“Can you believe what’s going on in Israel?” my mother asked me when I called her in the middle of Sukkot. I felt my heart drop, my breath catch. I hadn’t been keeping up with the news at all. My house was full of guests; children running up and down the steps and trays of food going in and out of the sukkah. And I stopped myself from saying: Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. Because part of me really didn’t want to hear what had happened.
Just at that moment my youngest ran into the room and pulled on my skirt. “Ima, hold me.” He rubbed his eyes as I gathered him into my arms and quickly steered the phone call into a different direction. But after I said Shema with him and tucked him into bed, I forced myself to finally go into my office. I sat down at my desk and as the lively din of my guests echoed towards me from downstairs, I opened up the news. The headlines looked like nightmares, one after the other. A father and mother shot in their car while their children watched helplessly from their seats. A father murdered on his way to pray at the Wall. His wife stabbed. His two-year-old daughter shot in the leg. And the young man who came out of his apartment to help them killed too. I closed my eyes and heard someone calling my name from downstairs.
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