Peace upon my enemies
May their cups overflow
May they lack for nothing
Peace upon my friends
May their journey in this life
Be through paradise
May they never enter hell
Peace upon my teachers
May their wisdom be remembered
May their sins be forgotten
May their life be everlasting
Peace upon my critics
May their pens never cease
May their sight be keen
May they merit to join me
Peace upon the righteous
May their light ever increase
May they rise upward like the cedar of lebanon
May their song double, triple,
Resound in four-part harmony
Peace upon my leaders
May their hearts be made of flesh
May they be guided from above in the darkest hours
May they return from love with the dawn’s light
Peace upon my victims
May their suffering be short
May their patience be rewarded
May we be purified together of our folly
Peace upon you, my friend
May you ever dwell in the house of the eternal
Peace upon me, my friend
May I never stop speaking your name
Gil
The Narrow Bridge
I don’t want to be an alarmist or pretend that I can predict the future. I hope that my concerns will be proven to be unfounded. But I want my family, friends, and neighbors to be prepared for what may be coming.
If you’re going to read this – and fair warning, you might not want to – please read until the end.
As far as I can tell, there is a hard math to this war: Missile launchers vs interceptor missiles.
The number of each is depleted in the following process, repeated over and over every day:
1) The IRGC (or Hezbollah or the Houthis) launches a missile.
2) The Iron Dome system gets triggered and sends an interceptor.
3) The US-Israeli coalition air forces hopefully locate the launcher and hopefully destroy it.
The first problem is obvious:
There is a finite, dwindling number of interceptor missiles. They will run out.
In three weeks or six weeks or twelve weeks or X weeks, depending on what you read, they will run out.
The second problem requires just a little bit of research to uncover:
The interceptor missiles can not be resupplied as quickly as the IRGC can manufacture new launchers.
That’s assuming that every launcher reported destroyed was indeed destroyed (history shows this to be unlikely) and that the IRGC isn’t holding many launchers in reserve.
Reserve for what, you ask?
I think they might be holding reserves in anticipation of either of two probable scenarios:
A) The US forces remain or even escalate the war, while Gulf states join the attacks on Iran and/or Iran attacks European states, leaving Israelis to deal in the near future with the current missile rate and the effects of a multifront aerial war, with no Iron Dome protection
Or
B) The US forces withdraw from the war (after all, less than a month in and it’s already contending for the most unpopular war in American history), leaving the Israeli air force to continue hunting the now continually increasing numbers of ICBM launchers alone, and Israelis to deal with a much higher missile rate, with no Iron Dome protection
The situation, as they say, looks rather grim.
Does this mean the state of Israel will be destroyed?
No.
This show is far from over.
This ain’t our first rodeo. We’re still here. We’ll still be here a year from now, a century from now, a millenium from now.
The more history I study, especially of the past 78 years, the more I see again and again the fortuitous alignment of events in highly improbable ways.
This is especially true when you read accounts from the past wars. (Which to be transparent and to add context to my point, I do not think were all legitimate or fought cleanly.)
The math just doesn’t add up. The improbable keeps happening again and again, delivering our people from the worst crises in the most unlikely ways.
I’m not going to jump ahead and use the M word – but I think a serious student of Israeli history would conclude that even when things seem hopeless, it is reasonable to hope for the unexpected.
Two lessons come to mind.
The Psalmist: “I raise my eyes to the mountains; from where will come my help? My help is from the Eternal, maker of heavens and earth.”
Rebbe Nahman: “The whole entire world is a very narrow bridge – and the main thing is not to fear at all.”
This is the narrow bridge – and deliverance will come.
But.
We have to stick together. All of us.
We have to have grace for each other. Ourselves too.
We have to submit to the will of God. Accept what is happening and whatever comes, and do teshuba every day.
We have to have gratitude for every improbable fortuitous alignment of events, for the simple and undeniable fact that God’s love has never abandoned us, despite all the chaos, war, and suffering.
We have to buy water, canned food, medical supplies, and anything else we might need to shelter with if and when things go sideways.
We have to do what we need to take care of our families.
Again – I don’t want to be an alarmist.
I can’t predict the future.
And I hope I’m very wrong in my read of the situation.
But if I have you thinking even just a little bit about how serious the situation might get, and what you need to do to prepare for that day when it comes, then I’m willing to take the risk of issuing such a strong warning – but also to insist that hoping for improbable deliverance is entirely reasonable.
May we merit to be strong and courageous – and to live in quieter times.
Racism in the Bomb Shelter
Racism reared its ugly head in the bomb shelter today.
I didn’t see the point of confronting it on the spot – I’ve learned that racists operating in maladaptive defense mode are not receptive to reason, empathy, or judgment in the moment of arousal – but I think my day would be lacking if I didn’t try, here in a more public forum when missiles are not being intercepted over our heads at the moment, to rectify the ugliness with an appeal to raise our collective awareness to a higher and holier level.
The rising tide raises all ships.
PSA: Missiles don’t discriminate between Jew and Muslim, or between Israeli families and “Arab workers.” Neither should we, in a time that we need to stand together more than ever and wrestle with our common fate.
I understand that racist people are operating from a place of fear, and that some residents may have legitimate concerns about strangers using their property, especially in proximity to their children.
If that’s you: then say THAT.
Don’t cast easy blame against people just as scared and vulnerable as you are, and have fewer resources to rely on, because they are strangers and speak a different language and are only associated with those who have actually murdered our citizens via movies and tweets by clout chasing lowlives.
The racist script needs to be ditched, now more than ever.
These missiles will most likely keep coming for months, long after the interceptors run out.
We may be facing the worst collective trial since 1948.
The way I see it, our best option is to face it together.
Coerced vs Choosing Societies
“A society that has to coerce its population into compliance does not outcompete one whose people are choosing, daily, under fire, to stay and build.”
Sometimes AI says something smart.
This works in so many ways.
Doesn’t change the immediate calculus of this war but it’s good and important to keep in mind.
A Shabbath of Peace
On Shabbath even the souls trapped in the hell they made get respite from their suffering.
I pray for my soul, for my wife, for my daughters, for the other families across Israel and Iran and Lebanon.
I pray because missiles and bombs, raving lunatics and angry crowds, would rather I didn’t. Would rather I give in to despair and acquiesce to madness and sign over my soul for false promises and illusions.
Or would rather I only prayed for my blood, my tribe, the children waving my flag.
That can not be my prayer.
I pray for us all:
May it be a Shabbath of peace.
May it be a Shabbath of blessing.
May it be a Shabbath of quiet.
When the Interceptors Run Out
Known: The number of interceptors the US coalition forces have left.
Unknown: The number of ICBM launchers the Khameini regime is conserving underground.
I don’t mean to be a downer but if we don’t count the initial salvos at the start of the war, then the average daily rate of incoming missiles hasn’t really gone down. It’s held relatively steady. Don’t be fooled by the “90% reduction” stat.
In the next 5-6 weeks the US forces are expected to run out of interceptors. Resupply will be insufficient and take months at absolute best.
At the same time, the war is very unpopular in the USA. POTUS has every incentive to unilaterally declare victory and end US involvement in the war.
If the US withdraws, and if the Khameini regime has been conserving missile launchers in the enormous underground facilities it has maintained, will the Israeli air force be capable of continuing to eliminate those launchers on its own?
If more missiles are on the horizon, and there aren’t any interceptors to intercept them, then we’ll still have the early warning system when missiles are launched, right?
Again, I don’t want to be a downer, but that early warning system depends on detection hardware and installations in US-friendly Gulf states that have sustained increasing damage over the past two weeks, materially degrading our warning system, translating into much shorter times between warning, siren, and interception, and sometimes no warning/siren at all.
Take away the interception at the tail end of that system, and the early warning/siren at the front end of it, and all you’re left with is… missiles.
.
I don’t know if this war was inevitable or not. The Khameinist regime was definitely making moves to escalate its attacks targeting Israeli and Palestinian civilians, and just the week before Bibi launched the strike on Tehran, the IRGC had effectively taken direct operational control over its main proxy, Hezbollah.
That said, Bibi’s strike was a calculated political move in the context of both his longstanding relationship with right wing American Evangelicals and recent domestic developments in Iran. Bibi himself is an incompetent wartime leader, as his numerous failures with Hamas and the Gaza War show, and probably a criminal to boot, as indicated by the many Israeli investigations of him and his administration.
I don’t trust Bibi. I don’t support him in this war. And I’m wondering if he’s planned for the day when the US goes home.
.
Hopefully these are just the paranoid ramblings of someone stressed out by war.
The future is never clear, never certain, never determined.
Every day we wake up to a fresh world, perfectly balanced between merit and guilt, and waiting for our thoughts, words, and actions to tip the scales.
As a collective, our failures, errors, mistakes, and negligence are abundant – we need all the merit we can get.
May the Creator shield all innocents from all bombs and brighten the light at the end of this tunnel.
Sanity in a Mad World
Life is crazy. The world has gone mad.
Technology overwhelms, wars crush, society fractures, people are alienated from each other and themselves.
What’s truly nuts is that sentence could have been written at any time in the past 5000 years.
The surface of things change and move around but structures remain the same.
Jewish people know something about surviving and thriving in the chaotic fluidity of an ever-shifting modernity, in all its painful messiness.
“As much as Yisrael has kept the Shabbath, the Shabbath has kept Yisrael.”
– R Shim’on b. Laqish
I can’t imagine going more than a week in this world or lifetime without Shabbath. Shabbath doesn’t just offer respite and rejuvenation, it offers a taste of a different life, a different world order, a different way of being in the world.
The Shabbath is also a Sign between the Creator and the covenantal people – communicating the ideas that a) the world was created by a first cause who set a natural order for the world and b) the first cause subordinated the deterministic order of natural and human history to a higher order of participatory justice and holiness.
What a mouthful.
But imagine how much personal and world peace can be obtained through slowly internalizing over time the truth of these two ideas.
And how we realize them simultaneously – through rest.
It’s almost poetic in its simplicity.
Six days a week you engage with the material world and its events fully, creatively, with real presence and person.
One day a week you
– disengage from the creative world of tekne
– share three meals with family, friends, and loved ones
– devote extra time to praying together and studying things that inspire awe and wonder
That’s the core.
It’s survived – and enabled the survival of – every imaginable historical circumstance.
Those of us who are bound by the Sinai covenant have a full list of obligations, requirements, and legal prohibitions for the day, which work in harmony to create a unique experience of holiness once a week.
But anyone – really, anyone, in any situation, from Jerusalem to Tehran to Tokyo to LA to London to Lagos – can practice the principles of Shabbath.
In a world of oppression, it’s a day of hope.
In a world gone mad, it’s a day of sanity.
It’s truly a taste of the coming world.
Miracles in War
Life is full of miracles.
The improbable and fortuitous concatenation of events, despite conflicting agendas, beliefs, and environmental factors.
Oftentimes, those miracles are easily mistaken for natural events or human achievements – as if a work of art can be reduced to paint on canvas.
But the medium of a miracle is just a vessel and a vessel can be found in nature or created in a workshop.
When an intercontinental ballistic missile is launched, the detection hardware and computer programs used to calculate its trajectory are wonderful inventions that reflect not just one man’s genius but a whole history of improbable and fortuitous events. It’s not foolproof – detectors and computer programs fail – but advanced computing translates into warnings to vulnerable populations that a missile is headed their way.
When that ICBM is intercepted by another missile in midair, fired by another wonderful system with its own even more advanced detectors and programs, the sheer improbability of the event itself staggers the mind. The success of each interception depends not just on astounding precision but on environmental factors combining in fortuitous ways. Again, it’s not foolproof – interceptor missiles fail, too; and there’s always dangerous debris from the explosion that can land anywhere below. Every interception defies the odds.
And when that missile is a clusterbomb, with multiple bombs that can explode over an 8 km radius, the odds that you’ll intercept it in the atmosphere in time – before the bombs separate – are even lower. The clock’s ticking, the computer’s processing, the missile’s roaring towards its targets – and despite all probability, it’s hopefully intercepted high in the atmosphere and detonated before any of its explosives can reach the civilians below.
Highly improbable.
Highly fortuitous.
Nothing short of miraculous.
.
Look, I didn’t ask for this war.
I didn’t ask Khameini to shoot missiles at me, whether from Iran, or from Lebanon, Gaza, and Yemen.
I didn’t ask Bibi to start massively bombing Tehran and southern Lebanon.
I didn’t ask for this war and I don’t support it, in this or any other phase.
I’m not a partisan, a loyalist, or an ideologue.
I’m just a guy raising a family in Jerusalem who goes down to a bomb shelter with said family every day and knows that if one of the buildings next door is hit we’re probably dead, if there’s a direct hit on our building we’re definitely dead, if the cluster bombs separate a whole lot of people in the neighborhood are dead.
I think about that and, among other things (like what it must be like to be an Iranian or Lebanese father right now), I think about the miracles in life.
Miracles that are easily mistaken for the occurrence of natural events or the operation of advanced technology.
Miracles that can mean the difference between another breath and The End.
Miracles we truly don’t deserve.
.
May the miracles never cease.
May we recognize them for what they are.
And may we soon see the day when we no longer need these specific miracles.
Kosher Rules of Thumb
Biblical rules for living a kosher life:
– Eat obligate herbivores
– Shun predators, scavengers, and bottom feeders
– Make death painless
– Respect that which gives life
🐄🐑🐐🐓🐟
Q&A on the War
Hi! You may be a new friend of mine. While I really like sharing poems and pictures of my baby daughter, and while I also hope to work together to help build the WordPress community in Israel, we’re living in interesting times, so you may have noticed a certain political tinge to some of my posts.
Don’t worry, I promise you no rants.
But I thought a little Q and A might benefit the newcomers in getting situated, and remind the oldtimers that things are more complicated than pop media would have you think.
Q “Why don’t you support the war?”
A Because I don’t trust Bibi to wage it morally, strategically, or effectively. Let alone the current POTUS.
Q “Don’t you want the missiles to stop?”
A Yes but I’m not willing to pay any price for safety; there are reasonable, moral limits to what I am willing to support in exchange for my own skin. While I trust the moral conscience of the majority of IDF soldiers, I think they are constrained and compromised by leadership, policies, and a system that in too many cases positions them to violate those limits. Also, I have no guarantee that even if I sold my soul to pay the price, I’d actually be safe.
Q “But they killed Khameini, doesn’t that matter?”
A I’m glad that wicked man can’t order any more attacks on innocent people but I would have rather he faced justice in an Iranian court of law.
Q “What about Hezbollah?”
A Hezbollah is better armed, trained, and funded than Hamas was on Oct 6. They have survived decades of war with Israel. Despite the pager attack (which btw was not nearly as clean as it was championed to be, many innocents were harmed), Hezbollah is still sending missiles against Israelis (and Palestinians). And the week before Bibi ordered the attack on Tehran, the IRGC took over all Hezbollah units, so now they’re all operating under Khameinist annihilation/suicide orders. They need to be addressed with serious, effective strategy in coordination with Lebanese forces and European allies, not doubling down on a demonstrably failed approach with a massive citizen evacuation order that’s producing its own refugee crisis as we speak. I have close friends who served and are serving in Lebanon, they – not to say nothing of the Israeli and Palestinian residents of the north, let alone the residents of southern Lebanon – deserve better than the status quo.
Q “So you don’t support Israel?”
A I support Israelis. I support Palestinians and Iranians and the Lebanese, too. I support everyone trying to make a good life for their kids and be a good neighbor and contribute something of value to the human species. I think our state is far from perfect, with a history and structural problems that we have not but desperately need to reckon with, and I think this government is criminal and incompetent. But every Saturday night at habdala I pray for the success of this state – that it become a true flowering of the Zionist dream, a country of justice, law, and holy order, a safe haven for all who need it, an integral and integrated part of the regional and human tapestry of spiritual enlightenment and material abundance.
Hope that helps.