Reminders of Sweetness as War Looms

"Anyone know how to get a gas mask? Or how to topple a despotic regime....but I think getting a gas mask might be easier."

This was a recent post on our neighborhood Facebook page.  While the world holds its breath awaiting certain chemical warfare to engulf the region, we are cracking jokes.  And why not?  When the countries surrounding your tiny "could fit in New Jersey" country are cavorting to plan your annihilation, it's a perfectly good time to call up the best defense: laughter.

Our children go about their business; school just started and so did dance, music, and karate lessons.  Uniforms and supplies have been purchased, bus routes are being learned by gruff-looking drivers, who greet their passengers with "Boker tov, yeladim!!" (Good morning, children!!) to ease their first day anxieties.  Parents go to work, either outside the home, or like me, they are back at their computers, tapping out thoughts and bringing in incomes.  Mornings are ours once again.

As I write this, my 11 year old son and his two friends are involved in a top secret mission in my kitchen; they are in the final stages of developing their vanilla ice coffee recipe.  The search and rescue mission involved vanilla extract and various neighbors.  Next, they will walk the dogs, blissfully unaware that the air that they breathe may well be saturated with either rockets or deadly chemicals in the comings days or weeks, a gift from one of our other neighbors, but not the kind that lends out vanilla extract to boys in a temporary state of culinary euphoria.  

The civil war in Syria has lasted two years, with 100,000 dead.  Yet until today none of the privileged countries of the world considered these lives a sacrifice enough to justify a military strike.  But when 1,000 bodies were found intact, without the telltale signs of death by shooting, beheading, or by other means that leave bloody residue, the world took notice.  The 100,000 were not worth the investment; but establishing authority over the world's chemical weaponry and the powers that engage in using them was a bigger interest for the so-called "civilized world".  How ironic.  The US wants to strike tomorrow.  The UN wants the US to "wait a little longer".  (I guess two years wasn't long enough.)  And all over Israel, dinnertime conversations that should be about first school days and new friends are overshadowed by war preparations, broken down into manageable ten year old terms.

Yet we are where we should be; we are in our homeland.  Life goes on, our routines uninterrupted.  We cook our extraordinary sabbath meals, we do laundry, we make plans.  We are able to do this because we live with the certainty that our comings and goings are honest ones.  We do not harm our citizens.  We do not stone, behead, shoot or burn living beings.  We value life, we love life, and so we simply live it.  Sometimes there is greater relief in relinquishing control than in trying to hang on to it, particularly when you live your life seeing to the welfare of six children.    

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, is fast approaching.  The men working the pumps at the local gas station, both Jewish and Arab, will greet me with the traditional "Shana tovah!!", or "Happy New Year!!" when I go to fill up.  They will hand me a gift of a small jar of honey to assure a sweet new year.  But the true sweetness lies in the time we have been blessed with to do what is right.  It is present when you take in your enemies' injured to treat them in your hospitals.  It is there when you welcome refugees into your already space- and resource-challenged country.  And it shines in the faces of your children, who learn compassion in the face of war, at the dinner table.