While My Husband Fights in Gaza

“Is this a playground, Mama?” Gefen asked me

“No, it’s not a playground,'' I answered, maneuvering the stroller along the rocky ramp leading up to Mount Herzl, Israel’s national cemetery.

I watched her serious, three-year-old eyes taking in the scene around her, trying to understand the world as much as possible. I half hoped that it would all go over her head. I wondered how much she realized life had changed since October 7th, when my husband had returned quickly from synagogue to pack his army bag. Before I knew it, I was standing outside our house with our three kids, watching my husband drive off. He has been working hard training and performing missions ever since. At home, the kids and I were slowly adjusting to day-to-day life in a state of war.

Chananel squirmed in his seat, itching to escape the stroller and follow the stream of people walking quickly and solemnly past the tombstones of fallen soldiers, each one carefully arranged and lovingly attended to.

I wasn’t entirely sure that it made sense for me to be in the military cemetery with my three small children, but I continued to make my way towards the funeral of Uriah Mash, a soldier from the settlement right next to ours. I didn’t know him personally. I had seen the message about his funeral and how he had fallen fighting in Gaza the night before.

Before October 7th, he probably wasn’t an active soldier. He was a husband to a loving, devoted wife, and the father of four children, with another one on the way. His mind, like my husband’s, had probably been far away from the world of the army. But like so many other loyal men in this country, he threw himself back into our military the second that it called him.

Uriah Mash, of blessed memory

I parked the stroller a bit of a distance away from the ceremony and prayed that our presence wouldn’t be an intrusion.

Gefen looked up at me. “Why are there a lot of people?” she asked.

I bent down next to her and said, “They're here because so many people loved a man who was brave and good and strong. He was a soldier, and he wanted to keep Israel very safe.” I hoped my answer would satisfy her.

“Like Abba?”

“Yes, like Abba”

“Why did he go to keep Israel safe?” she asked.

I explained that there are many good people in this world, but some are bad…very bad.

“Like Pharaoh?” she asked, with a glimmer of recognition in her eyes

“Yes, very much like Pharaoh”

“And then there was Moses,” she said, nodding her head, putting things together.

“Yeah, I guess he was a lot like Moses” I answered. I felt connected to the Jews who had been at the shores of the Red Sea with nowhere else to go, when God had split the sea.

“Why are they sad, Mama?” Gefen asked, pulling me back to the cemetery full of mourners. I looked at all the red, devastated eyes, and didn’t know how much to answer.

“Because the world is a bit broken right now, and we really need to fix it.”

She was quiet. And suddenly I was overwhelmed with everything -- with the way we were slaughtered, our women raped, our babies murdered, our children dragged away to tunnels deep in Gaza. I felt the weight of everything that had unfolded in the past weeks, flipping the world upside down and somehow leading me to Mount Herzl cemetery with my children, as my husband was fighting somewhere in or near Gaza.

A lump rose in my throat. I looked at the deceased’s friends and family, and then looked at my own little kids who were now playing quietly with Eliav, the baby, watching his little fists grab at the small Israeli flag I had draped over our stroller.

Thank you, I said to Uriah, the soldier killed in battle, realizing why I had come. Thank you, for everything. Thank you. Because of you, Hamas is further away from the reach of my children. Because of you, my kids will God-willing never need to fight them.

Thank you is not enough.

I thought of my own husband, and I thought of every soldier. I thought of every wife and family in this country and I felt overwhelmed and suddenly determined

“Are we afraid, Gefen?” I asked her, and then hoped I hadn’t scared her with the randomness of the question

She looked up at me and answered no

“Why are we never, ever, ever afraid?” I pressed her because if there is one thing I must inculcate into my children, it is this:

“Because we have Hashem,” she answered simply.

“That’s right,” I said.

And He can split seas.

I guided my children away from the funeral back to our car, offering another prayer to God to protect my husband and all the soldiers.