October 7th

I wanted to write down my experience on that horrible day, because one day we'll want to look back and understand what happened and people's experiences are how we're going to remember the story. 

7:30

My mom woke me up. We were living with my parents because we hadn't moved into the new house yet. We got the keys in mid-September but the house still needed work. I was sleeping in my old room with Yuvali and Yossi slept down the hall with Lavi in Ari's old room. That worked for us, because Yuval still wakes up at night and this way Yossi and Lavi can get a good night sleep.

My mom came into my room all nervous, saying she was hearing booms and there seemed to be rockets shooting all over the country, and she wanted us to be awake and downstairs in case we needed to go to the mamad. Immediately my heart started beating fast and my stomach felt like was tied in a knot. My parents live in a valley so they hear rockets and interceptions from all over, it's very nerve wracking. I took Yuvali downstairs and Yossi and Lavi came down too. It was chag so my phone was off, I turned it on and put on the news and learned that Hamas had infiltrated the Gaza border, but it wasn't clear how many terrorists and where they were. Hamas were shooting rockets all over the country. Bubby was sleeping in the mamad and Mommy wasn't sure whether to wake her up - it's not Bubby's first time being in Israel with rockets, unfortunately, but we knew it would make her nervous.

Around 8:30 she came out and just when Mommy was about to say something we had our first siren and we all went into the mamad. Abba came back from shul, he had gone to vatikin so he could be home with the kids when we went later.

It was simchat torah, and Yaira, Mom, and myself had planned to go to Levana davening at Brenda's house, which started at 8:30. I got dressed and decided to go - Yossi stayed home with the kids. I got to Brenda's around 9:00, luckily she lives right across the street, and Yaira and Kedem were already there. So were a few other women. I looked at Yaira and tried to make a face that says "well, this is shitty." We tried to have a normal davening, but there were a few sirens. Talli Rosenbaum stood outside just to make sure we would hear the sirens when they happened. Brenda's mamad light was off so I turned it on and said "oops".. Anyway I thought I was funny :) It was just so surreal. We even danced for hakafot, it sort of worked. I went back home in between - I was going to read the haftara, which is the beginning of Yehoshua, and I was really nervous about it. Yossi said he got a message from his miluim and they were waiting for instructions.

I don't know how I got through davening. Aviad drove over with Gefen. Around 11:00 Yossi called me out of Brenda's house and signaled that he was leaving. All I could say was "Yos." I mean, what do you say when your husband gets an emergency call to go to war? He drove out to the new house to get his things, then came back and left me the car because he had a ride up north.

I did read Yehoshua, but couldn't concentrate on it. Davening went on so long, it was almost noon and we hadn't even done musaf yet. Steve Ganot came home and locked the door, there were rumors that terrorists could be anywhere. We decided to stop the service and all went home.

I couldn't eat. I tried to keep calm around the kids. Kedem and Lavi put their toys in the mamad and spent most of the day playing in there. At some point in the afternoon I had coffee and that helped me relax a bit. I was getting whatsapp messages from the city of Beit Shemesh and from the Moatza with Homefront Command updates, basically telling us to stay near a mamad and download the Pikud HaOref app. Aviad was glued to his phone, but I stopped looking at the news. He sat on the deck outside and I went to talk to him, and he just said "it's bad." Yaira and I kept pretending to be normal for the kids.

As the day went on we saw more people from the neighborhood drive off - everyone was being called to miluim. We heard planes all day long, and more booms. We tried to stay indoors but did go out to the deck, the weather was beautiful, the contrast was so strange. I was worrying about Yossi. The Vocalocity whatsapp group was buzzing too, people checking in with each other, one of the guys said that his husband's family were trapped in their mamad in Ofakim with terrorists in the streets.

In the evening we started to hear numbers. First they were saying there were 60 people killed, then 100, then the numbers started to rise. Only later did they mention the Nova music festival, hundreds more killed. We knew there were hostages taken to Gaza, and we knew that people were still held hostage in their homes. How does an army (or country) deal with these sort of hostage situations? It looked like Hamas had invaded Israel and was present in quite a few cities, and looters were coming in, stealing things, and taking it all back into Gaza. It would be a few days before we'd learn exactly what happened.

I tried to stay in touch with Yossi. He was headed up north to Amiad, which is the base where he usually does his miluim. The plan was for his guys to replace the soldiers there so they could be sent down south. He got his gear and weapon but they stayed on the base for a while, they didn't really know what to do. 

On Sunday they sent him to some outpost on the Lebanese border. Hizballah were trying to infiltrate and they were shooting anti-tank missiles and soldiers on the border. That was the scariest part. Are they going to join the war? Is Iran going to join? Is this WWIII? Sunday night Yossi wrote that he wouldn't be available for a few hours. He wasn't back online until late Monday morning and I couldn't concentrate on anything until I knew he was safe. He kept using words like "אירוע" and "פעילות" which to me just means that he's in danger. Later he told me that they had to do some sort of ambush all night, but they weren't really prepared for it - he hadn't calibrated his weapon and they didn't have proper gear. And that's the other thing - the IDF is smart and knows how to handle almost any situation, but if you make stupid decisions then people get killed, and doing an ambush without a calibrated weapon is a stupid decision. So Yossi and his guys were lucky.

Schools were immediately cancelled. Aviad was called up on Sunday. I was supposed to go back to work on October 9th, which I did, but I worked from home and actually did no work at all. I had one meeting with my boss, that's it.

Bubby was supposed to stay in Israel for two more weeks but she managed to get a flight for Friday. In the meantime she was amazing with the kids! She played with Lavi and watched Yuval, and while Yaira and her kids were over she entertained them for hours. Lavi and Kedem really enjoyed playing together which was excellent for me because I wasn't really functioning. Mommy's tours were cancelled of course, so she spent her time cooking for soldiers and for us. Abba's base was closed to civilians so he spent his time at our new house installing the air conditioning and doing other work.

Best I could do was try to work on the house. Things move slowly because the Palestinians aren't working so there's no construction, and other suppliers are short-staffed because people are in miluim.

That was the first week.