My First Bomb Shelter Experience in Israel
Our enemies know that they cannot defeat us on the battlefield, so instead they attack our peace of mind.
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This is a guest essay written by Ted Goldstein, a Jewish poet and educator.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
The siren shattered Shabbat.
It was 10:30 in the evening, and we had just started dessert.
My hosts, their 15-year-old daughter, and I rushed into the shelter.
I wasn’t worried so much as I was annoyed.
I happened to be in the middle of a particularly good piece of rugelach when the siren went off, and I foolishly forgot to bring it with me.
My tea, I knew, was getting cold.
Living in Jerusalem, you get far fewer sirens than the rest of the country. If you get one, it’s usually a Houthi missile — and, if it’s a Houthi missile, it’s usually going to get intercepted well before it gets anywhere close enough to do any damage.
So why send the missile at all?
Ballistic missiles aren’t cheap, and they know that Israel is going to respond with great force.
So why send the missile at all?
I was trying to work this out while I stood in the bomb shelter of my Shabbat hosts.
They were so kind, so hospitable.
And, in the middle of our lovely meal, a siren went off and spoiled our peaceful meal.
Their daughter, poor girl, was really scared.
She was raised in Canada; she wasn’t used to the sound of sirens and the ever-present threat of ballistic missile attacks.
As I watched her parents try to help her calm down, as I looked around the darkened room, surrounded by walls of iron hidden beneath the plaster, as I heard the baby begin to cry in the next apartment over — I finally understood.
I finally understood why the Houthis and Hezbollah and Hamas and all the other enemies of Israel invest so much money and manpower into these futile attacks: These missiles are not meant to destroy infrastructure, they are meant to destroy peace. They exist to terrify children, to ruin meals, to wake sleeping babies. These strikes are not military strikes; they are emotional strikes.
That night, I did not feel like I was under attack; I felt like Shabbat was. All around Jerusalem, families and friends were gathered around big family tables, laden with food, celebrating the sanctity of rest. And into that peaceful celebration, our enemies sent a missile.
Our enemies know that they cannot defeat us on the battlefield, so instead they attack our peace of mind. They are not at war with us so much as they are at war with our peace.
Israel is the only place in the world where Jews can feel at home, where Jews can walk the streets proudly and wish each other “Shabbat Shalom” and not worry that someone dangerous might hear.
When I was in London, I told a young woman that I liked her Hebrew necklace. In a whisper, she thanked me and asked if I was Jewish. In a whisper, because she did not want anyone else to hear.
The promise of Israel, the promise of Zionism, is the promise that Jews might no longer have to whisper their prayers and cover their kippot1. And that is what our enemies are at war with. Not with Israel, not with our military, but with our peace.
They are not fighting for land, and they are certainly not fighting for their people, since surely they know that these strikes will only cause more destruction to them than they cause to us.
They sacrifice their lives to disturb Israel’s Sabbath. They hate our Sabbath rest more than they love their own lives. Their main military objective is to wake sleeping babies, to scare young children, and to break up family gatherings.
They are not at war with Israel; they are at war with peace, and the sound of the siren is their greatest weapon. The sound of the siren is the sound of fear, the sound of attack. It hurts us more than the actual missiles they send because it reminds us that we are still not safe, even here.
Like our ancestors who feared the chants of their murderous neighbors and the sound of their galloping horses, we fear the sound of the siren. It recalls to us all those long centuries of exile in which we did not feel safe. And it reminds us that, as strong as Israel is, we still are not safe. Because our enemies still hate our peace more than they love their own lives.
The same Holocaust that claimed 6 million Jewish lives took 25 million Germans along with it. So great was their hatred of the Jewish people, they were willing to sacrifice four of their own for every one of us they killed.
Has anything changed?
As Israel looks towards the end of this war, as we look towards the future world we wish to live in, we must commit ourselves to the end of this psychological warfare. For too long, Jews have lived in fear that our Shabbat rest would be destroyed by our hateful neighbors. For too long, we have taken constant fear as a feature of Jewish life.
We must make never again not a slogan but a promise — never again will Jewish children cry when they hear the sound of the siren. Never again will Jewish mothers be woken up because someone has threatened their children. Until one day, we never again have to say “never again.”
The constant threat of our enemies is intolerable. The constant bombardment, the constant attacks, the constant violence — these things cannot stand. Before October 7th, we tolerated the sirens, the missiles, the fear. We accepted the constant threat because it was a threat, and not much more.
But now we know better. Now we know: never again.
Our enemies have no interest in living in peace with us. They have no interest in negotiated settlements. They have no interest in anything other than making war on our peace.
And so, we must make defending that peace, defending our Sabbath, our primary focus. So that we may say, one day, that our peaceful Shabbat rest will not be disturbed — never again.
Plural for kippah, a brimless Jewish skullcap, usually made of cloth, traditionally worn by Jewish men to fulfill the customary requirement that the head be covered
This was so moving and terrifying! I can’t imagine how terrifying it is. Personally I feel angry that this story isn’t told in MSM. The UK has not suffered bomb shelters since 1945. They need to revisit it. What a hell Israel is going through it. We are with you.
They will lose with this tactic too. With every Shabbat meal busted, they strengthen the resolve of Jews to do Jewish. We are all under the threat of Houthi missiles regardless of where we live. Those outside of Israel started to understand this on October 8.
I live in Jerusalem and like the writer my dinner is not often interrupted to get to a shelter, but when we get back to the table, or return to davening, the reaction is often a resolve to do better at Jewish. They make us stronger, not weaker. A big backfire. #amyistaelchai