JULIAN RESNICK writes from Israel
Have you ever wanted to be a cat?
Seriously, you have never wanted to be a cat?
Truth be told, I have never wanted to be a cat either.
But I know someone who recently shared her desire to be a cat with her mother, my daughter.
Just a week ago, my granddaughter, Ronni, informed her mother, my older daughter, that she wanted to be a cat. But not any cat…
“Ima (Mommy)”, she said, “I want to be a cat with superpowers. And do you know, Ima, what superpower I want? I want to be a cat with the superpower that will enable me to stand outside when the warning siren goes off and we all have to hurry to the bomb shelter.”
Did you all hear that? “I want to have the superpower that will enable me to stand outside when The sirens go off”. (!!!)
Is this what a five-year-old girl should be saying to her mother? What has she already learned/experienced/gone through as a little girl growing up in Israel?
Just ten days before her cat with the superpower remark, on October 1st, Ronni (aged 5), Noam (aged 3), Roy (aged 6 months), their Mom (my older daughter) and I went scurrying to the bomb shelter as over 180 missiles were launched at Israel from Iran. Picture us together: my daughter breastfeeding a six-month-old infant; me reading a wonderfully illustrated book about botanists, zoologists, and physicists to my Ronni and Noam (Did I forget to mention they are super smart – like all our grandkids?), for an hour until the all clear sounded.
I went home, a little shaken by the experience of being in the shelter with four of my loves, only to get a lovely WhatsApp message from my daughter thanking me and telling me that Ronni wanted me to know that it was “the best siren ever” and that she had enjoyed the book I read to her.
Out of the mouths of babes…
As the war drags on, we begin to understand the amount of damage it is causing. The most extreme being of course the loss of life of our soldiers, and the incredible pain the hostages and their families are going through but, alongside this obvious damage and pain, there are so many other people who will carry the scars of these times with them into their futures.
We do not even begin to understand what this time will mean to the adult lives of our little ones.
Julian Resnick was born in Somerset West and grew up in Habonim Dror. He studied at UCT, and made Aliyah in 1976. He’s conducted numerous shlichuyot and educational missions on behalf of Israel, to Jewish communities in England and the USA. He works as a guide in Israel and around the world (wherever there is a Jewish story).
He’s married to Orly, and they have three children and eight grandchildren and is a member of Kibbutz Tzora.
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