family

 I receive worried messages from relatives all over the world. They are all great-grandchildren of my grandmother's sisters.

From Johannesburg and Cape Town in South Africa, Copenhagen in Denmark, Sao Paulo in Brazil, Chemnitz in Germany. A small town in Alabama whose name I forgot, there are also in Australia and England but I haven't heard from them yet.                                                                                                                           These are the eight sisters. The only brother for some reason does not appear in the picture. The picture was taken around 1905 in Leipzig, Germany. The four little sisters, including my grandmother who was about five years old when the picture was taken, left Germany in 1933. My grandmother was already the mother of a six-year-old girl (my mother) and had to leave Berlin, where she lived then, and to abandon the shops she had there in Alexander Platz.                                                                Tsila, the eldest sister, left for South Africa many years before the rise of the Nazis, one of her grandsons was Nelson Mandela's advocate and had to flee South Africa, the Australians refused to accept him and that's how he came to England. He was very successful there and even became a lord.                                  Ida and her husband Jacob ran a Jewish orphanage in Oslo. The Nazis sent her husband to Auschwitz with many of their housemates. She was disabled and therefore saved.

Anna went to Alabama to meet Jacob's brother, she married him and stayed there. Bertha married a German in Chemnitz. When the Nazis wanted to take her he broke her leg and that's how she was saved.

Louisa and her husband sent one child to Denmark and one child to Israel even before the war. They did not manage to leave in time and arrived at Auschwitz.

Sophie stayed with the old father in Leipzig, he eventually managed to reach his daughter in Oslo but she did not manage to survive in Germany.

And that's why we have so many relatives all over the world.

My grandmother Dora lived here for sixty years. She never managed to learn Hebrew properly and that's why I understand German as my mother tongue.

I still miss her and the wonderful foods she made all my childhood. She was an artist, a talented painter, but there was always the feeling that she was someone who was uprooted from her roots.                                                   

More of the same

 Today I went to my grandchildren again with zucchini fritters, sweets and orange juice. On the way I stopped to buy them a "gahnoםn "which is a very popular Yemeni dish here and in fact it is a dough baked in a lot of fat throughout the night. There is a family that sells it in their yard in one of the small settlements on the way to the grandchildren.

Because I'm doing the calculation of the Hamas missiles I'm almost sure that the morning is the right time to go, so far I haven't been wrong but I got to them when everyone was still sleeping and I waited for them to open the door for me.

a month has passed already. The videos of the horror that was here are shown to foreign journalists and they leave in tears after a few minutes. There is a forty-five minute film most of which is from the terrorists' body cameras. They don't show it here because of the magnitude of the horror.

The aunt of a nine-month-old baby who was kidnapped to Gaza is now being interviewed on television, followed by the grandmother of a three-year-old girl who is there alone after her parents were shot, and so on all day.

.Public opinion in the world is against us now and I no longer have the strength to explain. I know that a sentence like that invites the trolls here, but I can deal with that.

In Germany they started marking Jewish homes and in France and England Jewish mothers are afraid to send their children to school. The world has learned nothing.

I changed my mind

 I changed my mind. I will write here. I hope something coherent comes out because every time I start writing there is an alarm.

I write what is happaning with me here, but I always feel that I represent something bigger because this is not my private war. I am especially saddened by the stormy and large demonstrations against us all over the world and I feel helpless in the face of people's lack of understanding that we would never start such a war. What country would stand silently in the face of the murder and massacre of 1400 of its people, babies, children, innocent citizens.

In what world should a grandmother like me feel that she is risking her life when she drives for half an hour to bring her grandchildren candy and food. Yes, I did it again. Yesterday I made them the cheese fritters they like, pasta and Bolognese and a meat pie and I left. The roads are empty and it's even scarier.                                                                                                                                                                                             They are surprised every time I come and of course very happy. I don't stay there long, I'm constantly calculating when is the right time to leave before the rockets and so far I've succeeded.

The shower is also a small victory every time. I hear around me that I'm not the only one who is afraid that the roof will collapse on her head in the middle of the shower. How embarrassing. I was told not to take a shower on the round hour because on the round hour there is more chance of an alarm.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              Today I went to do the annual test for my car, something that in the past I paid someone to do it for me. Since on my birthday which was the day before the war started I promised myself to overcome my fears, I went by myself and it was easy. I was the only driver there, everyone is either the army or afraid and so I got through it in five minutes.

And thanks again to everyone who comments here and I apologize again that I still don't respond personally to the comments.                                                                                                                                                                        And one more thing, I of course think in Hebrew and sometimes I use Google Translate when I'm not sure I wrote correctly, if there are sentences or some words that seem strange to you, blame Google. (I will deal with the rest of the charges later...).

Another update

 I think I will take a short or long break from writing posts. I think that everything I can write here can bring a lot of sadness and pain to your world, you who read here, and I don't want to bring it to you.

Those who want to be updated can do so through the news wherever you live. Even if the truth is not always told there.

I will read your blogs and comment there as if nothing is happening here, as long as I feel it is the right thing to do.

The world is full of pain but also good and beautiful things and I don't want to bring the pain into your world.

I'm glad you were here for me with a kind word. It was very important and still is.

See you in the comments to your blogs, in the special and personal world that each of you brings to blogland.

The narrow corridor of fear

 I noticed that people here fear the silence. Hours of silence are interpreted here as a conspiracy. Maybe they are planning something big, maybe they are there doing the math on how to keep their ammunition for a long time and so on.

A miracle happened to me. I'm not afraid anymore. Most of the time. Yesterday I went to the small town nearby to buy a new computer. My computer crashed and if there's something I can't do without it's a computer even though most of the time I'm with the iPhone which is actually also a small computer but it's not the same.

I also took my neighbor who doesn't drive with me and together we felt very brave.

In one of the Zen books on my shelf I read the concept of the narrow corridor of fear. I remember then it helped me overcome my worries and concerns that always accompanied me. I think I crossed that corridor.                                                                                                                                                                                                My granddaughter asked me to make her the zucchini fritters she likes, tomorrow morning I will buy zucchini at the small store here that has everything and if the conditions permit I will go there again in the next few days.

In the meantime, Shabbat is relatively quiet except for a few rockets that were fired at the city of Ashdod, not far from where my grandchildren live.

 Friday the 6th of October was my birthday. This date is not always easy for me because it is also the date when my first husband was killed in the Yom Kippur War. There were years when I ignored my birthday, but years have come when I do mention it and here in the picture is my granddaughter, some of you know her from the blog at the restaurant in Ashdod where we celebrated my birthday. In the last week, Ashdod has been bombed every day and of course you can't go to the restaurant. But on this Friday life still seemed normal. On Saturday morning that changed.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  On this birthday I promised myself that this would be the year I stop being afraid. I always worry and there are too many that I fear because of them. Like driving in certain places and parking in the city. I didn't think that the next morning life would challenge me to stop being afraid.

Indeed I am very proud of myself. I'm not afraid I went to my grandchildren yesterday with sweets and food that I cooked for them. I prayed all the way that I wouldn't get hit by a missile and I did arrive safely and returned home after two hours.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Yesterday on the phone my hairdresser told me that he had no clients. I agreed with him that I would arrive this morning and hoped that this time too I would do the 14 kilometers in peace, so it was.

It is now afternoon and that is the time when the windows and the house start shaking. Biden is visiting here and it gives a little confidence that there might be someone to help in difficult times.

Thanks again to everyone who says a kind word. It helps a lot.

update

 Every time I start writing there are alarms.

It is important for you to know that Israel did not shell a hospital. A long-range rocket that Hamas was preparing to launch exploded there and in addition to that there was a weapons cache there.