I think that the best way to summarize the week that was is to tell you about my favorite videos on social media which uniquely capture these confusing and fleeting moments in time, and give us a sense of how the country as a whole is feeling.

First on the list is the following: Mom is at the sink. An baby cries hysterically from his high chair, while a toddler pulls insistently at her skirt. Outside the window, rockets can be seen flying through the air, and the smoke from bombs are visible. Mom, at the end of her tether, opens the window, hops on her own private rocket and flies into space.

Exactly. I don’t know how mothers of small children are managing at all. They are the real heroes of this story. My two married grandchildren who live in Jerusalem have four toddlers between them. Jerusalem has been battered mercilessly by rocket fire, as if Iran is targeting Al-Aqsa. Go figure! I asked them how the kids are managing being woken all times of the night and day. We were on Zoom, and her two year-old started mimicking the noise the alarm makes, but with a smile.

Wisely, they have set up a little play corner in the public bomb shelter, so the little ones view the alarms as an announcement of play time. They meet their friends there, and best of all, their parents are around all the time now. My grandson’s two little boys – one still an infant – are equally relaxed but confused. The one in preschool keeps thinking its Shabbat because he isn’t going to preschool, and he keeps telling off his parents if they want to put on lights, or cook, or use their phones. “Shabbat, Shabbat,” he scolds them. He also goes to the shelter willingly because there is someone who brings his dog there, and he loves the dog.

Many of the videos are of women who admit to fatigue, confusion, overwork, but in a humorous way. I give them credit for that. It’s been absolutely brutal dealing with the cluster bombs which put a wide swathe of the population into bomb shelters because of their unpredictability.

I recently saw a video by a Ger Chassid who was injured in the Arad rocket attack: “I know it’s hard with all the kids, but you have to go to the shelter every, single time,” he begged his audience, quoting from the Bible: “And you shall be exceedingly careful with your lives.”  Maybe they’ll listen to him. But I’m not without sympathy. Chassidim have large families. I can’t imagine waking up eight kids and heading down a few flights, just to do it again, and again, and again. It’s a nightmare.

And even though posting videos of the rocket impacts endangers the entire country and gives information to our enemies, we can’t help but look at them in horrified fascination: the deep holes in the streets, the destroyed homes and apartment buildings. The burning cars and trashed restaurants that have sustained direct hits. But what these videos bring home to us most of all is how truly miraculous it is that so few lives have been lost, and how few serious injuries Israelis have sustained. I know there are explanations: good civic defense discipline, abundant, safe shelters. Still.

Many of the videos being uploaded are from the bomb shelters. The video of a shelter in Tel Aviv in which for some reason an IDF singing group was present, and serenaded a frightened, crying four year old girl with the song: “The Prettiest Girl in the Kindergarten.” How the child stopped crying and smiled! The shelter where someone got up and suggested that all the singles use the opportunity to meet someone! There is actually an app you can download to see who is in the shelter and who is single! The videos that show how crowds of people walk calmly to shelters during alarms. It’s like “yes, we’ve got this.”

And because of that “system” life is going on, believe it or not. People are going to work. I went to the supermarket to shop for my Passover order, and buy presents. You are always a little terrified an alarm will find you in the car, or bus, or train. But even in those instances there is a protocol. My husband, coming back by train from his eye doctor in Tel Aviv, was caught in the middle of an alarm. The loudspeaker calmly told passengers to get off at the next stop, and head downstairs off the platform to await further instructions. Ten minutes later, they were told to go back up and continue their ride.

I’m not saying things are normal. There is parking in Tel Aviv and at our train station in Benyamina (never happens!) And the streets are not crowded. And there was even a table available at Nili, our favorite restaurant in Zichron. That is also quite rare. I was in the center of town when a warning went off, and a whole troop of kids on some kind of sport excursion headed towards the nearest shelter. An actual alarm never did go off, which happens a lot in our area because we get a warning whenever a rocket is headed to Haifa or Hadera. But we haven’t had a bonafide get-into-your-shelter right-now alarm for a few days.

We will get through this, because Israelis are very, very brave and very level-headed. But it’s not easy.

Far more difficult to get through, as far as I’m concerned, is the announcement that our soldiers have fallen on the Lebanese front. Hezbollah, which the Lebanese government agreed to dismantle in the ceasefire agreement, is still a major threat. Israel is creating a security zone for our northern cities and towns in rocket fire distance from Southern Lebanon. Brave soldiers are going house to house in the villages, discovering mind-boggling caches of rockets, anti-tank missiles, and every other kind of weapon, which neither the Lebanese army or those useless UNIFIL soldiers did anything about. Even as I sit and type this, northern Israel is under a nonstop rocket barrage from Hezbollah, who seem to have a near endless supply of rocket launchers and missiles everywhere.

Our continued life as a nation depends on the removal of this terrorist threat that has blatantly taken over a sovereign country, Lebanon. Under an ultimatum to leave by the Lebanese government, the Iranian ambassador said no. He’s not going anywhere. What does that tell us about Lebanese autonomy?

We lost so many brave IDF soldiers to these Hezbollah monsters this week. It truly breaks my heart. Captain Noam Madmoni, 22, from Sderot. Staff Sergeant Ben Cohen 21, from Lehavim. Staff Sergeant Maxim Antis, 21, from BatYam. Staff Sergeant Gilad Harel, 21, from Modi’in. They gave their young lives to give our country and our people a future. May we be worthy of them, and the sorrow of their extended families. Our troops are going house to house in southern Lebanon to root out the terrorists and their weapons that threaten our families. It’s a heartbreaking price we are paying for Iran’s insane antisemitism.

In a speech a few minutes ago, Prime Minister Netanyahu said that “Over the years, the Ayatollah Regime of Iran has invested almost a trillion (!) dollars in its efforts to destroy us, and all of it has gone down the drain. The battle isn’t over. But we have shocked the regime and sooner or later it will fall.”

Tommorow the people of Israel will gather in the midst of this war of annihilation around the Seder table with their families. All of us are now getting a lesson on how the Jewish people have survived for thousands of years. Despite suffering the worst of what mankind is capable of doing to their fellow man, particularly the Jewish people, we go forward, bolstered by our faith, our beloved customs and rituals, which no hatred, no bombs, no war, no sorrow or loss, can destroy. We go forward.

For myself, this is particularly poignant. Last night I got a phone call from my daughter. It was almost midnight. My first reaction was to think that her house had been hit and she wanted to let us know. It was a while before I understood she was calling to tell us that we had a new great-grandchild, a beautiful baby boy from my grandson and his wife!

Eilon was married a few months before October 7. During the war, he was forced to leave his new bride and spend months in Gaza blowing up terrorists strongholds, while his wife – a doctor at Soroka Hospital –  treated many of the victims of October 7. And last night this wonderful couple had their first child. Despite everything!

We will rejoice with them. The Brit will bring us together, rockets or no rockets. And while our Airforce and the American pilots drop bunker buster bombs on Iran to bury their stockpile of enriched uranium, we will hear the blessings that accompany each new Jew into the tribe.

Welcome little one! You are part of a remarkable people. Hopefully the world you have been born into will be a better, safer place because of all the courageous sacrifices that the people of Israel and our good American allies have been prepared to make to see that happen.

Thank you, dear God, for this precious gift.

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