Thursday was a beautiful day in Jerusalem. The sky was bright blue the weather mild. No sound of helicopters bringing wounded to Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital or of fighter jets overhead broke the serenity of the day. One who did not have any sons at the front or relatives who had received their reserve call-up notices could have strolled around all day without any reminder that Israel is once again under fire and perhaps on the verge of a full-scale invasion of the Gaza Strip
And that’s the problem.
We check out the Jerusalem Post news site and learn that a Hamas missile hit an apartment building in Kiryat Malachi. Three Jews were killed. This is real. But then we look out the window or head off to Minchah and we forget again.
The fate of approximately one million Jews within range of Hamas missiles and that of thousands of Jewish soldiers awaiting orders to invade the heavily populated Gaza Strip are not totally removed from our consciousness. But neither have they crowded everything else out. They don’t intrude so far as to preclude small talk after davening with a neighbor or a trip to the gym.
On Friday morning the war in the South moved a little closer to home. Looking at the front page of the Jerusalem Post my wife realized that she knows the family of one of the Kiryat Malachi victims Mirah Scharf. Rebbetzin Scharf and her husband replaced Rabbi Gabi and Rivka Holtzberg as Chabad shlichim in Mumbai. She had returned toIsrael to give birth and came early for a memorial service for her friend Rivka Holtzberg.
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