Superficial Joy

It is now 1 PM on Tuesday afternoon with no sirens for a day and a half here in Tel Aviv, though not so in the south near the Gaza border. Last night around 6 PM, Hamas threatened to attack Tel Aviv again. Our little group of friends were together at someone's house for dinner when we got the news. Shortly thereafter we all went home, essentially to wait. No rockets came overnight and none so far today. We are teaching virtually again today and just got word we will be virtual Wednesday and Thursday as well. Although teaching under stress is challenging, but I find comfort in the familiarity of being with the students and having something external and neutral to focus, if only for an hour.  Sleep has made a world of difference to my mental health. After the attack two night ago some switch inside of me flipped and I realized/accepted/assumed that I will  wake up if the sirens wail and that there is absolutely nothing I can do but follow the rules and pray. Since then I've been...

 After the rocket attack yesterday afternoon, perhaps needless to say, I did not go out of my building. Sometime in the late afternoon Hamas said they would target Tel Aviv at midnight. The waiting began, although this voice inside if me tells me I "should be productive and work on my scrapbook" or "it's just time alone". I'm not so sure that voice should be heeded. I spent most of the afternoon on Zoom with various groups until I got a text from my dad around 7:30 asking if I wanted to Zoom. Of course I did! We talked for about 2 hours--this is not normal, but I suspect both of us didn't mind staying on the line to pass the time. He gave me a tour of the parts of the house that got remodeled after the winter storm a few months ago [they live in Austin and were without power for almost 5 days in February; they were without water for longer, I think].  My mom said hi; even my brother  briefly popped into the screen to say that he was always worried about ...

 It is 1:52 P.M. and we just had sirens here in Tel Aviv. So scary. Again, everyone in the building collected in the lower part of the stairwell. It is a beautiful, blue sky day in which I was considering going for a walk to the park. Some of my friends were out--park, beach, just home from a walk. Everyone is home now. 2:09. Got interrupted by more sirens. The booms were really loud today. Here are some audio/visual displays.  This is me getting out of my apartment and going into the stairwell. I forgot to turn of the recording so you can hear what people talk about during a rocket siren, if you can speak Hebrew! The ping you hear is the Red Alert app notifying of rocket attacks.   These three are from Twitter after the first attack. Impact in Tel Aviv pic.twitter.com/cQ0LOVf8Hp — 🇵🇸 Ali 🇱🇧 (@allushiii_new) May 15, 2021 This was taken by someone I know from her stairwell. Remember that the people down south are living with this more or less constantly. Prayer greatl...

Today marked the first daytime siren for those of us near me in Tel Aviv.  I taught from 8:30 until 11:30 this morning, after which I posted about last night. Shortly thereafter the plumber arrived to fix my kitchen water situation. It was not giving me cold water greater than a small drizzle so that I only had full, scorching hot or lukewarm water from that sink. Anyways, I digress. He was here about 30 minutes when the siren went off. We went into the stairwell with the rest of the residents. We heard two big booms but no more sirens. After 10ish minutes we came back to the apartment and he finished his work. It was strange to hear the sire with blue skies and 80 degree weather. It is now 10:22 and so far no more sirens where I am, but about 20 minutes ago the Red Alert app started going on. It tells of rocket attacks and their targets. The targets the last few minutes seem to be close to the airport. See below for what it looks like.  I am off to bed to hopefully sleep...

When rockets from Gaza landed in Jerusalem Monday night I was certainly concerned. I subscribed to the i24News , an English language news channel in Israel, stayed up too late watching it and went to school on Tuesday. Around 8:45, after watching a movie instead of the news, I headed out to the pharmacy. I took the long way since I'd been on the couch for a while and I didn't take my phones--so dumb! In my defense they were both out of charge, but still not smart given the current situation.  I walked about 10 minutes, to the corner of the street the pharmacy is on, when I heard the siren. I sounds just like it does in the movies, but more faint that I imagined. A small older woman was walking towards me and we looked at each other. I said to her, "that's the siren, isn't it?" One of us said we need to get inside and we were standing in front of an apartment building. We grabbed hands and knocked on the glass security door of the building where we saw a man an...