old can’t go to school. Anyone who can work from home is encouraged to. Instead of biking in the nearby forest and hills, I stick to the paths inside the city, where—in the event of an alert—I can easily dash into a building and knock on a stranger’s door.

Like Covid, my neighborhood has come together (though this time, thankfully, the parks are open). One friend arranged a book exchange in the park. Another organized an impromptu arts-and-crafts event at her house. I organized a mincha minyan for a friend who had yahrzeit. We can run from the park to our safe room at a moment’s notice, bringing anyone who can't get home in time.

What’s been keeping us going, these past 622 days? Being together. Twenty-somethings, who had been living or studying in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem or Beersheva, have come home. My older daughter, who is preparing for her university exams, regularly invites three or four friends to study together at our house; another three, or ten, come over at night to relax. My son's girlfriend has moved in with us for now; she has no family in Israel, and our son is working night shifts on the Home Front Command.

I was asleep last night at 12:10 a.m. when the ear-splitting early warning went off on our phones. Ten of us gathered in our tiny safe room. I texted the family we'd invited for Shabbat lunch this weekend.

"Dry run tonight, and we'll be okay with 12 if there's a siren."

Shortly after October 7, I wrote an essay called “It's Too Much.” It’s still too much—but I'm grateful that I'm not stuck outside of the country, like some of my friends and colleagues.

Despite the sleepless nights, I'd rather be here than anywhere else.

Through it all, I want to shout: ומה עם החטופים??—And what about the hostages?? We haven't forgotten them for a moment. My daughter's friends, Gali and Ziv Berman, 27-year-old twins from Kibbutz Kfar Aza, are still languishing in the tunnels of Gaza, along with 51 other Israelis. It seems impossible that they are still there. Perhaps what is happening now will somehow shake things up, create the right conditions for a deal or a rescue or whatever it takes to bring our beloved 53 hostages home. Halavai. May it be so.

In the middle of this, our soldiers are still being killed in Gaza. Two days ago, we lined the streets with Israeli flags to pay our respects to a 28-year-old soldier from Modiin who'd been killed, leaving his wife, two small children, and a grieving family. His father-in-law is one of my daughter's teachers; many of our friends are close with the family. He had volunteered to go back to the reserves because so many others are exhausted. My friend, who knew him well, wrote that he was "the best of the best." Another entire world destroyed.

In my circles, there is no love lost for our current government. But whatever one's stance on the judicial reform or the war in Gaza or the question of the Palestinians or the Haredi draft, there is unanimous support for our current actions in Iran. It must be done. And we are so, so grateful to our brave soldiers and pilots. May God protect them.

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Julie Zuckerman's debut novel-in-stories, The Book of Jeremiah, was published in 2019 by Press 53. Her fiction and non-fiction have appeared in CRAFT, Salt Hill, Atlas & Alice, Crab Orchard Review, Jewish Fiction, The Coil, The SFWP Quarterly, and Sixfold, among others. She is the founder and host of the monthly Literary Modiin author series. Her essay, "Under One Sky" won first prize in the 2023 Creators of Justice Literary Awards from the International Human Rights Art Movement. A native of Connecticut, she now lives in Israel with her husband and four children. Subscriber to her monthly author newsletter for book recommendations, writing news, recipes & more.

Instagram: @juliezuckermanauthor

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This essay is part of a new collection of work inspired by the anthology On Being Jewish Now: Reflections of Authors and Advocates. Want to contribute? Instructions here. Subscribe here.