4 April 2026
It was an abbreviated Passover seder, but a lovely one. We didn’t knock ourselves out making fancy dishes, we didn’t care if everything was ready on time, nobody minded that the tablecloth was stained with Seders past, and a good time was had by all. All four of us. All that tension gone because it was too dangerous to travel to somebody else’s home or have others travel to ours. So around the table were just we three adults and one three-year old, who insisted we start by holding hands and singing Hiney Ma Tov, that golden oldie whose lyrics go, “Oh how goodly and pleasant to be sitting together.” It’s amazing how much gusto can be generated when trying to please a three-year old.
Ugh—just as I begin to write, we hear distant booms and know that missiles are getting closer. In Nahariya, 6 miles from Lebanon, we enjoy both Iranian and Hezbollah attention, and the north has had more than its fair share of missiles. Siren! We now rush (we have 30 seconds) into our “protected space”—a room with thick, reinforced concrete walls—and wrench the steel door shut behind us. Gal is already fast asleep in there—it’s her bedroom, which she generously shares with Denna, her mother. For late night sirens, Judy takes the mattress on the floor and I enjoy the Ikea armchair, which is comfy enough to sleep in, if you’re sufficiently tired from sirens the previous night. Now the ally-ally-in-free has sounded and we’re out.
Denna and Gal have not left the apartment the entire five weeks, while Judy and I periodically take harrowing drives to a (well-reinforced) supermarket to stock up on groceries. Daughter Mieka is giving “protective presence” to Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli settlers have been acting like the Ku Klux Klan—killing and terrorizing locals, burning down their homes and cars, brutalizing children—while the Israeli army stands by and watches, even sometimes participating. I worry about her; she worries about us.
Here’s the current score: In Israel, 25 dead and 6,400 wounded (not yet counting tonight). In Iran, either 3,000 or 7,000 or 32,000 dead (depends who you ask). In Lebanon, a thousand dead, god-knows how many wounded, and an even million displaced.
Me? My mental health has moved through stages during these weeks: from panic through fury to a desire to personally execute regime change.
Who ever started this asinine war? Oh, I guess Israel did in cahoots with the US, and then Hezbollah jumped in. How were the 90 million Iranians, the 10 million Israelis, and the 5 million Lebanese so unlucky as to have Trump and Bibi in power at the exact same instant, each with his mental illness and perverted motives coming together in synchronous synergy to harm so many innocent adults and children all at once?
Ugh, another siren and booms. Gotta run.