I want so much to write about the inspiration that was all around me in Israel, under air raid sirens.

How resourceful and resilient most Israelis seemed to be, in overcoming adversity, and finding ways of adapting to new challenging situations, even if it means making Pesach preparations in between ballistic missile sirens. Never mind the sharp humor of Israelis that has even kept me laughing in-between sirens. All this, as I felt my faith deepen, and watched in awe as strangers helped strangers make it through, be it in helping people through their grief at shiva for those tragically killed by a missile attack, or helping people find alternative ways to throw their war-time wedding.

Walking through the Machaneh Yehuda market on a rainy day, it was still filled to the brim with people hustling and bustling their way from one market stall to the next, checking out the wares and tastings on offer, live music permeating the air, sirens be damned. Sometimes you just need a reprieve.

Sirens or no sirens, impending Pesach was just around the corner. For the month of the war I was in Israel, I had dishes I was cooking get ruined as siren struck and I had to run to the shelter. I could only imagine the pre-Pesach cooking marathons taking place in between missile sirens.

I’m not going to sugarcoat it, though. Time and again, witnessing young families with tired little kids, or the elderly who can barely walk, exerting great effort to reach the bomb shelters under the pressure of the siren is hard.

Once in the shelter itself, in time the space transformed into mostly 15-minute increments of might otherwise be a temporary home of sorts; a play area for some of the children — to build with toys; a synagogue. Some take the time to study Torah, perhaps continuing from where they left off when the siren wailed. Some pray. Some murmur Psalms with the increasing, deafening sounds of the booms above. Most regard the shelter as like a cafe or park bench, shmoozing about “the situation,” sharing up to the minute details.

It so happens that our shelter has a large, brown, old-school type radio. We sometimes turn it on to learn the latest transpiring around us, outside the bomb shelter.

Many of the people in the shelter are religious, usually dressed in a more formal and dignified manner, and usually conducting themselves in a more restrained manner. At this point, that has all been shed. Once you are running for your lives down a staircase together, bleary eyed in the middle of the night, with a robe thrown over pajamas, or perhaps if it was a disrupted shower, a towel wrapped around your head, that formality and distance shrinks quite fast.

The usual core in the shelter are the neighbors from the apartment building, but many times strangers from the street, passing by when a siren sounded, would join (our shelter was the closest at hand) — just as I too, at various times, was in other shelters I stepped in for safety, depending on where I was.

There were some days and nights of extreme weather. Fiercely howling winds of deafening sounds and darkening rainstorms of thunder — you’re not sure you can discern between a missile sirens or crackling thunder. War and weather. Truly, at times it felt apocalyptic. Truly, at times, it felt like the Heavens were weeping.

Sadly but obviously, for security reasons, the Kotel has been closed. Another layer, that even without the shriek of sirens, says: war.

Yet within these limits, in many ways the logistics and spirit of life, of prayer, continued, albeit in a modified way.

Now it’s over a month into the war. The high of Israel destroying the evil leadership of Iran bent on Israel’s destruction is almost a distant memory. While there is a certain element of getting used to the situation, the longer the war drags on, the deeper the anxiety and tension.

For a minute there, especially after the body of the last Hamas hostage Ran Gavili was miraculously found, retrieved and returned to Israel for burial, it seemed like the war was finally over. The profound moment of his platoon singing Ani Ma’amin as they guarded his body, felt like an emotional and meaningful end to the heartrending hostage saga.

Now to think that we have come to another Pesach, with the agony of the Hamas chapter ended — yet our third Pesach in a row at war. It is beyond words. Gut wrenchingly, the “hutar le-pirsum, cleared for publication” announcements of young fallen soldiers has returned.

It’s heartbreaking, to the point of feeling physical pain. It’s a Pesach of chronicling our Exodus from Egypt as we grieve with deep sorrow and mourning for fallen soldiers.

As we hold our breath for the soldiers advancing deep into Lebanon, I write these very words with a trembling hand.

Vehigadeta le-vincha, and you shall tell your son” is a theme of the seder and the Haggadah. Of telling of the miraculous story of the Exodus and transmitting our remarkable story of peoplehood and survival, of endurance, of building, to the next generation. Transmitting that message in war time, though, is both more complex and more powerful than ever.

The “Vehigadeta le-vincha “ I so badly wish I could say with certitude to the children in my life, is: “Don’t worry. Everything will be OK. The war will end. Peace will come. Geula, redemption, will arrive. All will be well. This is the last war you will ever know.”

Pesach is meant to be a re-experiencing of the Exodus from the past, in our present.

This year, in addition to that, it feels like we are living through and experiencing something new and historic in our present, which we are not yet sure how exactly it will unfold.

But we hold the hope that looking back on it in the future, this current fraught Pesach time this year will turn out to be another historic chapter and layer in our people’s greater Exodus story, a story that we can pass onto the next generation with the same miraculous joy of our original Vehigadeta le-vincha into future Pesachs.

© IJN 2026