Old/New World Discourse: Yoman (diary) of a Mad Housewife

I am mad. Angry. Bitter. Upset. Aggrieved. I trust Hashem. I sure don't get what's going on.

When I woke up shortly after 5 am the morning after the horrific killings in Kyrat Moshe, Missy Oldest, who otherwise would have been electronically hooking up with her New World friends, greeted me with a somber, "did you hear the news, Mommy?"

Mommy was barely awake. Yet, the news that eight humans, eight souls, eight people, were slaughtered at Mercaz HaRav Kook Yeshiva jolted me like no other stimulant could. I sat for a few moments, after thinking Baruch Dayan HaEmet, and just sat.

Thereafter, I prayed shacharit, but I prayed with the silence of a person shocked rather than with the joy of a person celebrating Rosh Chodesh Adar. I don't know what The Boss Made from my prayers.

Thereafter, Missy Oldest and I woke up the younger children. Boy-Who-Needs-Books said little as he sleepily grabbed a funky hat for his school's Rosh Chodesh Adar celebration. He wanted face paint, but I told him we couldn't open that package until Purim. We told him nothing about the violence. There would be time.

As for Missy Youngest, we told her slowly. First, we said one student was killed. She digested, with rancor, the news. After a necessary pause, she asked if others were dead. We told her of the seven other martyrs.

She digested, with bad feeling, that news, too. Then, she asked, in a soft voice, where the killings had taken place. We told her in a neighborhood near her school.

Missy Youngest's friend, who had slept over and who is a frequent fixture, Baruch Hashem, in our home, asked which yeshiva. We told her.

She told us two of her brothers learn there. I gave her the phone and asked her to call her parents. I was relieved to know, b'li eyen hora, that her brothers were safe. I was horrified to think that someone else's brothers were not.

Madness knows no limits. Savagery knows makes no distinction.

While the girls were getting ready for school, I called a special friend. I nodded to the receiver as she reminded me that the world sees Jewish life as cheap and Israeli rights as nonexistent. It's easy for terror to take its cue from governmental brazenness.

Like a magician twirling his one hand at his audience, all dazzle and flourish, while the other reaches into a secret compartment to actually release a lizard or rabbit, during the emptying of The Gush, the Israeli Government had already made concession to the Road Map Plan. Is it such a surprise that the walls are falling?

Before we wished each other well, I asked my friend if I were wise to allow my daughter to travel to an outlying area for Shabbot. She pointed out that her own children settle hilltops and that I already knew what her answer would be. For a moment we laughed together, sharing a solidarity that is a love of this land and of its people.

I loaded Missy Youngest and her pal into our car. They had grabbed chocolate cereal for breakfast and I made no protest. They had also grabbed garish masks from our Purim stash and I made no complaint, having nothing in me upon which to draw.

After dropping off the girls, rather than return home to finish my Shabbot preparations or to work on a writing project, I went to the shuk. I needed to be with people. En route, I called more friends. I needed to hear their voices.

The shuk disappointed me, both literally and as a metaphor. It also confused me.

When I tried to engage some of the shopkeepers in talk about the previous night's events, they furtively indicated, by means of their eyes, their employees. My heart cried. Those Jews need their parnassah. Those Jews know and certain strata of our society provide less costly service than do others. Those Jews never heard my grandfather used to say, that you get what you pay for.

Two of my shuk incidents were unlike the others, though. In one case, a very young man, who said he was just twelve, helped me haul a very heavy box to my car. He was all smiles, energy, and joy in living.

He confused me. He was not of my people, yet he had not (yet) acquired the sneer, the squint or the other body language which so often accompanies the polite discourse of other Middle Easterners. When I thanked him for loading my box into my car, I meant it sincerely. I cannot hate innocence.

In another case, a shopkeeper, who had no employees of any nation, choosing, for whatever reason, to work alone, talked "on the level" with me. We shook our heads, we touched our own hearts and we allowed our eyes to brim with impossible feelings.

He had no English and I have only a beggar's Hebrew, but we spoke a shared language.

I'm home now. I'm not sure if I want to keep my doctor's appointment in another part of the country since I travel there by a route on which there is a history of killings. On the other hand, ISRAEL BELONGS TO MY PEOPLE!

It's Adar and all is upside down.

Shabbot shalom.