Eye to Eye

Gan Or Then and Now

It had been almost ten years since the last rocket attacks on the town that I live in. Rockets launched from the place where I once prayed three times a day. That sure was a deft move, o leaders of Israel. At the time our leaders proclaimed: “If, after leaving the Gaza Strip, the Arabs lob even one mortar shell over the border, we will be free to smash them.” Sure. Right.

This time, I was babysitting my two-and-a-half-year-old grandson.  When the warning siren went off, as I bent to pick him up, I realized—we realized—that it was the first time that we were alone together during an attack.  Until then in my house there had always been a crowd when Eliyahu had been here. He would do his siren imitation and we would join in and the noise we made would muffle the sound of the rocket exploding or the explosion of the intercepting missile. This time was different.  He wasn't looking at me as we ran down the hall and entered the room, and he wasn't doing his imitation of the siren either.  In that way, a two-and-a-half-year-old let me know that he had scheduled an executive meeting with me.  When I secured the door and while we were waiting for the explosions he called the meeting into session, by looking at me, eye to eye, soul to soul.

The voice of thy watchmen is heard: they lift up the voice; together shall they sing: for they shall see eye to eye, the Lord returning to Żiyyon. (Isaiah 52:8)

The entire edifice of trust between grandson and grandfather was put to an existential test so unexpected and so immediate that any stock reactions that I had at the ready for lesser challenges were obviously and entirely irrelevant.  He was too young for the explanation that the redemption will come slowly, slowly, or that the Land of Israel is redeemed through great hardship.  By that time had learned to answer "Amen" when he heard a fellow Jew blessing the Creator over a morsel, but I had no reason to think that there was more to him spiritually than that.  I stood corrected, and I began:

And this is the promise that has sustained our ancestors and ourselves, for it was not just once that somebody rose against us to destroy us; for in every generation they rise up to destroy us and the Holy One, Blessed be He, saves us from their hands. (Passover Hagada)