Faith Under Fire:
33 Days of Missiles and Miracles
Compiled and edited by Chana Besser

The First Shabbos

Shabbos, July 15, 2006 19 Tammuz 5766

There was a mass exodus on Friday. Cars, taxis, buses were filled, all going one way, the opposite direction of every other Shabbos of the year.

By now, those of us left in Tzefat were not as scared as we had been on Thursday. In the last couple of days we have become war-wise. The little pop pops from a distance and boom booms from closer - but not close enough to be threatening - have become background noise.

We know that if a Katyusha is close enough, we will hear a screechy whistley sound for at least a minute as a warning. If we don't hear the screechy whistle, it will land somewhere else. So far, I've heard it about three or four times.

"All of your Shabbos guests have left Tzefat, and I might not come either if Katyushas are flying," I had told Hadassah on Thursday night.

"Well, if you come, we'll be in the Ohel Avraham bomb shelter. You can join us there."

"Chana, come over and eat with us." It was Elisheva on the telephone. "For both meals."

It was a welcome invitation - if I had the courage to dash down the street. (They lived only a block away.)

"If they aren't shelling, I'll come. But it might not be safe to leave. This time, don't wait for me for Kiddush."

They always waited.

"I mean it. Because I'm not leaving the house if there are Katyushas. I have food. I'm just coming for the company."

The usual Shabbos sirens to signal candle-lighting time weren't sounded. It was wise not to sound them. They are the same sirens used for air-raid alerts.

I lit my Shabbos candles and started my Shabbos prayers alone at home. Few men were walking to shul down my street. Usually hundreds of residents and tourists pass on their way to all the famous synogogues in the Old City, many of them singing. People who never sing on the streets in their own hometown sing when they walk down the streets in Tzefat on Shabbos. Only one lone man was singing Shabbos songs outside. Every few minutes another man or two would scurry by.

Outside my kitchen window, overlooking Gan HaKasum, a Breslov chassid strolled slowly and happily down the street, conversing with his three little sons, as if it were an ordinary Shabbos. But not another soul was in sight. The emptiness of Tzefat on a Shabbos night at candle-lighting time was eerie.

In the middle of my Kabbalas Shabbos prayers, the air-raid siren sounded, long and loud and insistently. The sky was just going dark. I grabbed my prepared emergency Shabbos kit sitting beside the front door - a little canvas sack with a siddur, sefer Tehillim, lots of Kleenex, my I.D. card, an apple and a banana, and a thin sweater. Next to it was a bottle of water and my house keys. I ran, my heart pounding, passing the first shelter across from the Sanzer Shul. I wasn't going to a private home for this meal.

An ambulance with the engine running stood in front of the Sanzer Shul. A chassid stood outside of it. "The shelter is just a few meters ahead," he said in Hebrew.

"I know, thanks," I answered, not breaking my stride. Whew! Baruch Hashem, nothing has exploded.

I ran down the shelter steps, hoping to be with the same wonderful people who had been there on Thursday. No one was inside. I walked through all three rooms - the little back room, the mediumsized entry room, and the large kollel room beside it. No one. This was not going to be a fun Shabbos. Then I remembered that I hadn't taken my food out of the refrigerator. I hadn't brought a bottle of wine or grape juice on purpose. Running in the street with glass in your hands isn't a smart thing to do.

A huge explosion went off, the loudest I had ever heard. Even inside the shelter it was very loud, but the walls didn't shake underground. I guess it's safe down here. Another loud explosion. I waited. Quiet.

We know now that if it is quiet for a while after a series of blasts, the enemy needs time to run to a new place and set up again before he is spotted. That's when it is safe to dash out if necessary. Sometimes we get a break for a couple hours, but usually it is a shorter interval of quiet. Good. I could finish my davening.

No booms disturbed my Shemoneh Esrei. The next order of business was Kiddush and hamotzi if it was still quiet. I walked upstairs and stood right next to the door of the bomb shelter, afraid to take more than a step or two from the entrance. Yitzchak, an American local, came walking by just as an ambulance pulled up. I heard him briefing the ambulance driver.

"One exploded in an empty field, just downhill a bit from Ari Street, and the other one has injuries," he shouted to the ambulance.

"A family was hurt in the Old City. A Katyusha hit a house on that narrow pathway below Chernobyl Shul, going toward Jerusalem Street." They'll have to go in on foot or motorcyle. That cobblestone street isn't wide enough to drive a car down, and there's a staircase at both ends of it.

Every few minutes a man would walk by, going to shul or coming back from shul to check on his family.

The town drunk had staggered down the street during the commotion with the ambulance. Yitzchak handled him well, calming him down. He didn't look frightened and didn't have enough command of himself to know he should seek cover. "If you look at me, you'll have sons," he told me. "I'm Mashiach."

Mashiach would know that I'm not married and have had all the children I'll ever have, I thought.

We get a lot of people coming through Tzefat who think they are Mashiach. Once, a young lady went to a mekubal in Tzefat to ask his advice about a young man she was seeing on a shidduch.

"He's perfect in every way except for one thing that bothers me. He thinks he is Mashiach." The mekubal gave her his beautiful smile filled with patience and compassion. "Yes, I just had three others come to me this week, all thinking they were Mashiach." In his sweet, soft, fatherly way, he suggested she find someone normal.

Tonight's Mashiach staggered down the road with Yitzchak. But when Yitzchak continued on, the poor, broken soul turned around. I dashed inside the shelter. He was headed my way. Being alone with a drunk man in a bomb shelter was not my idea of oneg Shabbos.

He's not coming into the shelter. If he wanted to be inside, he wouldn't be out on the streets, I told myself. Mashiach staggered past, shouting whatever he was shouting, and slowly disappeared down the street.

Two chassidim walked by. "I don't have any wine and I don't have any challah!" I shouted. "Do you live nearby?"

One nodded. "Yes."

"Can you bring me some?" I asked. He nodded again.

Ten minutes went by. Their wives aren't letting them out, I figured.

I waited some more. The night air was lovely. Someone would come by.

"Git Shabbos," I greeted a woman who came out on her balcony nearby for a dangerous moment of fresh air. I had never met her.

"Gut Shabbos," she returned.

"I don't have any wine, and I don't have any challah," I said in Hebrew.

"Come eat with us," she answered in English. They always do that as soon as they hear my accent.

I didn't answer. It was a top-floor apartment with a flat roof. My house was safer than that.

"We have a safe room," she added.

"OK, I'm coming!"

Big smiles and a warm welcome greeted me while their bigeyed children stared at their unexpected wartime guest like Eliyahu HaNavi.

"Where did you make aliyah from?" Yisrael asked.

"Denver."

"Do you know Motti Twerski?" asked Chana. We were both named Chana.

"The Rebbe of Hornosteipel, Rav Mordechai Twerski, shlita, is my Rebbe!"

"You're kidding! I lived in their home. He 'mekareved' me!"

"But you're an Israeli. How did you wind up in Denver?" I asked.

"I was living in Colorado Springs, and Shlomo Carlebach came through. He took me to Motti Twerski's house in Denver and left me there. I became their bas bayis."

Thank you, Rebbe, for davening for me. I thought. And for sending me your bas bayis with a Shabbos meal. I only asked Hashem for wine and challah.

I stayed for the whole Shabbos meal - the usual eight or more Israeli salads and three more courses, served leisurely, as if there were nothing unusual about this first Shabbos of the war.

The men sang all the Shabbos zemiros. But every time a boom sounded, Chana flinched.

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