Superficial Joy

 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...

It is almost 10 PM on Friday night, Shabbat, and the beginning of a long weekend. The Jewish holiday Shavout is Sunday at sundown until Monday sunset. In Tel Aviv we have had over 30 hours without a siren. I got almost 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep, a luxury the people in the south near the Gaza border are not getting. We taught online again today and because of that I was able to go to yoga at noon! Don't worry--the studio is in the basement of a building and has a bomb shelter in it. There were definitely more people out today than the last few days but that could be people out preparing for Shabbat dinner and/or getting what they need before everything closes until Sunday morning. This was the first time I've been to a yoga class that began with, "the bomb shelter is over there in case we hear a siren." Near the end of class her Red Alert app went off but it was rockets down south so no siren for us.  This evening I met up with some local friends and we hung out...