War and prayers for peace

To our darling new great-granddaughter Mekimi Shir, welcome to this incomprehensible world, this place and time of trouble and war. Our family prays that this strife will soon be gone and that you will grow up here, in our holiest land, Eretz Yisrael, in peace.

My own birth coincided with a raging war in Europe that threatened the peace in the USA, which was soon to be embroiled in it. My arrival, many years ago in 1939, was during the horrible age of hatred and the attempted total destruction of our people, known as the Shoa, the Holocaust, the Second World War. Fortunately for me I was born in New Jersey, where that war was only peripheral and had practically no impact on my childhood. I knew nothing about the threats to those of our family still in Poland, who would be murdered, or even about the dangers to those of our American relatives who would be called upon to do battle. My childhood was protected and cushioned, free and safe, unchallenged. I was just one of many lucky Jewish children growing up in a cocoon called Weequahic in the enchanted city of Newark, whose sidewalks were covered with chalk from our hopscotch games, and who never had to learn to whisper or remain unseen, unless we were romping and playing hide and seek.

You, dear Mekimi, have already had a very different experience. From the very instant of your delivery, a mere two weeks ago, into the adoring and loving arms of your remarkable parents, you have been on a different itinerary, with already numerous excursions to shelters designed to protect your tiny body from enemy missiles, and roaring alarms to make sure you get to these protected places quickly.

What must you think as your innocent infantile dreams are repeatedly interrupted by the menacing sound of sirens?

Your parents strive for normalcy, celebrating your arrival, adhering to feeding schedules, holding you close, engaging with you in joy. But you, precious newcomer, can know nothing of what would have been different in another time, a time without shelters and safe rooms and sleep disruptions. This is all part of the war into which you were born. And we can only hope that your memories will be of the sweet and loving times, of the calm moments when your parents’ embrace is tender and unthreatened and when the only event from above is the gentle pitter-patter of spring rain.

You are fortunate that your house has its own safe room, a mamad, a protected space, so you are unlike those many who need to find shelter outside of their own homes. Can you even imagine that access to a personal shelter is a blessing and that things could be worse, more threatening, more dangerous?

Just yesterday, Sabba Rabba and I were driving on Highway One, nearing Jerusalem, when the warning siren began its somber song. We knew the silent lyrics, which were that we must immediately find a bomb shelter.

We then followed the long line of cars ahead of us to a nearby exit in very close proximity to a parking lot. Like everyone else, we just abandoned our car where we had found limited space to squeeze into and rushed into the building. It was an old commercial property of some sort and the primitive basement space designated as a miklat, a bomb shelter, was clearly not built to accommodate hordes of running people, some carrying babies, others escorting small children, some physically handicapped, and a few, like us, the very old, with tentative footing and a very real terror of being trampled as we fell down the slippery old stairs, which had no banisters to grab onto for support.

We made an instant wordless calculation that it was more dangerous for us to continue the descent than to stay at the top of the stairwell and await the all-clear signal. That is what we did. In retrospective thinking, it is clear that people make all kinds of life-changing decisions all the time, and this was one of ours. It would have been catastrophic for us if a missile had hit, but the odds were with us and the calculation was essentially instant. Luckily, it turned out also to be correct.

For us this is a phenomenon of our old age. We have had lifetimes of existence essentially without fear. But what does this mean for you and your brother, at 19 months still a baby himself? Do you project war and peace differently from us? Does this all seem normal?

I can only pray that the answers to those questions are no and no, that you both will soon live in peace and never know war again; and the same wish extends to your entire cohort, the many beautiful babies of the Land of Israel whose families came to this place to build it and make of it a magical home for their progeny. And so may it be!

Rosanne Skopp of West Orange is a wife, mother of four, grandmother of 14, and great-grandmother of 11. She is a graduate of Rutgers University and a dual citizen of the United States and Israel. She is a lifelong blogger, writing blogs before anyone knew what a blog was! She welcomes email at rosanne.skopp@gmail.com