bomb shelter pesach thoughts

[Leon Kraiem]

Hi friends,

I was scolded by several of you last week for not writing in a while; I appreciate it. I am, in fact, alive and well -- despite others, not all of whom are. (Ten IDF soldiers — including a 22-year old from New Haven — have been killed in southern Lebanon in recent weeks, as well as 15 US service-people amid the war with Iran. ) 

For those in the States who are concerned about my safety: rest assured, I’m alright. The missile launches are always detected in time to get to a safe place, and they are almost always intercepted anyway, making windows rattle across the country but keeping us out of harm’s way. (As the saying goes, ‘The only thing that stops a bad guy with a cluster munition is a good guy with a guided interceptor.’) 

Case in point: a couple hours ago, upon the first siren of the day, I discovered that my go-to miklat, in the apartment building next door, had flooded a little in the rain, so I took advantage of the extra few minutes provided by the Home Front Command to hustle over to a public shelter a few blocks down that I’d heard was particularly luxe.

That time, I made a mistake, arriving instead at a shelter in a synagogue basement, with prayer times for the daily minyan posted on the door, along with a sign forbidding the bringing-in of chametz. It did the job, but it wasn’t a party — the crowd was old, Anglo, and entirely human. The next siren, though, a couple hours later — success. This one had five dogs in it, which was more than I’d even dared hope for. Plus kids, cushions, two bathroom stalls that lock, refreshments — it’s a bomb shelter fit for kings! It's about a thirty seconds' jog from my house, but if I get the early warning, that's plenty of time. And I was thinking, I could get used to this.

For the record, I do actually go to the shelter every time (unlike the rest of the tenants in my building, who never go.) I view that as something of an ethical and civic obligation, given that the air defenses, while good, are not hermetic — and even when they succeed, truck-sized pieces of “shrapnel” still come crashing down to earth. 

Case in point 2: A few weeks ago, two big missile chunks fell on Jerusalem, one landing meters away from the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and the other just outside the National Library. On Friday night, as I was holed up in my dinner hosts’ safe-room for that evening’s Iranian surprise party, it came out that two of the six people present had themselves been sitting at the library when that particular hunk of sky-steel impacted. But they were in different reading rooms when the siren went off, and wound up in two different areas of the library basement.

Now, in the dim light of the half-covered Shabbos-lamp, Ben recounted his harrowing experience that day: “Oh, it was awful,” he said. “It was me and a roomful of... academic Talmudists.” His words said, “I made it through alright" -- but the tone of his voice said: “Next time I’ll take my chances with the missiles.” 

--

I’ve been meaning to collect vignettes like that. To name just a few before moving on: My friend Charlie, who covers police for ToI, hated going to the shelter in his old building, because one particular neighbor of his had “terrible takes about Bedouin politics,” about which they would argue every azaka.

Another: A cranky old lady said my building’s aging shelter was “the worst one” she’d been in all war, which I took offense at, but I acknowledge was probably correct. On which note: don’t get me started about the illegal tempeh factory running out of the ground floor apartment located just above: the guy’s employees – two young religious guys, fresh out of the army – are lovely, but his industrial machinery (which both the building’s residents’ committee and the city of Jerusalem have ordered vacated, STAT) is responsible for the ominous, moldy crack in the ceiling, which isn’t what you want to see against a backdrop of interception explosions. Plus, his tempeh is overpriced. 

—

I’ve been trying to prepare, spiritually and physically for Passover, which at time of writing — from a bench on my barber’s patio, amid an hours-long line for last-minute haircuts ahead of the Three Weeks — is barely 24 hours away.

The Aroma down the street closed early yesterday, underwent some crazy transformation overnight, and when I went there this morning had an entirely new menu, complete with that potato-starch bread you get in Israel that’s somehow kosher for Passover, but very aggressively not matzah. More importantly, they have their normal vegan milks — I was worried, because the place I usually go when feeling bougey and decaffeinated is strictly cow-milk for the duration of the holiday; I guess Aroma has a special hook-up for the kosher-for-passover soy products — maybe they’re using Mister Tempeh next door.

It impresses me, but also drives me bananas, the OCD-ness of it all. God forbid that Conveyor Belt 3 be used for poppyseed bagels on the weekends, some wheat could get stuck to those gears and make its way into your almond milk!. But then I remind myself that most years, when I spend the holiday in New York, that very same OCD impulse itself — the unbearable urge, say, to throw out my bodega breakfast because the guys didn’t hear me when I told them “hold the toast” — tortures me even more. Glass houses, you know?

--

Last week, I sent around my Pesach playlist, along with an accompanying commentary. As I wrote, this project vexed me for years — in contrast to, say, my Purim playlist, which came together easily five years ago and has never needed tinkering since.

The reason a Passover playlist is so much harder than a Purim one, I explained, is that there’s nothing subtle about Passover, no tensions or contradictions or interpersonal dramas that lend themselves to playing around with pop music. Purim is about ambiguity, and occlusion, and putting on airs. On Pesach, it’s: God good — Pharaoh bad. God everything — Pharaoh nothing. Egypt slavery — Israel freedom. At first, our fathers — idol worshippers. Now, we — servants of The Holy One, Blessed Be He. 

And, crucially: Miracles necessary, and performed out-in-the-open — human effort hopelessly insufficient, not even deserving of mention in the Haggadah.

That absolutism — that there really is right and wrong; that freedom is possible, and that its circumscription, which we call slavery, really is in a sense, to serve something, anything, other than God, Who is real, and took us out of Egypt, and demands justice for the widow, orphan, and stranger — is, of course, the very same impulse by why people go berzerk setting fire to mounds of dry fusilli ahead of Leyl HaSeder. 

Now, what that means for how one ought to think about ritual, or morality, is beyond the scope of this email. But it definitely means something.

—

Alright, time to wrap this up. I finally got my hair cut around 8pm, about four hours after arriving at the barbershop — the guy did a good job, as he always does, and was delivering a d’var torah the whole time, about Joseph’s bones and Rabbi Pinchas ben Yair and this and that, I didn’t really follow, but I enjoyed the vibe.

Now, I have to clean, and call my parents, and throw out/burn/sell my chametz, and I ought to do all of it before work tomorrow, because I’ll only have a few hours between shift and seder (and by the way, I should quit equivocating about which seder I’m going to, this is ridiculous, it’s 10pm the night before Erev Pesach) — but that’s just the storm before the calm, right? …Right?

As always, there is so much more to say. And, as always, so much I took out while editing, which will hopefully find its way into something, sometime, soon.

If I can say one last thing (which of course I can, this is my email): This moment has its real and severe complications, but we are in so many ways out of the Egypt that we were in a year ago, and that is important to recognize and to have the appropriate gratitude for.

To all who celebrate, chag sameach,
Next year in Jerusalem rebuilt.
Leon