It is hard being alone

November 6, 2023. Haifa, Israel

It is hard being alone. My dear friends and colleagues. This is a very personal note.

I hope you will read it, feel it, and react to it.

I want to share with you this new song. It reflects very simply how I feel now. The words, the music. I want to translate a few lines to you. "Tachzor" means "come back", or "may you come back". It is a word that the young woman is saying to her loved one. Though this is not stated in the song, we all understand that her loved one is now drafted to the army. Drafted to fight terrorism and our immediate threat.

The first verse is about her. The one who waits. This is me (this is everyone in my country). So I know what is not explicit in the words. I know that she cannot sleep. She is not herself. She doesn't find a reason to do anything (in the song it is about the heavy legs that don't find a reason to walk – which connects with TIME that is keeping still since that dreadful day, that is not running as it usually does). Everything stops. The last line in the first verse changes to speaking (in her mind) directly to him "Everything stops when you are not here". We are fearing. We hope that everyone who needs to fight for us there, will safely return.

She wakes up from a dream and feels him close and then calls him from the night: COME BACK! (Tachzor). But words and exclamation marks cannot express it. Listen to how the singer calls this word from teh bottom of her soul. Listen and cry with me.

"Come back, come back today.

I wanted so much that you will come back.

Let it be that you will come back today without letting me know beforehand"

The next sentence is one that makes me cry harder. More and more tears. Because I am not strong as she is. And I want to be. She can give him hope and courage. Can I? no.

She says:

"I am a house of light"

Then she returns to the idea of before:

"May you appear from the distance,

Let it be that you will come back today without letting me know beforehand"

PS - background - please read all points if you can

1. Although I live in the north of Israel (an hour and a half from the border with Lebanon where Hezbollah is ruling) I am also 1 hour and 45 minutes from Gaza.

We are so used to small-scale terrorist attacks in Israel (eg my daughter was in one in Tel Aviv a few months ago) and we are so used to small balloons with fire that terrorists put in the air to burn the crop of the farmers on the Israeli side (a few days ago I shared a photo of beautiful flowers rescued from the south that were brought to a nursery close by, where I bought them).

We are so used to missiles fired from Gaza all the time, for years, on the south of Israel - that everyone ignores it. Everyone. We did nothing about it. We put a fence around Gaza, with the naive hope that the Palestinians will cross to work in Israel and that the terrorists will not try to cross the gate. Well, you cannot rely on this. 3000 of the tens of thousands of Hamas terrorists entered and slaughtered and burned and dismantled young people from the army and wiped out entire communities of Jewish people living in Kibbutzim (plural of Kibbutz) close to Gaza. They can do it again. We have no choice. We are a tiny country with a small population and military service of a few years is mandatory. Now we naturally have to rely on our reserves duty - people ages 21-50 (most of them with families of their own) who completed their army service and are called to fight for our lives. For my life.

2. In each family, someone is drafted. In my family, it is the boyfriend of my middle daughter. People have been drafted on October 7. They returned from holidays abroad and enlisted. They have been there a month now. Some people never had a day off. I asked my friends, and I see that for most of the people drafted had a chance to come back twice for a 20-hour visit home. You never know when this will happen.

So the song "Tachzor" is a call for your loved one to come back.

3. So many Palestinian s are killed. A tragedy that I, that we, don't want. This is why we are willing to send our young men, some of whom will not return. We send them to destroy Hamas places of amunition and places where the Hamas reside. Hamas brutally use innocent children women elderly and family men. They place their strategic places in schools. In mosques. In hospitals. Our young men are killed by the terrorists when they try to enter on foot and target only the terrorists. Israel announced two weeks ago to citizens to evacuate the places that they need to destroy. Istael is a moral country. Hamas is ISIS.

4. The grammar of the Hebrew language is such that this word means future tense -- a statement saying you will return. It can also be an "order": come back! But in the song, and you will hear it from the singer, it is a plea: "please, please, please come back". It is a prayer. The word "please" is implicit in the voice. The only word is "return".

5. The song is by my favorite composer and song writer Idan Raichel and sung by Roni Dalumi

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTXAA96W1Ww

Facebook All reactions: 28+ 6 Shares (a link if you'd like to react on Facebook)