Chasing the Fionist Dream

If you’ve been following our blog, you know that we live for travel and had been excitedly planning our family vacation that was supposed to happen this fall. In fact, we were supposed to land back in Israel this morning, just in time to vote in our municipal elections – which also never happened. Our Ashkenazi ancestors used to say “Mann tracht un Gott lacht“. Man plans and God laughs. But this, of course, is no laughing matter.

In another universe, far far away, it’s Halloween. Kids are dressed up as cute little ghosts, skeletons, and zombies, and people visit haunted houses looking to get spooked. They have no idea about (or choose not to think about – or believe) the real-life despicable, gruesome horrors took place not too far from our home. Life goes on as normal for them. There is no before and after October 7. They haven’t had a part of their heart burned alive and another part kidnapped and held hostage by Hamas terrorists.

Instead of touring, horseback riding, and eating our way through Sofia, Bulgaria while we educate ourselves on communist history, we spent the past five days (and the weeks before) working and caring for our children in a fog, doom-scrolling, occasionally racing to the bomb shelter, and doing laundry for soldiers and displaced families. Having had a(n unrelated) death in the family two weeks ago, we’d likely have cancelled our trip anyway. Fortunately for us, we were able to cancel our accommodations and receive a full refund, and we expect to receive the refund from our cancelled flight soon.

It’s been a long, hard month, on both national and personal levels. We went overbudget, but hey, that’s what emergency funds are for. Our go-to cheer-me-up is planning our next vacation, which usually commences as soon as we get back from one. But it’s not happening. We have no timeline. No ability to plan for the future since we have no idea how long this will last. Our homeland is bleeding. So we doom-scroll and pray instead, with some Netflix thrown in as an attempt at a distraction.

And we are the lucky ones. We are all home together and all healthy, Baruch Hashem. We still have our jobs, and our city goes several days at a time without having missiles shot at it. That’s pretty good, all things considered. It’s wild how a war and a surge in global antisemitism messes with your perception of normal.

These are dark days for Israel and for the Jewish people as a whole. But we will persevere, just as we always have. We have no other choice. And there’s no place we’d rather be.

ה’ עוז לעמו יתן. God will give strength to his people.

עם ישראל חי. The Nation of Israel lives forever.