War Day #297 Coexistence

Monday, July 29

Jul 29, 2024

Monday, July 29

So, thank you all for the many emails and notes asking if I was ok when I suddenly went off the grid last week. It often feels like I’m sending these missives down a dark hole with no one at the other end, so it’s encouraging to realize some people out there noticed when I stopped publicly emoting.

I was in the hospital for the week, but I’m definitely on the mend now, thanks for asking :)

While in the hospital, I shared a room with a Muslim teenager and her lovely mother and very large family. Hospitals in Israel, like a few other institutions — notably among them Magen David Adom Red Cross ambulance corps, and the Jerusalem Zoo — are havens of cross-cultural cooperation and coexistence, where all different ethnicities and religions and colors and races stop seeing their differences, and just pull together for a common good.

It is beautiful to see.

Anyway, the day I moved into my hospital room, the Muslim woman in the next bed’s Mama looked at me shyly from under her burqa, and when I smiled, flashed me a big grin. None of the family really spoke any Hebrew, much less English, so we contented ourselves with smiles back and forth.

A few hours later, when they were all gathered around the bed eating al ha-esh (bbq), the mom peeked over the curtain and offered me some of their salad. I declined, but then a while later A, who was accompanying me on my hospital stay, offered them some of our snacks. And so it went. When they were disappointed to find the Aroma still closed just after Shabbat ended, we brought them their ice cafe a few hours later. They tried to reciprocate with a large box of chocolate.

By the time I checked out, the mama hugged both of us goodbye.

We still have no idea where exactly they live, much less what their politics are. We really didn’t have any words with which to communicate. Coexistence flourishes under such conditions.

Maybe the trick is to never try to use words at all.

-30-

Let our hostages go.

Day #297 in captivity by Hamas.