It’s been an eventful few days!

On Monday I went to Beit Shemesh with ds13 and ds12 to take care of a bunch of errands. On our final errand, at about 6 pm, the missile warning siren went off. The boys looked at me and one asked, “Could it be a siren for Yom Yerushalayim?” As I heard the pitch begin to go up and down, I realized it was a real alert and we quickly made our way to the underground parking lot and got in our car.

Only a few others made a move to find a safe place – almost everyone around us continued with their shopping. Ds13 afterwards told me how surprising he found it that everyone kept acting normally; I explained that they probably had no idea what to do. What we do in situations like this is look around to assess how others are responding, and then act accordingly. And this is a challenge, when those around you don’t know how to respond.

As soon as we verified that the coast was clear, we zipped out to get home. The traffic was clear and I was relieved to be going north, to safety. We passed several tanks being transported, something we had never seen before, but otherwise everything looked normal.

The north is filled with Arab neighborhoods, and unlike other parts of the country, the main roads travel directly through these neighborhoods, all considered safe. I didn’t know that riots were breaking out in Arab neighborhoods across the country. Once I got an hour from home, traffic suddenly became extraordinarily heavy and I had no idea why. My boys noted the heavy police presence, the horses they told me were used for riots – when we drove around burnt, still smoking items in the road, I wondered if somehow a rocket had hit this area and was relieved to see the infrastructure looked undamaged. My bias was to see the areas I was in as safe and I was looking outside for the threat, and wasn’t putting the pieces together yet.

I was less than twenty minutes from home when I drove into a crowd of about 100 young Arab men blocking the four lanes of the main road (near Shibli), yelling and waving flags twenty minutes from home, sitting on cars in the middle of the street. For the first couple of minutes I was only puzzled- there was a huge truck blocking my view, a police cruiser two cars behind me, and I saw that ahead in the distance cars were slowly driving up the hill. The police had gotten out, said something to the crowd and then walked back to their cruiser to watch, so I assumed things were safe (that’s what I told my kids to reassure them). It was when the truck was allowed to pass that I could see what was just ahead of me – men running back and forth across the road, jumping on the car ahead of me, others beginning to push some large burning object into the road – that I made a quick decision to make a u-turn and get out of there. No other cars followed me. (I was told that rocks were thrown at the drivers soon after.)

It was at this point I realized that the first traffic jam had been due to a riot that had been cleared by the time we drove past. The benefit of hindsight.

I thought I would take the long way around, and followed the alternate route suggested by Waze. This route went directly through two Arab towns, and I again ran into heavy traffic. As we slowed to a stop (this time near Nazareth), we heard firecrackers going off up ahead, and ds13 said, “I don’t feel safe to drive forward.” I was thinking the same thing, and began to make another u-turn, and for the first time saw other drivers doing the same thing.

This was part of our exhausting drive to try to get home, as every possible route became blocked with traffic jams caused by rioting. I felt trapped, like everything around me was closing in on all sides. I was confused about where I was – I have a good sense of direction but I was in areas that were completely unfamiliar to me – and was afraid to follow another Waze route and drive into a riot that I wouldn’t be able to get out of. I wanted to get off the smaller roads I had been diverted to and get onto a main highway, and after looking at the options, made the decision that we would stay on the route that I finally chose no matter what.

At this point I put on a relaxing meditation to listen to, and this was the best possible thing I could had done. It totally shifted our energies, and helped us feel safe and protected in an alarming situation. As we were in yet another traffic jam, fireworks began going off a short distance to our right (fireworks are shot off at celebrations and riots). This time, ds13 smiled and said, “Nice, we can enjoy the show while we wait!” He felt so much more relaxed that he began giving friendly waves to other drivers sitting in traffic with us. (If you’re wondering, ds12 had fallen asleep in the back seat; I needed ds13 to help navigate – even though we had Waze I wanted him to confirm that I was turning on the right place – I didn’t want to make a mistake that could take us into a dangerous situation – so he didn’t close his eyes until were were finally on a bigger highway.) We only talked about how everything was working out for us.

We got home at 11:30 pm, five and a half hours after leaving Beit Shemesh (usually a two hour drive). When I lay down, my entire body was buzzing with tension and exhaustion.

The next morning I didn’t see anything about rioting in the north being reported, and was uncomfortable sending Yirmi to school. (He began the week before Pesach and loves it!). I was debating until literally made the decision a minute before his bus arrived, and decided since they travel on main highways and anyway, no one would be rioting in the morning that it would be fine. I then took Rafael for his interview at the school, and he did great. I was able to see Yirmi in his classroom and meet his teachers, which was really nice. (Due to covid, we were limited when we visited the school back in November for his intake interview.) Yirmi only stays until 1 pm every day, due to the availability of the van that takes him home, and that day we took him home with us, which was really nice. He’s asked me a number of times to pick him up from school but it’s a one hour drive in each direction so it’s not something I’m usually able to do.

Meanwhile, ds15 was at his high school in Kiryat Ono and was woken at 3 am to a missile alert. They all filed to the protected area, and classes continued for the next day and a half as usual. They heard a number of alerts that they were in the protected area for, and at other times saw missiles high above headed for locations farther away. They were all sent home on Wednesday, around 1:45, and I’m happy to have him back at home. He’s hoping that things will clear up in time for him to return to yeshiva for Shavuos (Sunday), but I think the likelihood of that happening isn’t high.

Avivah