Rain Like This

Shabbat afternoon. It’s Simḥat Torah, one of very few holidays on the Jewish calendar whose story is unmarked by violence. You’re at home, just as you are every Shabbat — but there will be no nap, no pleasure reading, no lazy afternoon meal of leftovers with family today.

The radio, normally silent on Shabbat, is tuned to Galei Tzahal — armed forces radio. Once in a while you rotate to the TV to watch local broadcasts, or CNN with its breathless, non-stop coverage. You’re hungry — isn’t everybody? — for news of the expanding conflict in Gaza, the missiles falling in Be’er Sheva, Tel Aviv, even Jerusalem.

The phone startles you, though of course you’ve been anticipating the call. The conversation is brief: put your life on hold, rejoin your unit, protect your country. You turn off the TV and the radio. On your closet door hangs your uniform; you hope you can still put it on without popping any buttons. Then it’s time to kiss the children, assure them you’ll be back soon. As you hug your little girl, you’re overcome by the knowledge that you will not be there to comfort and protect her if — when — the missiles reach your little town. It’s an act of supreme will to hand her back to Chaya, your wife. You and Chaya embrace, each of you promising the other you’ll stay safe, both of you understanding it’s a pledge you may not be able to keep.

As a kid in the army you were in electronic communications, a fancy job that required specialized training. But that’s a regular-army billet; as a reservist, you’ll be assigned duties that demand no regular training or superior physical skills.

Maybe you’ll dig a trench around a base, or stand guard by a gate. Or maybe some genius of a 19-year-old lieutenant will decide that “electronic communications” means you’re just the guy to carry a radio through the mean streets of Gaza, while soldiers half your age go door-to-door searching for terrorists. Maybe one of those doors opens to reveal a family, not so different from your own, trembling because they’ve been convinced by the terrorists who control their lives that you’re there to kill them.

You’re not.

Or, maybe that door explodes — as they often do — and your first view of that family, not so different from your own, is of their mangled, blood-drenched bodies huddled into a corner. In the hall, nothing but red mist remains of the 20-something sergeant who turned the booby-trapped knob. The enemy has traded a whole family for one Israeli soldier. In the terrorist calculus, the only things cheaper than a Jewish life are the lives of those he claims to represent.

You push those thoughts aside, trying not to perseverate on worst case scenarios. You’re a 43-year-old reservist, you remind yourself; they’re not going to send you into the streets. You repeat that to yourself, again and again — they’re not going to send me into the streets — hoping to manifest a gentler reality, one more likely to see you returning home.

You arrange a ride with Tzahi, a member of your unit. He shows up in a military Jeep — how’d he pull that off? Best not to ask. He’s also wearing his uniform, one suspiciously free of wear and tear. Guess he was no longer able to squeeze his 42-year-old body into the outfit he wore at 22.

It’s going to be a long trip, and — as usual — Tzahi is on a mission to experience every bump and pothole.

Shit, you realize: The dog’s out of food. Not a big deal — unless the trip to the supermarket is interrupted by an air raid siren. But Chaya will figure it out. She always does.

There’s too much to think about; there’s nothing to think about. Time is crawling, but you’re in no hurry. You’re reminded of a song — a classic, really — by Arik Einstein, the Bob Dylan of Israel:

And I think: soon we’ll be in Gaza
Hope there’s no grenade that flies our way to send us all to hell
Hey, slow down; just slow down
They won’t start before we get there
Just slow down

Tzahi is religious, but not the kind who tries to get himself and his kids out of mandatory service. Every time we hit another bump, his kippah gets a little closer to flying off his balding head. He lives in the south, had been up in Haifa with his parents for the holiday. Tzahi and his wife Shoshana have six at home, ages 2 to 14, with one on the way. He shrugs when you ask him how Sho is going to take care of the whole brood while he’s on active duty: savta, he smiles. Grandma.

You speak in low voices about the attack: the young women, sisters, at the party — that party; the 22-year-old kid, a medic, shot as he arrived at the scene to treat the survivors. Last year, he tells you, the army found a tunnel exit about 200 meters from his front door. The entrance was in Gaza. “How could they not know this would happen?” he asks, speaking broadly about the government , the army, anybody in a position of responsibility, past or present. “What did they think these tunnels were for — planting carrots? They knew; we all knew. And what did they do about it? Bupkes!”

The non-Jewish world — horrified, for once, by the carnage of antisemitic terrorism — will surely forget their teary empathy soon enough. Thousands of missiles already have fallen, with no end in sight. Your nephew’s high school gym took a direct hit; baruch Hashem, it was empty at the time. Mostly the rockets strike open fields — nobody bothers to aim, because there’s more terror in volume than in precision. Whether they hit a stalk of wheat or a room full of kindergartners, it’s all the same to the terrorists.

A stalk of wheat. . . You suddenly appreciate a strange lyric from the same Arik Einstein song, one you had never really understood before: Tzvika says that rain like this can cause damage to the crops.

What kind of rain does that? A cloudburst of lead, of steel. A downpour of blood and viscera and body parts raging across a land of milk and honey.

You try to remember if you restocked the safe room after the last time. You worry that Chaya will forget the parent-teacher conference tomorrow — oh, right, the schools are closed. You wonder how she’ll keep the kids occupied. You imagine their lives without you — the kids growing up fatherless, your youngest barely remembering you at all; Chaya eventually remarrying, spending the rest of her life with him, not you.

The base — a glorified stretch of empty desert featuring only a handful of trailers, one permanent building, and a security fence — is just ahead.

So soon?

Tzahi greets the guard, drives up to the lone building, and we hop down from the Jeep. I glance up at the cloudless sky. Looks like rain.

I will post some thoughts about what led me to write the first version this story a decade ago, and what it means to me now. Check this space for a link.

Photo credits:
— (Israeli soldiers) Photo by Timon Studler on Unsplash
— (Bullets/rain) Image: Wix. Filter: E. Scott Menter

Translation of Arik Einstein lyrics: E. Scott Menter