Az Nashir: Echoes of Eicha-
Reflections on the Unfolding of Redemption

This morning reframed everything for me. Like many people, I woke up with what I can only describe as a “war hangover” - feeling slow, heavy, a little nauseated from the emotional whiplash of it all. I’m tired of the politicking. The push and pull. That constant feeling of standing at the edge of a cliff - and then the lurch of the sudden, disorienting stop. And then comes the eerie quiet. The kind where you can suddenly hear your own inner world again. And it’s… a mess. But

The house is heavy with gratitude and heartbreak. There are people lining up in the streets of our town, with Israeli flags and shock, to say goodbye to a son of our neighborhood who was killed in Lebanon. A young man, whose family has known too much loss, who had a whole future ahead of him. I ask for no more sacrifices as I roll matza balls to boil, a recipe I made this morning with my mother, just like my grandmother did. The counters are groaning with freshly prepared foo

There is a lot of grief and frustration (and even rage) about not being able to access our holy places here in Israel right now. After Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa was blocked from praying at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Palm Sunday for security reasons, the internet burned up with anger at the Israeli government. (They now made a deal with the government that they can worship there now.) So much of the blame ignored the fact that the Old City has been hit with mis

The city shook this morning. We were in the second siren of four so far today, (there have been more hatraaot, warnings, than I recall) and the interceptor is right over our heads. For the first time since this war started, it sounds so close that my body instinctively braces for impact. It feels like it is going to hit us. The Iron Dom does its job. But there are many pieces of the missile that fracture and land in different parts of my city. I won’t tell you where. The Iran

God, I miss ordinary things. It’s raining this afternoon. There is lightening that flashes green and purple and metallic, thunder that growls and claps and demands attention. I think I can tell the difference between the missile interceptions, the warplanes, and thunder. It’s hard to describe; maybe thunder is more crackling, more robust, more familiar. The light is blue from my window, the rain is tapping on the windows, on the roof, slipping into the house through the glass

I barely read the news anymore. Usually, I read the news all the time. Not obsessively, like many in the information era. But I check the news with the awareness and urgency that the news shapes my reality on a day-to-day, minute-to-minute basis. Once, my therapist (who is in America) said to me, "Why don't you put your phone in another room?" I laughed and said that my phone is a lifeline for an ever-changing environment. It tells me when I'm in danger. Often, the news, as c

I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to belong to an ancient people. I'm amused by the antisemites who come to my page to negate Jewish history- from our origin and modern life. Who blame and point fingers and literally laugh at our suffering. Who lie and twist and leave little droplets of hate on my page. Because their ignorance or their vileness bleeds out from their comments. It reflects nothing on me when trolls try to shame me, erase me, and wish for my d*

When the war is over, this is what I'm going to remember about this time: I'm going to remember my neighbor's daughter in her green uniform leaving her house on Shabbat morning to go serve when the war began. I'm going to remember that feeling of readyness when the sirens began- I had been preparing for this and knowing that it was coming. Jumping out of bed with an awareness that it was time. I'll think about the way the sky cracked open and massive pieces of metal fell from

This is a message for those who live outside of Israel but love, support, and advocate for her. I want to say that I see you. I see how your hearts are here with us. I see how you comment online, what you share, what you post. I know the pain of being separated from a place that you love when its suffering. Someone in my comments the other day even went so far as to say, "I'm not in Israel right now, but I would rather be with you in the bomb shelter..." I knew exactly what s

If you want to understand Israelis, you have to understand one thing: we are stubbornly committed to life. The situation we are in is absurd. There are literal ballistic missiles flying over our heads, shrapnel falling on houses, roads, open fields… …and still my 12-year-old just asked me if he can play football tonight. “They just brought new shelters,” he promised me. Pesach is only a few weeks away, and the supermarkets are packed. War or no war, people still need to make