Rosh Hashanah in the North: 'A game of chance'

As I open the house gate, the oh-so-familiar scenes of Rosh Hashanah’s immanent arrival are evident. Nicely dressed and recently showered nieces run ragged around their tired parents. My mother busy at work, operating an entire kitchen and somehow keeping her calm amid the madness. The table already laid out with festive serviettes and crimson-colored pomegranates grown in the back garden.

My father sits outside, observing the final rays of light fade behind the Meron mountain range. Streaks of pink and purple collide seamlessly with the fading pale blues of the passing day. “Whisky?” he asks, knowing full well the answer is always going to be an affirmative one.

“So how’s Jerusalem?” he asks, while pouring us a decent Scottish single malt.

“Eternal, as they say. Unchanged, for the most part.”

He reacts with a sad smile as I return the question. He opens his mouth to speak, but the sirens over Safed ring across the valley. The nieces panic and head for the bomb shelter; they have 20 seconds to do so before the rockets start their rapid descent on the Upper Galilee.

Rockets or a light show?

The men of the family all gather outside in one rapid motion to watch the impending light show, one of them wrapped in a towel, fresh from the shower. The anticipation is palpable, all eyes are locked on Mount Canaan, the highest point of elevation in the ancient holy city opposite our moshav. And then, in a split second, it happens. Two white trails of smoke ascend elegantly from the mountain, the familiar trail left by the Iron Dome’s rocket interceptors.

The rockets are launched into the air, scanning for their invasive targets. Once the impending Hezbollah rockets are identified, the Iron Dome interceptors accelerate toward their targets and, in a truly immense technological feat, destroy the hostile rockets in midair, far from the city’s limits.

The remaining five Hezbollah rockets collide with the surrounding Biriya Forest. The seismic thudding of the earth reaches us, and the entire region shakes violently for 10 seconds before quieting down, having absorbed the impact. Smoke billows from the ground where the projectiles made their landing marks. Better the trees take the hit than the citizens of Israel, I say to myself.

The kids reemerge from the house, even more excited than they were before the latest rocket barrage. My mother and her daughters continue their final holiday preparations while swearing at Hezbollah for its latest futile intrusion. And so, Dad and I return to our aforementioned drinks and the conversation that was served with them.

“Well, son, as you have just seen for yourself, things are pretty much unchanged here, too.”

AND THAT was exactly how my family and the rest of northern Israel welcomed the Jewish New Year, grabbing the first few rows of the grand showdown between the IDF and Hezbollah. This reality accompanies the dozens of thousands of Israelis situated just outside the evacuation parameter designated by the IDF. They live well within Hezbollah’s rocket range and have faced its wrath every day since October 7. The IDF perceives that the Iron Domes are deemed efficient enough to guarantee the northern residents’ safety; for the vast majority, that is.

A game of chance

All in all, it’s simply a game of chance for the remaining citizens of the Upper Galilee, a region with few household bomb shelters and very little time to reach them regardless. However, the Israelis of the North are a stubborn bunch, and possess the resolve to withstand and endure years of ongoing rocket fire, as they have done since the first mortars were fired on them from the Land of Cedars 50 years prior.

A theater of war, such as the one I celebrated Rosh Hashanah in, is no minimal production. The sporadic rocket fire is just one actor from a rich and diverse cast. The roaring thunder of F-16 fighter jets heading toward their Hezbollah-affiliated targets is an increasingly reoccurring feature in this production. Attack helicopters constantly circulate in the region, shepherding northbound supplies and evacuating the occasional wounded soldier to the appropriate medical center.

The constant noise is broken up by the shuddering vibrations of Israeli artillery fire, which echoes across the area every few minutes. We have to perpetually remind the little girls that those constant booms are our own and directed against

the evil Hezbollah, not another rocket attack. It matters not, for unfortunately the girls cannot differentiate between the two similar sounds, however contrasting their meanings may be.

THIS ROSH HASHANAH 2024 soundtrack follows us to the synagogue. As we enter, the elder village farmers are unchanged from last year, just as they were the year before and many years before that. Their sons, however, are all dressed in

typical reserve-duty tactical gear, with their well-oiled guns hanging off their backs or by their army boots.

The shofar’s piercing wail tries to drown out the roaring sounds of war, a symbolic representation of reality. The theater of war ultimately wins the contest.

Across from the synagogue are several army jeeps, all primed and ready for action. The young reservists sit outside on the grass by the village hall where they sleep, passing the time between military preparations. Extensive meals were

delivered to them by the residents of Kfar Shammai, which insisted on hosting the soldiers instead of them camping out in the unprotected open. Their presence instills a sense of safety for us all, but it also brings the border much closer than

before. Seeing so many guns and uniforms completes this northern theater of war, with its cast and their props firmly in place.

THIS IS how the North spent its Rosh Hashanah. It balanced the celebration of the New Year with the ongoing Jewish resilience in the face of the eternal struggle to be a free nation in its historic land.

And so, with this war reality locked in for the foreseeable future, all that the people of the North can do now is sit around the nicely laid out table, dip the apple in the honey and wish, for themselves and for the rest of the nation, a new and better year ahead, full of hope and security.