Hi, all. I’ve been posting to Facebook since the new war started, but only put the pieces back together to do the newsletter now. So here are the four most recent posts, up through today:

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Saturday, February 28th, 8:37 AM

Alarms. In the shelter. Here we go again.

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Sunday, March 1, 12:11 AM

Update: I'm back upstairs in my apartment after yet another alarm, some sixteen hours later. We've had about twenty. I lost count when, somewhere around number seventeen, we had several in such close succession that I wasn't sure whether to count them as one or more.

The next to last one had the biggest booms that I've heard during the wars so far. A building in Tel Aviv took a direct hit. Media are showing an utterly destroyed building burning. Of course, they aren't saying exactly where it was.

I headed down the stairs to the shelter from my third-floor apartment the first few times, until my knees informed me that they weren't in a mood to do that again. I've been taking the elevator since then.

People in the shelters are tired, but in a generally upbeat mood. We've all been through this before, enough times that we can get down there quickly.

The shelter also serves the neighborhood. There are several new dogs coming in with their families. Each growls when others enter. One young girl repeatedly swings a sort of mermaid Barbie doll around by its hair, lets it fly in an unpredictable direction, then crawls across the floor to retrieve it. Her brother slithers between the legs of chairs as if going through a tunnel.

We've been ordered to stay in the shelters each time until we hear the All Clear announcements. Those rarely happen. People gradually wander out. Most, but not all, of the time, we have time to get back to our apartments before the next alarm sounds.

It's just past midnight now. I hope to get some sleep tonight, but I'll be ready to head downstairs again if needed.

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Monday, March 2, 12:01 AM

The sirens continue, just about once every two hours, between 8 PM and 2 PM. Residents and neighbors tromp down to the shelter each time. While, in theory, anyone can sit anywhere, people keep landing in the same seats. I choose a white chair directly across from the entrance.

At around 11 PM, I hear the biggest booms ever. Later, I hear that an apartment block in Tel Aviv was hit.

One woman was killed there. It turns out that she was a friend of a friend, a Philippine caregiver who was trying to protect the elderly woman for whom she worked. On Facebook, the main library of Tel Aviv put up a post remembering her. The Bauhaus Center put up a post honoring the destroyed buildings.

The mutual friend, by the way, may have saved my life a couple of weeks ago. I had been feeling increasingly unwell for a while. At lunch one day I found I couldn't eat (I think I just stared at my spoon full of soup for several minutes) and went to sit outside. The friend, also a caregiver for someone at my lunch table, took a look at me and ran to the reception desk. The worker from there guided me to the nurses' office. The nurse took my blood sugar count, saw that it was at a catastrophic level, and sent me to the hospital.

I spent overnight at the hospital. I was declared officially diabetic, and now am on a regular regimen of insulin, Ozempic, and other stuff, which is gradually bringing my blood back toward normal levels. And I'm having to make significant changes to how I eat.

This afternoon was relatively quiet. The kitchen staff, with the help of the lead staff, including the House's CEO, brought meals to our rooms. All activities were canceled. The nurses' office stayed open, so I was able to go down twice to get my blood sugar checked. It's getting better.

The city is doing what it can during the war. A message on the official English language WhatsApp channel promotes Fun in a Protected Space: "Every day we hold a variety of strengthening and enriching Zoom activities – especially for you. We were happy to see you join us, and we thank everyone who took part today in the breastfeeding clinic, movement for toddlers, baby massage, Feldenkrais for seniors, and mindfulness."

The city was supposed to have been in the midst of activities all over town leading up to the holiday of Purim, which starts Monday night. None of that is apparently happening. The theme was to be Purim in a Movie. Unfortunately, it feels like the movie is War of the Worlds (and not last year's Ice Cube version). Come to think of it, though, the only movie that I can think of that touched upon Purim (other than Esther and the King, with Joan Collins and one Richard Egan in the title roles) was For Your Consideration (not one of Christopher Guest's better flicks, though the cast is great).

I sit down to write this at about 9 PM, right as sirens go off again. I head back down to the shelter. There are fewer people there this time. The worker from the front desk comes in to check on things. I could swear that he has been here round the clock since all this started yesterday morning, but I'm told that he did take a break last night. He's implausibly cheerful, but that seems to be how he keeps himself going.

There's another siren at around 10 PM. The same group of us go down to the shelter then come back up. It's close to midnight now. I've put on an ad-hoc tracksuit, good for both sleeping and wandering down to the shelter. I don't know which I'll be doing tonight.

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Monday, March 2nd, 9:06 PM

The morning's first alert goes off at 7 AM, exactly the same time as my alarm clock. I tell the clock to shut up (it's the only thing that I use Alexa for), but most of the sound keeps going. It takes me a moment to realize that I am being summoned to the shelter again.

In theory, the initial alert, where the phone makes a chocketa-chocketa sound, is only to tell us that there may be an alarm soon. Sometimes there isn't one, but it happens often enough that I head to the shelter whenever I hear that initial sound. If I wait for the alarm, I may not make it to the shelter in the minute and a half that we would have if missiles headed for us were to actually hit. The elevator down is often crowded, and the stairs can be difficult.

The shelter is close to full. Most of the neighborhood children, as well as some of the residents, are still in pajamas. School, as well as just about everything else, has been called off. The electronic sign near the reception desk, which usually shows the day's planned events here at the House of a Hundred Grandmothers, just says "The light will defeat the darkness."

When we get the all-clear, I head down the hall to get my insulin. Another alert sounds as I pass the shelter on the way back. I head in again. Most of the people are back. One girl (the one who had been swinging the mermaid Barbie around before) is now dressed as Queen Esther, with a multi-layered skirt and a tiara. Costumes are a tradition on Purim, and kids often start a few days early.

Purim celebrations are effectively cancelled. Home Front Command has banned all gatherings, including the traditional reading of the megillah (the Book of Esther), other than in private homes. Gathering for readings over Zoom, however, are acceptable.

The city had sent out an announcement over WhatsApp that one set of public readings, every hour on the hour, will be allowed. Chabad is organizing them in the very large shelter at a high school downtown. I'm also getting word of other permitted community-organized readings, but they're fairly low-key.

My Facebook is overflowing with tributes to the caregiver who was killed in Tel Aviv yesterday. Tributes are also appearing for the nine people killed in a rocket attack near Jerusalem, as they are identified. They were in a synagogue within a shelter -- but even the best shelter can't protect us from a direct hit by the large bombs that the Iranians are throwing at us. As the Anan Sahadei blog wrote today, we can make safer spaces, but nothing is ever totally safe.

A relative posted that the apartment building next to where a coworker of hers lives was wrecked in a direct hit. The worker didn't yet know how bad it was or whether her own building was affected, since she was in her building's basement shelter. Later reports say that nineteen people were injured in the hit.

A report says that one Iranian bomb landed about a mile from the Western Wall and Al-Aqsa. Definitely an area that no one would want to target.

The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews have been installing shelters around the country. In Holon, the town where the Scratch Orchestra that I'm in meets, they had just finished putting one up this morning when alarms sounded. They got to try it out right away.

When I go downstairs after another alert at about 5:30 PM, the shelter is almost full. There are a lot of people whom I don't recognize. Some are residents in wheelchairs, none of whom had been down there before. Others appear to be family members visiting here. It's so noisy that when the actual sirens sound, I'm not sure if I've heard them.

By the time that one family with a large, friendly dog arrives, no chairs are left. They spread out a blanket that the dog likes on the floor, then sit on the ground next to it, as if they are making a picnic.

Just after dark, my family down the hall in the House calls me over to hear one of them read the megillah. We listen as he chants the text from a scroll. I then go back to my apartment to eat supper, which staff had delivered earlier.

I eat some of it, but I'm not all that hungry. I skip the bread. For dessert, there are two small, traditional hamantaschen. I suppose that I can eat at least one, eventually. But as of 9 PM, as I finish writing this, I haven't yet.

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