For Israelis on the frontlines, ‘what is a good future to look forward to?’
From Homer to the Tanakh, young Israelis are turning to different sources for answers
‘At times I feel like I never signed up for this whole Zionist movement thing, and I definitely didn’t appoint the people who are seemingly running it,’ writes one young Israeli. Courtesy of Bronfman Fellowship
Editor’s note: The Bronfman Fellowship is an educational program for Jewish high school students from North America and Israel. This is our sixth installment of pieces showcasing the experience of some of Bronfman’s Israeli fellows and alumni since the Oct. 7 terror attack.
‘I have the nagging feeling that nothing will be the same.’
JERUSALEM — Like many of my friends and family, I was called up for reserve duty on Oct. 7. As a former paratrooper, I was stationed on the northern border and took part in the effort to secure Israel from the imminent threat of Hezbollah. Now, over 100 days later, the time has finally come for me to try and return to my “regular” life.
On Oct. 7, I had just returned from a summer vacation trip to India and was making my final and exciting preparations for the start of medical school. My roommates and I were spending Simchat Torah in our apartment in Jerusalem. I woke up to the strange sound of sirens around 10 a.m., and found my roommate in the living room. While we were heading to the safe room in our building, she told me a war had broken out. Given that my other roommate and I were both in combat units, we realized it was only a matter of time until we would be called up for reserve duty. As the day went by and the severity of the attacks became clearer, the tension and uncertainty began to develop into a large lump in my chest.
The hours between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., when I finally got the call, are a blur in my memory. I mainly just remember many phone calls to loved ones (including my parents who observe the Sabbath), trying to cling to anything that could grant me a sense of security. On the drive up north, my mind was racing. It is hard to explain the dissonance I had been living in, knowing that I was a reservist but never expecting the full, hardcore reality to hit at such speed. Suddenly, fear began to slip into my consciousness and the understanding of the task I was willingly driving toward crash-landed in my mind. We continued to the gathering point of my unit and got our equipment together while waiting for the official assignment. I quite clearly remember looking at my phone at 2 a.m. while crawling into a sleeping bag on the cold metal floor of an empty hangar. My sleep was troubled by a deadly mixture: the chaos of the army and my relentless thought loop which made me feel like an emotional wreck. It felt like an unimaginable reality, which in some way I was supposed to be ready for. I was standing over an abyss.
Two months into the war, after a chaotic first month where our assignments changed on a daily basis, we had been stationed in Rosh HaNikra on the border with Lebanon that is closest to the sea and had begun to develop some sort of routine. Although the routine included constant bombings and drone attacks, the experience was closer to the border patrols we had done in our period of active duty. The human superpower of getting used to any situation kicked in. It was only a month into this routine I realized that in order to cope with the situation, I had actively regressed back into my 19-year-old self in active duty. My main concerns shifted from school, work, relationships, purpose and other factors of semi-adult life to a narrow focus on what I will eat, smoking and — on a productive day, due to the lack of cellphones — reading my book. Any complex thought became strenuous and overly heavy, and all emotional and mental tensions were buried and left to rot. The visits at home became like vacation from the army, shifting between binge-watching Netflix and getting a beer with friends. As I see it now, I became a caveman. My last worry was any aftermath or repercussion from what I was experiencing.
Now, I am currently attempting to return to my previous life. I finished my reserve duty three weeks into the university semester (which had been delayed by nearly three months due to the outbreak of the war). While I felt a deep need to decompress and take time to clear my mind, everything around me had already moved on. A large percentage of my peers hadn’t participated in the war and, with great dissonance from my internal feelings, things seemed quite normal.
After taking a few days of total relaxation, I came to the realization that although my body had received the time off it needed, my mind suddenly had the freedom to wander into all the areas it had avoided for three months. Questions and realities I had set aside moved to the front of the stage. Question marks arose around many issues, and traumatic experiences began to seep into my mental wiring. Priorities rearranged and the life I left behind did not encounter the same person who had so carefully arranged them. Although I returned to therapy, and decided not to demand too much of myself, I have the nagging feeling that nothing will be the same.
If I had based my life on a certain self-perception, and had set many goals through the lenses of that self-perception, the most basic parts of that structure are now rattled. What is the definition of security? How can I ever feel secure again? How can I live my life knowing that any moment I could be called back up to fight in Lebanon? Have I been condemned to a life haunted by war after war? What does it mean to be Jewish? Is it just a never-ending struggle culminating only in the fantasy of redemption? What are we fighting for? In what sense am I willing to risk my life? Where does my political outlook stand? How do I define my Israeli identity? How do I define my Jewish identity? Facing the rise of antisemitism, is there any safe place for me?
Suddenly, I have no patience for deep thinking because it seems like a luxury of a bygone world. Who can consider philosophical issues when people are dying all around? While the necessity of the war and the righteousness of protecting my loved ones never came into question, my place in that mixture seems unclear, and the pain and struggle brought on by the conflict seem to be too much. At times I feel like I never signed up for this whole Zionist movement thing, and I definitely didn’t appoint the people who are seemingly running it. What is a good future to look forward to? What should I pray for? How can I pray?
While the moments of peace and clarity do appear more frequently, the deep sense of uncertainty is the challenge I face day and night.
— Yisrael Ziegler, 25
‘My fear is that what I will return to will be totally unrecognizable’
JERUSALEM — “When he returned, he found his home was locked.”
This is the first sentence of the short story Fernheim by S.Y. Agnon.
This is also the biggest fear for anyone who serves in the army reserves or on any long mission at times of upheaval like these. I fear I will return home and discover the things I have invested in building and maintaining, both physically and emotionally, have perished and have been forgotten. I fear returning to locked doors. I fear discovering that my business collapsed, my garden died, my work project was shut down (or given to someone else), the building that was planned will not be built, my social group fell apart …
Agnon’s powerful and focused sentence has been in my thoughts since the second week of my reserve service. I was called up to the army in the first week of the war and was released after three-and-a-half months. I serve in a support unit, one that takes care of logistics for army forces in the south. I may still return to my unit this year.
My conditions were relatively comfortable — a base on the home front, a regular bed and a roof over my head, and leave to go home every week almost since the beginning of my service. Still, I was uprooted from my routine; I lost control over my time and my missions prevented me from sleeping through the night. I was in an environment that was all-encompassing and demanded my commitment.
Since I am normally a high school teacher, when I got called into the reserves substitutes had to take over my “standard” classes (sometimes receiving full compensation, but oftentimes not). For the classes where I teach in a special program, I had to provide guidance from a distance. A teaching initiative I started with some friends during the COVID-19 pandemic suffered from the sudden absence of most of its staff and volunteers, and the initiative almost collapsed more than once.
Truthfully, Fernheim of Agnon did not invent the fear of returning to a locked home. The motif of delayed return — to a home that is different than the one we left — is an ancient element in the hero’s journey. Yet, returning to a locked home is a more powerful image than returning to a home full of suitors and a loyal wife (Homer), or to upsetting self-declared heirs and a region that was burnt and despoiled (Tolkien). Perhaps the power of this image comes from the fact that it is expressed in Agnon’s Hebrew. Or perhaps from the fact that in the real world, we do not really need to battle rivals when we return.
My fear is that what I will return to will be totally unrecognizable. Because the truth is that when the world turns upside down, we need to make changes in order to survive. Close relationships need to be rebuilt so they can hold more. The world never freezes in place.
It is important to say that these changes and ways of coping are almost always rooted in difficulties and rough patches that existed beforehand. Of course, the reservists will return home different. Three months of a different reality gives us an opportunity to take a new perspective on life, to ask questions about the paths we have chosen (or have not chosen), and to re-choose things that were once part of our routine.
I feel the need to raise awareness of this fear, this deep phenomenon that is a fundamental part of reality. All around us, there are so many people who, when they return home, will not find the same home or business or relationship or work plan that they left behind when they were called up to their army reserve services (or when their partner was called up, and they had to devote themselves to getting by moment by moment). If only I could find a way to help all of them.
I am still in my own “moment of return” right now. Maybe the bottom line to this stream of thought is appreciating the good — that I am returning from service on a sovereign Jewish army base — and not from captivity in Serbia, like Fernheim was in the story. Maybe it’s appreciating my high school literature teacher, who introduced me to this story. Maybe it’s simply longing for simpler days, and for choices I will be satisfied with in the future.
— Tommer Shani, 35
A glimpse into the life of a school teacher during wartime
RETAMIM, Israel — There is no longer a need for what I did in the army, so I did not enlist in the reserves. What did I do instead? I helped out my relatives, I helped guard my community and mainly, I continued teaching. At first, I taught on Zoom because of the sirens in nearby Be’er Sheva, and then gradually we returned to a very intensive routine.
A month and a half after the war began, I was asked to substitute at the high school near where I live, for a teacher who was enlisted into the reserves. I have been much busier, but it has been an exciting experience which has helped me develop professionally. In the school I usually teach at, I also decided to have my students ask and present research questions, rather than take routine exams. The general topic I chose was “life and death.” I expected and hoped there would be questions and experiences directly connected to the war, and I also hoped their personal research would be a kind of gentle therapy for hidden distress. I was surprised to discover how many students are interested in life after death. While I felt the students were asking age-appropriate questions, they weren’t necessarily connected to current events.
A month ago, one of my dear students lost his second cousin, who was a hostage in Gaza and was tragically killed by IDF soldiers. A week and half later, a different cousin of his was killed in battle in Gaza. Last Friday, after a significant delay, he sent me the following question: “Are Jews who died in order to save lives any more important than Jews who died naturally?”
What a question.
— Yishai Gesundheit, 37
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