We decided to kick off the summer with some short local trips. The kind that are enough to make everyone exhausted and happy yet don’t require too much driving or planning.
We head out to a local historic site right outside of Bet Shemesh. The crawling caves are a fun, quick and exhilarating activity for old and young. I’ve been here before with groups of students and with family.
The fun part about going on summer trips in July is that everything is empty. We get to the parking lot and there’s only one other car (I’ve been here at times when there were no parking spots). We park super close to the trail, I leave my husband and baby in the car and head over to the caves with three very excited children, fully geared with their brand new head flashlights.
As we take the steps down to the cave one child decides that the caves are too scary and wants to back out. Said child goes back to wait around with his father and I head down with 2 children.
I get down on my knees while giving clear instructions to my super eager followers.
I enter the cave and my world goes dark.
I am hit in the face with the reality of war that has gone on for way too long.
I struggle to breath as the damp muddy walls close in on me, threatening to take away the little bit of air in my lungs.
I practice all my breathing techniques that have served me well through various life struggles, and silently pray that I’m breathing life into those yearning for life.
I take one cautious step in front of another as I wonder how you can survive without taking a step in any direction.
I feel the ground under me and the walls around me and hope they can still feel.
I move forward slowly, wodering how long has passed, while time has lost all meaning and day and night merge into one.
The next few days I find myself lost in a haze of survival. I won’t fool myself and not even for a split second and say I felt what my brothers and sisters have. For I have not. But my heart stopped to ponder the irony of the world we live in.
There is a huge dissonance in the shape of an underground tunnel between my day to day life and the life of those out at war.
One day I ran out of patience and took a few minutes to regroup. I text a friend with the desperate “I’m not managing!!”. She kindly reminds me that I (still) just had a baby, and “your country has been upended”.
Right.
Right. My heart that I work so hard to protect from the news, from falling apart for the sake of my family, is a heart holding within it the heart of a nation. A nation in pain, a nation at war, a nation at a loss.
Stories unfold as we face the reality of what so many have endured, and that fragile and strong heart wonders how long we’ll have to hold on.
We hold on to a normal functioning life as that is the biggest victory of all.
We hold on to faith that provides no answers but comfort.
We hold on to sanity when the world around us is insane.
We hold on to each other because we can’t do this alone.
Those crawling caves had me hyperventilating, demanding me to remain composed as I guided my kids to the end.
My body may have been there but my heart sank at that very moment, transporting to the horrible sights we so wish are not part of our history.
For they are not part of our history. They are a living reality, pumping blood in the veins of every Jew, providing us life as we face uncertainty through our day to day life.
Those walls threatened to trap me, to stop me and cover me in despair. I reflect on those moments, the clarity that reminded me of the world we live in, and the hope we must cling to.
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