Episode 48: Sderot, City of Lights | With Mushka Pizem, Chabad shlucha in Sderot

00:01 Speaker 1 To bring light into the darkness is to go out on shlichus after your wedding to a city that has come under so much fire. To bring light into the darkness is to raise and educate children from one siren to the next, while giving them strength and resilience. To bring light into the darkness is, even when you yourself have been displaced and are away from home at such a difficult time, with so much uncertainty, to go out and support those who need you. Mushka tells us how she brings light into the darkness in an unimaginable reality, but above all, how each of us can and must bring light, because that is our strength. To bring light, to give strength. Shlichus as a way of life, shlichus that gives life. A reminder to share this episode with friends, acquaintances, family, and anyone you care about. To see content on my status and get details about lectures, workshops, and digital programs on Shlichus as a Way of Life and Chassidus, message me at 050-850-5770. First, the intro, and then we’ll begin. How can we make our lives lives of shlichus, full of meaning? I’m Chani Moskowitz, a shlucha in Kharkiv, Ukraine, now continuing my shlichus in Karmei Gat, Israel. In this podcast, we’ll meet different women who will share their shlichus in a variety of fields. Through them, each of us can find and refine our own shlichus in the world, because living the lives we were created to live is the best thing there is. Shlichus as a Way of Life. We’re starting right now. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Shlichus as a Way of Life podcast. Today I have a special guest I’ve been waiting a long time to have here: Mushka. How are you?

01:41 Speaker 2 Baruch Hashem, baruch Hashem, I’m doing okay.

01:43 Speaker 1 In a moment we’ll tell everyone where she came from and how long the drive took. Honestly, I thought it was closer. We tell everyone who comes here that we’re pretty close to Sderot, but it took forty minutes, so... We met at the Kinus Hashluchos this year, on Motzaei Shabbos. There’s a big Melaveh Malka event, and it was hashgachah pratis. How could you not call it hashgachah pratis? We sat next to each other, and I heard you telling story after story, and all my ears could hear was “podcast, podcast, podcast.” It was clear this would happen eventually. So, Mushka, introduce yourself to everyone who has no idea who you are. They have to meet you. Go ahead.

02:24 Speaker 2 So, I live in Sderot. I’m a shlucha and have five children, may they be healthy. I was born and raised in Kfar Chabad, in central Israel. And then, when I reached the age for shidduchim and started dating—when I started going on shidduchim—my husband was suggested to me. He was from Sderot, and the idea of going out on shlichus came up. I thought, well, Sderot sounded like a challenging place.

02:59 Speaker 1 Tell me, when the match was suggested, were you already thinking about where you’d live? Like, hold on a second.

03:07 Speaker 2 Right. It seemed challenging to me, but I didn’t know how challenging. Okay, another challenging place in Israel, but I had no idea just how challenging. We lived in Kfar Chabad for a year after the wedding, then moved to Sderot. My husband was born and raised in Sderot, in a family of Chabad shluchim there. His parents were sent by the Rebbe.

03:31 Speaker 1 Oh! How many years have they been there?

03:32 Speaker 2 Almost forty years.

03:34 Speaker 1 Wow.

03:34 Speaker 2 Yes.

03:34 Speaker 1 That’s incredible.

03:35 Speaker 2 When they arrived in Sderot, it was still a very quiet place. There were many immigrants from North Africa, Russia, and Romania—a gathering of immigrants in a place nobody had really heard of.

03:52 Speaker 1 A city out on the periphery.

03:53 Speaker 2 Exactly. But really quiet, so quiet. They said, “Oh, wonderful, we’re coming to a quiet, peaceful place where nobody knows us.” When we moved there, it was after Operation Protective Edge, and things were very quiet after that war. It had been a really difficult war. I think it lasted two months.

04:19 Speaker 1 In the summer, right?

04:20 Speaker 2 In the summer, yes, and we moved right afterward, in Elul. It was—

04:25 Speaker 1 Wow, that really was right afterward.

04:26 Speaker 2 Right afterward, yes.

04:27 Speaker 1 I happen to remember because Operation Protective Edge ended—the ceasefire began at eight in the evening, while I was in the delivery room. I gave birth at five past eight. I remember saying, “Well, I gave birth to my oldest daughter just as the ceasefire began”—

04:39 Speaker 2 Yes.

04:39 Speaker 1 And that was on 1 Elul. So exactly...

04:43 Speaker 2 So we arrived with a three-month-old baby, a little baby. My husband had grown up there, so for him it was a continuation. For me, moving from the center of the country to the south, to a more outlying area, was new, along with all the changes that come with a move in general. Entering a new place of shlichus, getting to know the place and its residents—it’s a very significant change, moving from a warm, supportive community to shlichus. The thing is, it’s an hour’s drive from Kfar Chabad when there’s no traffic. It’s amazing: an hour’s drive, and the difference is like night and day.

05:27 Speaker 1 Like being in another country.

05:28 Speaker 2 Yes. Sderot is about eight hundred meters, as the crow flies, from the Gaza Strip—from its northern end. It’s really, really close.

05:38 Speaker 1 Wow. Oh my goodness.

05:39 Speaker 2 Yes. We moved after Operation Protective Edge, and it was quiet. I remember three quiet years—not a single boom.

05:50 Speaker 1 Wow, three years with nothing?

05:52 Speaker 2 Yes. No alerts, nothing. After three years, the chaos started. What do I mean by that? I remember the first alert that caught me. I was driving with the music and air-conditioning on, so I couldn’t hear it. I saw the car next to me stop. The driver got out, lay down on the ground, and put his hands over his head. I opened my window, heard the boom, and then realized there had been a Code Red alert. That place has been hit by enormous numbers of rockets. The first rocket was twenty-three years ago, and more than twenty thousand rockets have fallen on that city—

06:33 Speaker 1 Wow.

06:34 Speaker 2 Over all those years. My husband remembers the first Qassam rocket, you know? He was a little boy, walking to the shopping center with his father, when suddenly they heard a boom. Then they realized a rocket had landed. Gradually, they added shelters across the city, more and more. Every home in Sderot has a reinforced safe room. They added one to every house. You can see a very, very old house, but it has a new safe room.

06:59 Speaker 1 Like a...

06:59 Speaker 2 Yes.

07:00 Speaker 1 Sort of a patch attached to it—

07:01 Speaker 2 Exactly. The thing about Sderot is that there isn’t time to reach a protected space, because it’s so close and the rockets come in barrages. Even when you’re inside the house, you barely have time to get there and close the door. All the more so when you have to run with children.

07:19 Speaker 1 Wow.

07:19 Speaker 2 If it catches you at home, that’s one thing. If it catches you outside, it’s another story entirely. In Sderot there’s a small public shelter every two hundred meters, but you don’t even have time to reach one.

07:28 Speaker 1 Two hundred meters, right.

07:29 Speaker 2 Yes.

07:29 Speaker 1 How much time is there from the alert until impact?

07:33 Speaker 2 Well, there are a few possibilities. Officially it’s twelve seconds, but again, it’s much less than that. In the best case—

07:42 Speaker 1 Two hundred—hundreds of meters, yes, it’s...

07:44 Speaker 2 Very, very close. So in the best case, the alert sounds and you have a few seconds to run to the safe room, the protected space. In a less good case, the alert sounds at the same time as the boom.

07:56 Speaker 1 Mm.

07:57 Speaker 2 In the worst case, you hear the boom and then the alert.

08:00 Speaker 1 Oh my.

08:00 Speaker 2 Yes.

08:01 Speaker 1 What a situation.

08:01 Speaker 2 It really is. Now—

08:02 Speaker 1 I think what’s also incredible here is that, in a way, the alert itself is terribly frightening.

08:06 Speaker 2 Right.

08:07 Speaker 1 So it’s like, the boom already happened—don’t sound the alert now, because it’s not going to...

08:10 Speaker 2 In Sderot, because it’s so very close, the alert has to be startling. We have to hear it. There’s no time for a siren that—

08:20 Speaker 1 Rises and falls.

08:22 Speaker 2 Exactly. There’s no time for a rising-and-falling siren. Instead, there are loudspeakers throughout the city, and you hear a recording saying, “Code Red.” The recording itself is startling.

08:36 Speaker 1 Oh my.

08:36 Speaker 2 That’s the thing. When the children are little, they’re afraid of the Code Red announcement itself, and they get angry at the woman on the loudspeakers who announces it. It’s so loud that it wakes you from your sleep.

08:48 Speaker 1 Wow.

08:48 Speaker 2 The recording—

08:49 Speaker 1 Even with the windows closed? Or do you make sure to sleep with a window slightly open?

08:52 Speaker 2 We hear it even with the windows closed.

08:53 Speaker 1 Wow.

08:54 Speaker 2 It has to be very, very loud so we’ll hear it, because there’s no time. The first time my children went outside Sderot and heard a rising-and-falling siren, it sounded like some kind of tune to them. They weren’t afraid of the siren.

09:04 Speaker 1 Imagine that.

09:05 Speaker 2 Yes. Now, this is a city that’s been fortified over the years with enormous amounts of protective structures and concrete. I keep asking myself how the city hasn’t collapsed under all that concrete. There are shelters everywhere, and all the schools and community centers are protected—everything is protected. You can’t hold any educational activity, or any activity at all, unless it’s in a protected space. So every home has a safe room, there are shelters, and everything is fortified. Concrete and concrete and more concrete.

09:30 Speaker 1 Wow.

09:31 Speaker 2 It’s been poured into this city over the years. They kept adding more and more protection. So the reality we lived with—I’m talking about before October 7, before that Shabbos of Simchas Torah—was a constant trickle of rocket fire. We might have a quiet month, and then suddenly there’d be a siren. There were always these sporadic attacks. They didn’t even make it into the newspapers or onto the news channels. A siren in Sderot—who cares? But—

09:57 Speaker 1 That feeling must be so hard.

09:57 Speaker 2 It’s very, very hard. I think the sporadic attacks are harder than a full round of fighting. During a round of fighting, you’re on high alert; you’re mentally prepared. But when it comes out of nowhere, it’s much harder. After a quiet month, suddenly a siren catches you at two in the morning, and I have to decide which child to grab. I mean, the children sleep in the safe room, but they always come into our room in the middle of the night…

10:20 Speaker 1 Wow.

10:21 Speaker 2 So you have to decide which child to grab.

10:23 Speaker 1 You have to get all the children into the safe room?

10:25 Speaker 2 No. I was just wondering when we’ve ever managed to get everyone into the safe room and shut the door in time. Usually, you hear the boom while you’re still on the way. That’s why I say we live with miracles—open miracles. My father-in-law, Rabbi Pizem, says that Sderot is actually the safest place in the world. Everyone laughs and says, “What? How?” But more than twenty thousand rockets have fallen on this city, and it’s still here and thriving. They’re even building affordable-housing developments, young couples are moving in, and the city is growing. Isn’t that—

10:57 Speaker 1 They’re building in Sderot now? Right now?

10:58 Speaker 2 Yes, yes, yes. They’re building in Sderot. The city has grown tremendously in recent years, and new neighborhoods are going up. Aren’t those great miracles? And that’s what—

11:09 Speaker 1 How do you explain it?

11:11 Speaker 2 That Eretz Yisroel is actually—

11:12 Speaker 1 Or is it a miracle? What’s the explanation?

11:12 Speaker 2 Eretz Yisroel is the safest place in the world, and in Sderot we feel that tangibly. I mean, the enemy is eight hundred meters away from us, with the clear aim of destroying us, and we’re alive, baruch Hashem. The Chabad House is active and bustling, with a full program of activities. Living in Sderot as a family with young children, and also running a Chabad House and its activities, is very challenging. I can organize a big women’s evening, invite a speaker, prepare lots and lots of desserts and a special meal, put thought into a keepsake—and then suddenly there’s concern about rocket fire, or trouble at the border fence, or threats that they’re going to fire. Even one Red Alert siren beforehand is enough, and then ten women will show up to the event.

12:03 Speaker 1 But haven’t the women, in a way, sort of gotten used to it? Like, okay, there’s a siren, and then afterward they go to the women’s evening? Or not?

12:10 Speaker 2 That’s the thing: you can’t get used to a reality like this. People say to me, “You’ve lived there for ten years—maybe you’re used to it by now?” Maybe you react more calmly, but it frightens you all over again every time. It’s not something you can get used to. It’s a reality you can’t get used to.

12:28 Speaker 1 Ultimately, it’s a threat to your life.

12:29 Speaker 2 All the time. So you calculate whether to leave the house. And each time it’s something else. There was a period of incendiary balloons. Every balloon in the street was suspicious. There were so many fires, and everything smelled burnt all the time. Or there would constantly be trouble at the border fence. They’d burn tires, so there was always a smell of burning. You’d hear the noise and the commotion, and machine-gun fire, aircraft and drones. Each time there’s another threat, and…

12:58 Speaker 1 They come up with some new—

12:58 Speaker 2 Yes.

12:59 Speaker 1 Some new trend.

12:59 Speaker 2 Yes.

13:00 Speaker 1 As it were.

13:00 Speaker 2 And that’s on top of the regular rocket fire. One day there was a siren, but we didn’t hear a boom. It turned out to be machine-gun fire. It was gunfire, but it had triggered the detection system—not a rocket launch, though.

13:14 Speaker 1 Yes.

13:14 Speaker 2 I mean, there’s always something. You live under the shadow of a threat. I remember when my son was three—he’s ten now; today is his birthday.

13:25 Speaker 1 Really? Mazel tov!

13:26 Speaker 2 Yes, he’s our oldest. When he was three, he asked us why we had to be shluchim specifically in Sderot, the place closest to Gaza. I remember it was after a siren; we’d run, and there was panic and everything. He said, “Why? We could have been shluchim in Rishon LeZion, maybe in Tel Aviv. Why Sderot?” So we told him that the Rebbe had sent us to Sderot, and surely we had the strength to cope. But it isn’t easy. There are challenges, and there are hard moments. When my daughter comes and asks, “Mommy, will there be no more Red Alerts?” I can’t promise her there won’t be.

13:59 Speaker 1 Of course. Wow.

14:00 Speaker 2 Because that’s not something I can promise. And if my son asks me, “Can I leave the house? What do you think? I’ll ride my bike, but what if a siren catches me on the way?” The reality is that if we’re walking down the street, we have to lie on the ground and cover our heads with our hands. If we have babies with us, we have to lie over them. It’s a very, very hard reality. And if I’m driving, by the time I unbuckle the children, you can already hear the boom. The instructions are to take the children out and lie on the ground, but there’s never enough time.

14:30 Speaker 1 Wow.

14:30 Speaker 2 I mean, we barely have enough time at home, let alone outside. If we’re at the park, there are shelters there, but getting to one in time—if a child is up on the play structure, they can’t make it.

14:40 Speaker 1 Wow.

14:40 Speaker 2 Yes. So you’re constantly thinking about where the nearest shelter is. If I take the stroller out in the evening to put my daughter to sleep, I walk near the shelters so I’ll be ready if there’s a siren. Do you understand? We live with an awareness of miracles all the time—miracles, miracles, miracles. We feel it tangibly, because according to the natural order, when a barrage is launched from so close, Iron Dome, with all its capabilities, can’t intercept the whole barrage. Some rockets will always get through. So—

15:13 Speaker 1 Wow.

15:13 Speaker 2 Yes. You can’t dismiss the danger and not run. But on the other hand, you can also get hurt on the way to the safe room. You could slip on the floor if a child is in the middle of a bath. So you have to avoid running too fast, and you can’t project fear and panic to the children. We always have to convey resilience and calm.

15:34 Speaker 1 I think “resilience” is one of the words you hear most often in—

15:37 Speaker 2 Absolutely.

15:37 Speaker 1 In Sderot.

15:38 Speaker 2 The resilience centers in Sderot are overwhelmed with requests for help. I mean, you’re constantly living under threat. It’s not that you experienced a threat, and now it’s over and you’re trying to deal with what happened.

15:51 Speaker 1 It’s like chronic hypervigilance.

15:52 Speaker 2 Exactly. And that’s why we always say that in Sderot, you can feel what it means to wait for the Geulah, to wait for Moshiach. Because the question is: How can we wait for Moshiach when we’re living our everyday lives—going to work, coming home, doing household chores and work tasks? Life is so—

16:11 Speaker 1 How do you keep it in mind all the time?

16:12 Speaker 2 How do you keep it in mind all the time when life sweeps you along? In Sderot, we feel it tangibly, because you go about your life, but you’re always alert. You know something could happen at any moment, so you’re always ready. If we can go about our lives while staying alert and prepared, that shows us we can live with an awareness of—

16:32 Speaker 1 Yes.

16:32 Speaker 2 Waiting for the Geulah. Because that’s what we’re living. We’re ready all the time.

16:38 Speaker 1 You walk down the street calculating, “If there’s a siren, I’ll go here. If there’s a siren, I’ll go there.”

16:42 Speaker 2 Yes. And what will I do if something happens? So if there’s a route with shelters and a route without shelters, I take the one with shelters, okay? And if there’s a park closer to home or a park... I mean, we’re calculating all the time. That’s the reality of living near the Gaza border. How do you raise a child there when he goes from Sderot to Jerusalem and asks where the shelter is in Sacher Park? Then he sees there aren’t any shelters, and my son says to me, “But Mom, the park is so huge, and there isn’t a single shelter?” So that’s just the reality... When you live near the border, you also learn to recognize the sounds. Okay, that’s an interception by the Iron Dome; that’s the whistle of the Iron Dome. Now that’s the boom of a helicopter. No, that’s a tank. We also feel all the IDF strikes because they’re so close, so we hear those sounds too. You understand?

17:36 Speaker 1 That’s crazy.

17:36 Speaker 2 So we also hear the whistle of the Iron Dome, which is very, very loud. I mean, there’s a lot of noise. There’s the sound of the army, G-d forbid, when they’re fighting.

17:46 Speaker 1 A whole vocabulary of—

17:47 Speaker 2 Yes. The average person from Sderot can tell you exactly what each boom is. That’s an interception, and they can tell you exactly: that was a rocket landing. It wasn’t an interception. You understand? You learn. Your hearing becomes very, very, very sharp.

18:02 Speaker 1 Sderot hearing.

18:03 Speaker 2 Exactly. You can tell precisely. When the army strikes, we hear very, very loud booms. It sounds like it’s happening right here.

18:10 Speaker 1 When there are major strikes, you can hear them in Kiryat Gat and Kiryat Malachi too. Every time there’s a boom like that... I think it was on the seventh day of Pesach, right during the Moshiach Seudah at the end of the holiday, there were these incredible booms. I remember thinking, if we’re hearing it so loudly that the door is shaking, what are they hearing in Sderot?

18:27 Speaker 2 Wow.

18:27 Speaker 1 If it’s like this here, then...

18:30 Speaker 2 In Sderot, the house shakes.

18:31 Speaker 1 You can’t imagine it, twenty kilometers from here.

18:33 Speaker 2 It really shakes. To the point that—

18:35 Speaker 1 But it’s—

18:35 Speaker 2 The windows move; pictures can fall off the wall. There are even cracks in houses—you can see a crack from the force of the blast.

18:42 Speaker 1 Wow.

18:43 Speaker 2 We hear the IDF strikes very, very loudly. We can tell exactly whether it’s a strike in the northern Gaza Strip, which is very, very close to us, or in the center or the south of the Strip. We really can distinguish between them.

18:52 Speaker 1 That’s crazy.

18:52 Speaker 2 You hear it very, very loudly. The tanks, the helicopters, the planes. We can tell exactly: that’s a shell fired from a helicopter. We hear it very, very loudly.

19:01 Speaker 1 Oh my goodness.

19:02 Speaker 2 Yes. And—

19:04 Speaker 1 Wow.

19:04 Speaker 2 Yes. I remember my little girl—we just found a video from when she was small—and she says, “Mom, put on music so we won’t hear the booms.” The children learn to develop all sorts of, you know—

19:15 Speaker 1 Ways of staying on alert.

19:16 Speaker 2 Exactly. Yes.

19:17 Speaker 1 Wow.

19:20 Speaker 2 And it’s definitely a challenge. A challenge in a place like this.

19:24 Speaker 1 Earlier you mentioned, say, preparing a women’s evening, and I’m thinking: it’s like constantly living with Plan A and Plan B. There’s ordinary life, and then there’s “what if something happens?” If there’s a trickle of rocket fire, if this happens or that happens, you switch to Plan B. Because, I mean, all our lives have uncertainty... But here it’s so tangible, this backup plan you have to keep with you all the time. It’s crazy.

19:52 Speaker 2 Completely. We live with uncertainty all the time. We don’t know what will happen today, what will happen next. We feel that uncertainty and that constant alertness all the time. We’ll talk soon about what happened on Simchas Torah and everything, but living in a place like this means we’re always on alert, always prepared, and you also keep drawing inward. After Shavuos, we organized readings of the Ten Commandments in all the shuls. Children came and heard the Ten Commandments. Then on Thursday, we organized a big gathering for all the children who had heard them. They came with their cards showing they’d heard the Ten Commandments, and there was a very big prize drawing and a magic show. We put a great deal into it. And the whole time we’re saying to ourselves—the Chabad House is protected, but still—

20:41 Speaker 3 What does “protected” mean? The entire building is reinforced?

20:42 Speaker 2 The entire building is reinforced. Yes.

20:45 Speaker 3 Imagine that.

20:45 Speaker 2 That’s the kind of luxury you have in Sderot. Otherwise, no one would come to the activities.

20:49 Speaker 3 That’s crazy.

20:50 Speaker 2 Yes.

20:50 Speaker 3 I heard there’s also a mikveh that...

20:52 Speaker 2 It just opened, yes.

20:53 Speaker 3 The whole thing is reinforced?

20:54 Speaker 2 The whole thing is reinforced. It just opened. So we had a wonderful event. It ended, everyone went outside, and there was a part where everyone got a wafer, a Tropit juice drink, and their gifts. There was a crowd of people. I said, “Oh, I just hope there won’t be a siren now, because it’ll be absolute chaos here.” Everyone finished leaving—and then there was a siren.

21:13 Speaker 3 Oh wow.

21:14 Speaker 2 We felt... We said, “Hashem, thank You.” You understand? You learn to calculate these things. You can prepare and get everything ready, and then people might not come. We organized a huge Selichos event before Yom Kippur and brought in a very, very expensive show, but not many people came because there was a lot of noise and turmoil. You understand? You can plan and prepare, but what people know is that we’ll never cancel an event. Even if tensions are high, even if just one child comes, the event will happen.

21:44 Speaker 3 Wow, that’s special.

21:44 Speaker 2 This is a Chabad House that stayed active during the most intense times. I’m talking about operations like Protective Edge and Cast Lead, when the city emptied out. The whole city left, but the Chabad House stayed active. Services and whatever else was needed—we never, ever stopped. Of course, we followed the safety instructions and everything. Another thing: last year, on the eve of Lag BaOmer, we finished the bonfires and got home around two in the morning. Then suddenly we got an alert to go into the safe rooms. A senior figure in Gaza had been killed. So we ran straight into the safe room, waiting for the response, for the nonstop rocket fire we expected.

22:31 Speaker 3 Oh, Lag BaOmer. Right, right.

22:33 Speaker 2 And my husband immediately thinks and says, “Wait, but tomorrow’s the parade. A thousand children are supposed to take part. What do we do?” He immediately says, “I’ll try to find a graphic designer to make a new announcement for the parade.” But it’s already two in the morning, so he gets hold of a graphic designer in New York who’s awake.

22:51 Speaker 3 Nice.

22:52 Speaker 2 And he drafts a new announcement: “We’re not giving up on the Lag BaOmer parade in honor of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. This year we’ll hold the parade in our safe rooms. Anyone who sends us a WhatsApp video of themselves holding a parade in their safe room and reciting the Twelve Pesukim will be entered into a prize drawing.” And wow, the next day everyone was in their safe rooms. No one dared set foot outside. Our WhatsApp was overwhelmed. Nearly the entire city sent us videos of themselves reciting the Twelve Pesukim.

23:20 Speaker 3 Wow.

23:20 Speaker 2 And the most moving thing was a video we received of a ninety-five-year-old woman reciting the Twelve Pesukim. She was holding a Lag BaOmer parade too.

23:28 Speaker 3 Wow, how special.

23:30 Speaker 2 And what happened was... wow. We hadn’t canceled the parade. On the contrary, it became an even bigger parade. Everyone celebrated the parade in their safe room. It was much more challenging and difficult, but there was a parade. So you’re constantly called on to be flexible—

23:46 Speaker 3 Creative.

23:47 Speaker 2 Creative, to think ahead... But it’s like that all the time, with every event we organize. Once we organized a women’s evening, and suddenly the speaker got cold feet about coming to Sderot.

23:57 Speaker 3 Imagine that.

23:57 Speaker 2 She got scared. She said, “Oh...” and tried to cancel. When you live in this place, you constantly have to think on your feet: if people don’t come, what will we do? What about everything we prepared? And you can never estimate how things will go. There’s no certainty. You’re living with uncertainty all the time. Say we’ve prepared for readings of the Ten Commandments in every shul and bought bags to hand out to everyone. You don’t know how many people will come, because many might go away. A lot of people are in Sderot during the week, but on Shabbos they go away. You understand? We can never estimate... There’s no—

24:39 Speaker 4 Because of the situation, or—

24:40 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. People want a quiet Shabbos. We want to sleep peacefully.

24:44 Speaker 4 Wow, I’d never thought of that.

24:45 Speaker 2 Of course. I mean, all it takes is one Red Alert at night and all the kids wake up, and that’s the night gone.

24:52 Speaker 4 Right.

24:53 Speaker 2 I remember times when we’d just go to work half-asleep, because there had been a siren during the night and we couldn’t get back to sleep.

25:00 Speaker 4 Wow, that’s crazy.

25:01 Speaker 2 Yes. So everyone’s exhausted, and the next day, it’s back to the usual routine. That’s the routine in Sderot.

25:07 Speaker 4 What’s crazy is that now, every person in Israel knows what a siren is. Everyone knows. I mean, people can imagine that moment I experienced, because they’ve all experienced it. But with ten seconds, and at an unbelievable frequency... You really can imagine it, because—

25:26 Speaker 2 That’s the thing—

25:27 Speaker 4 It’s not normal.

25:28 Speaker 2 Completely. And the thing is, there’s no time. I’ve been in areas in central Israel where you get a minute and a half when the siren sounds—

25:35 Speaker 4 You must be like...

25:36 Speaker 2 I say to myself, “Wow.”

25:37 Speaker 4 “You could make coffee.”

25:38 Speaker 2 What do you do with all that spare time? You can decide what to take into the safe room, like—

25:43 Speaker 4 Exactly, exactly.

25:43 Speaker 2 For us, there’s so little time that you just grab—you just scoop up the children and run. When you have two babies, you’re like—

25:52 Speaker 4 And I think it’s also about feeling that you’ve done your part, made the effort. You know that it’s not—

25:56 Speaker 2 You know for certain you won’t make it in time, but there’s just no time. That’s the point. You said there’s no time, and... closing the door, let’s say, is—no, we don’t even get that far. And according to the instructions, you’re supposed to close the door and lie on the floor even inside the safe room.

26:13 Speaker 4 Twelve seconds is a stretch of time nobody would normally even count.

26:16 Speaker 2 Yes, unfortunately—

26:16 Speaker 4 Oh, that reminds me of the speech. Oh, maybe you should tell us about it. It was so beautiful. Who wrote his speech? I have to know.

26:24 Speaker 2 So, the production team worked on it together with Avremi and his grandfather—

26:30 Speaker 4 Was it his grandfather’s idea?

26:32 Speaker 2 Together. They wrote it together. It was a combination—

26:36 Speaker 4 Let’s give a little background first—

26:37 Speaker 2 Yes.

26:37 Speaker 4 This year, at the Kinus Hashluchim, because of everything that was going on—although, unfortunately, somehow there’s an escalation every year—but at the Kinus Hashluchim in New York... No, he spoke in Israel.

26:48 Speaker 2 No, at the Kinus Hashluchim in New York.

26:50 Speaker 4 Because there was an event in Israel at the same time, right? A joint banquet that—

26:54 Speaker 2 No, because many shluchim didn’t travel due to the situation, they screened the New York banquet at the banquet in Israel.

27:02 Speaker 4 Oh, but they were there.

27:03 Speaker 2 Huh?

27:03 Speaker 4 They were there.

27:04 Speaker 2 Yes.

27:05 Speaker 4 Oh, okay. So they invited your son, who—how old is he? He’s—people would think—

27:09 Speaker 2 He’s ten now, yes.

27:11 Speaker 4 He was nine, and they invited him to actually speak, to give a speech.

27:14 Speaker 2 Yes.

27:15 Speaker 4 And he spoke about those twelve seconds. So tell us about that beautiful idea. Listen, just watching it made me cry. Apart from all his talent and the way he presented it, but—

27:30 Speaker 2 My husband had already booked the tickets before all the turmoil began.

27:33 Speaker 4 Oh, before the holidays.

27:34 Speaker 2 Yes, yes. Then they asked my son to come and say a few words. They’d seen him interviewed on several programs that had come to the Chabad House to cover all the work being done under fire. So they asked him to speak. The theme of the speech was that the whole world sees those twelve seconds as moments of tension, anxiety and hardship—literally the difference between life and death. We’ve seen that firsthand. There was a child in Sderot, during Operation Guardian of the Walls, unfortunately—the boy, Ido—

28:10 Speaker 4 Ah.

28:10 Speaker 2 He was actually inside a safe room.

28:12 Speaker 4 Right. What happened there?

28:14 Speaker 2 It’s a terrible story—let me digress for a moment. This child was in a safe room in Sderot, in a new building. The safe room met all the protection standards, but a piece of shrapnel pierced its reinforced window. And unfortunately, the child was killed. A five-year-old boy, Ido Avigal, such a sweet child. He was inside the safe room. It was very, very hard. So very hard. The door was closed; everything was closed.

28:44 Speaker 4 It sort of shakes your whole—

28:46 Speaker 2 Right.

28:46 Speaker 4 You tell yourself, “Okay, if we’re in the safe room, everything will be all right.” And then—

28:49 Speaker 2 Exactly. It was a very difficult period, because it shook everyone’s sense of security. Everyone had relied on the safe room. I mean, you’re in a protected space, but... After that, we were instructed to lie down inside the safe room too, so we wouldn’t be in line with the window, even when it was closed. And then my son stood up at the gathering of five thousand Chabad shluchim from around the world, along with friends and supporters, and spoke about those twelve seconds.

29:19 Speaker 4 I want to pause here and play Avremi’s speech. Let’s listen.

29:25 Speaker 5 From the day I was born until today, I’ve heard the Red Alert siren thousands of times. Since I was little, I’ve been used to protecting myself within twelve seconds by running, frightened, to the safe room. And if I’m too far away, I have to find shelter, lie on the ground and cover my head with my hands. Thousands of times I’ve made it to a protected space, and dozens of times I haven’t. I want to ask you a small favor. Close your eyes for twelve seconds. We’ll ask for the lights to be turned off, and then we’ll begin. Shluchim, the Rebbe’s shluchim, I’m telling you this so we can grow from it, learn from it, and value twelve seconds. The world tends to think of twelve seconds as a time of fear and anxiety, as the difference between life and death. But a shliach of the Rebbe knows what can be accomplished in twelve seconds and how to use every moment. In twelve seconds, you can give a Jew a smile from ear to ear. In twelve seconds, you can lift a Jew’s spirits with a kind word. In twelve seconds, you can say a blessing with a Jew. In twelve seconds, you can simply give a Jew a hug. You can bring them happiness, offer support, help them believe. You can simply give them their life back. And yes, in twelve seconds you can run with a baby in your arms straight to the safe room and save a life. Or you can lie on the ground in the street, cover your head with your hands, and hope the rocket doesn’t fall on any Jew. You can daven, picture the Rebbe, and simply ask that he say “Enough!” to our troubles and walk with us to the third Beis Hamikdash, leading the way. Every shliach has his own challenges in his place of shlichus. And I suggest that just as I’m not leaving my place of shlichus despite the challenges, you too should stay in your places of shlichus and keep bringing light. We must not despair. The Rebbe gives us strength. I, too, am staying in Sderot with joy.

33:23 Speaker 5 I’ll look after every Jew, because I’m a shliach of the Rebbe. Chazak, chazak, venischazek.

33:57 Speaker 6 It struck a chord, because the whole world was anxious. Everyone was terribly anxious, glued to the news, waiting for updates, and it was very, very hard. Then a child who’s been dealing with this comes along—a child who’s been running from sirens since he was three, who’s been caught by them thousands of times, at home and outside. A child who’s run to a protected space so many times. And he says, “Look what you can do in twelve seconds.”

34:29 Speaker 7 It really—

34:30 Speaker 6 You can change the world.

34:32 Speaker 7 Wow. Really bring light into the darkness in—

34:33 Speaker 6 Exactly. And we got responses from all over the world. Really. One shliach even approached my husband and said, “Listen, we’re in a very, very difficult place of shlichus, some remote corner at the end of the world, and we’d decided to leave. But my wife said to me, ‘You know what? Go to one last Kinus Hashluchim.’ So I’m sitting at the Kinus, and I see a nine-and-a-half-year-old boy talking about his challenges and difficulties, and he says, ‘I’m staying in Sderot too, to continue my shlichus.’”

35:06 Speaker 7 Oh, wow.

35:07 Speaker 6 “At that moment, we decided to stay in our place of shlichus. Because if a child can stay in a place like Sderot and not leave his shlichus, but continue it with all his strength, then we’ll continue our shlichus too.”

35:20 Speaker 7 Incredible.

35:20 Speaker 6 And that’s just one story. Responses came pouring in. They showed it in schools everywhere, and people watched it at Chabad House events. It gave people so much strength to see a child who could so easily have been broken by something like this. It’s very, very hard. And he comes and says, “I’m staying in my place of shlichus, and I’m continuing despite the challenges and difficulties.”

35:46 Speaker 7 Wow.

35:46 Speaker 6 Yes.

35:47 Speaker 7 Let’s go back to Simchas Torah.

35:48 Speaker 6 Yes.

35:49 Speaker 7 We skipped over it so elegantly. Were you at home on Simchas Torah?

35:53 Speaker 6 Yes. It’s Simchas Torah, and we’re at home. We celebrate hakafos at the Chabad House, and then we have a meal. The Chabad House has two floors: we finish the meal and go upstairs for hakafos. We finished at about two in the morning and went home. By the time we got to sleep, it was around three. We had no idea that, not long after hakafos, we’d be facing attacks.

36:19 Speaker 7 Mm, something.

36:20 Speaker 6 At 6:27, we hear lots and lots of booms and sirens. So we quickly run to the safe room, and then we hear a lot of gunfire too. We don’t understand what’s happening. We’re sure it’s the army firing back already, because what else is all that gunfire? We’re used to booms and sirens, but the sirens just keep going, one after another.

36:38 Speaker 7 So your whole family is shut inside the safe room at home.

36:40 Speaker 6 Yes. My parents had come from Kfar Chabad; they were staying with us too.

36:43 Speaker 7 Mm.

36:44 Speaker 6 We stay huddled in the safe room until things calm down a little around eight, and then my husband gets ready to go to the Chabad House. Now, he doesn’t know what’s happening outside. By then—at 6:45, actually—there’s already that well-known video of the pickup trucks entering Sderot. Pickup trucks full of terrorists had entered Sderot, massacring everyone they encountered outside. But at eight, my husband is getting ready to leave the house. We’re used to an emergency routine. The Chabad House is close by, so he’s going to open it. It’s protected, and people will be able to come for hakafos between sirens.

37:23 Speaker 7 After all, it’s Simchas Torah too. It’s not—

37:24 Speaker 6 It’s Simchas Torah. Unfortunately, we’re used to these emergency routines. Then we start getting phone calls on my father’s phone. My battery has died, and my husband’s phone is at the Chabad House. Family members are calling us. We see the phone vibrating, and when we answer, my sister and my brother-in-law are saying, “There are terrorists in Sderot.” It sounds utterly far-fetched to us, because it’s not a scenario we’d ever prepared for. My husband is sure it can’t be true. What? Terrorists have entered Sderot and taken over the police station? It sounds unreal, impossible to grasp. We don’t believe it, but we go inside, turn off the lights and try to close the windows as best we can. Some of the windows don’t even have shutters. It turns out my son had actually seen a pickup truck through the window. He thought they were soldiers, because they were dressed like soldiers, you understand? But he said, “They had a band on.” Then we had to explain to the children that they needed to be quiet and go into the safe room. We had to gently explain that there were terrorists, and then the whole—

38:34 Speaker 7 You have no idea.

38:35 Speaker 6 No idea. Then we realize that what our son saw was the terrorists.

38:39 Speaker 7 Oh my.

38:39 Speaker 6 Yes. And just on instinct, my son grabs the knives so we’ll be ready. You have to understand, this is a situation that’s completely new to us. We don’t really understand what’s happening either. We think it’s one or two cells. We don’t know there are more than a hundred terrorists inside the city. And it’s a small city. My husband tries calling the police, but no one answers. We look for the army, but we don’t see anyone, you understand? And there’s so much gunfire, with sirens going off at the same time. We have to think about what to say to the children and what we’re conveying to them. My husband was saved because he came back home. He had already left, and I called him back because of the phone calls—

39:23 Speaker 7 Wow.

39:23 Speaker 6 —we’d received. He was already on his way out, right into the terrorists’ path. They were by the fence behind us, on the main road. We live on the main road, and they drove past behind us. He was just meters away.

39:34 Speaker 7 That’s unbelievable.

39:34 Speaker 6 Completely. And we only understand that afterward. At the time, we don’t grasp the scale of it. We don’t realize we’re just one point in the entire area around Gaza. Everyone thinks the fighting is happening in their own area. So we spend many long hours in the safe room. We bring food in, do hakafos with the children in the safe room, take the Chitas, hold the Rebbe’s picture and daven there. All the while there are sirens and booms and so much gunfire. Toward noon, we start seeing special forces searching the city, and then the rumors begin. My husband gets hold of a phone and tries to reach the people who daven at the Chabad House, to tell them not to leave home, because people don’t know. There had been no alert warning of a terrorist infiltration, you understand? There’s no electricity either—the power has gone out—and no communications. Whenever there’s a little reception, he tries calling more people. Then my neighbor knocks on our door and says, “Do you know what’s going on? My husband went to daven and hasn’t come back.” We ask her, “Do you know there are terrorists?” She says, “What? I didn’t know!” She starts to panic, goes back home, and we begin davening for her husband to come home. He did come back in the afternoon. But you see, people didn’t know. Nobody knew.

40:43 Speaker 8 I think, really, a lot of people turn off their phones on Shabbos.

40:47 Speaker 6 Right. It’s a mostly traditional city.

40:49 Speaker 8 And not everyone had someone who could call them—

40:51 Speaker 6 Right.

40:51 Speaker 8 —someone who knew what was happening and could let them know.

40:52 Speaker 6 So there were lots of people we couldn’t reach, either because their phones were off or because there was no reception. It was total chaos, and there was no police station. I mean, there was no... because there was fighting, so—

41:05 Speaker 8 So you didn’t really grasp what was happening until...

41:07 Speaker 6 We grasped that something was happening, but we didn’t know the incredible scale of it. And through it all, the power kept going out. People in the apartment buildings put their lives on the line. In a split-second decision, some people shut down the elevators. You could see the terrorists entering a building and trying to call the elevator. When it didn’t come, they left. In one building, a neighbor shouted down from an upper floor to people on their way to daven: “Go back home! There are terrorists!” You understand? They had no idea, so they went back home. There are so, so many stories of miracles—people saved at the very last moment. A friend told me, “Listen, the night before, I took the key and put it up high because my grandson was playing with the door. The next morning, my son-in-law got up to go daven early, at sunrise, but he couldn’t find the key. So he stayed, and then the sirens started. He didn’t go out, and he was saved.”

41:52 Speaker 8 Oh my goodness.

41:53 Speaker 6 So many, many stories. Another friend’s husband was supposed to go to one of those shuls. The terrorists surrounded two shuls, one in a portable building and one in a shelter. They tried to get in but couldn’t. There were heroic residents there who fought them. They had a plan to take over the entire city. They’d already taken over the police station, and they’d surrounded the roads in and out of the city.

42:20 Speaker 8 Even the phrase “take over” sounds like—

42:21 Speaker 6 Exactly.

42:22 Speaker 8 It’s another world.

42:22 Speaker 6 Yes. They came with detailed maps showing all the shuls and schools. They knew everything. And while those battles were going on, dozens of city residents were murdered—more than fifty. The dear officers of the Sderot police station fought a real battle. They gave their lives and saved an entire city, an entire city. It’s a city of thirty-five thousand people. And for all the grief and pain and loss, we saw tremendous miracles here. If the terrorists had entered an hour later, when all the shuls were full... It was Simchas Torah. Everyone goes to hakafos; everyone goes.

43:06 Speaker 8 Wow.

43:07 Speaker 6 And the police officers held them up at the station and fought them. It took three days to liberate the station, where the terrorists had barricaded themselves. On Motzaei Shabbos, we start hearing all the news about what has happened, including terrible news about people close to us who had been murdered. There wasn’t a part of the city without terrorists. They’d entered through several access points and neighborhoods, and they were moving around the whole city and barricading themselves in. The security forces gave their lives fighting them in fierce battles. Then, on Sunday morning, we decide to leave.

43:47 Speaker 8 Wait, do you go to sleep on Motzaei Shabbos? How do you even manage?

43:50 Speaker 6 You can’t sleep. You really can’t sleep.

43:52 Speaker 8 You’d slept maybe three hours on Shabbos.

43:54 Speaker 6 Really. We were exhausted, completely spent. We couldn’t sleep. The city wasn’t safe, terrorists were still roaming around, and there were sirens all the time, explosions, rockets falling, chaos, and all the reports coming in. There was no electricity, no air conditioning, and it was very, very hard. On Sunday we decided to leave. We left the house in the middle of a siren—right in the middle of a siren. Now, leaving was frightening because there were still terrorists outside, but it had become very, very hard to stay at home with little children. It was really hard. By the time we managed to get out, the children just came in their pajamas. We took nothing. I was still unplugging the hotplate, and then we got into the car and lay down inside it. There was a fear of terrorists shooting at us, terrorists—

44:42 Speaker 9 And all this was with your parents.

44:44 Speaker 6 Yes, they drove out in a car behind us. Exactly. We left the city, and I saw very, very difficult sights. Really. Smashed-up cars and terrible things. We simply didn’t recognize the place. The city looked like a battlefield. It was so frightening, and as we drove, we could still see terrorists being caught right in front of us. Just imagine what we were seeing.

45:06 Speaker 9 You just step on the gas and...

45:07 Speaker 6 And drive, and we had to lie down in the car so they wouldn’t see us. We had the Tanya and the Chitas, and we were saying lots and lots of Tehillim and Tanya. Then we managed to get out of the city. Just getting out was a miracle, because there was still concern about terrorists who had barricaded themselves inside.

45:30 Speaker 9 Wow.

45:31 Speaker 6 Then we arrived in Jerusalem. Some really good people provided us with an apartment, and... we got to Jeru— But we had nothing. And it was simply amazing how the Jewish people rallied around us. People brought us hot meals. The wonderful Chabad shluchos in Jerusalem brought food and basic things—a kettle, everything.

45:52 Speaker 9 What, was it an empty apartment that...?

45:53 Speaker 6 Yes, yes, yes.

45:54 Speaker 9 One that happened to be available.

45:55 Speaker 6 Yes. Good people gave it to us. Everything happened at a moment’s notice, and everyone was shaken up and confused, still trying to recover from the experience. Then my husband went back to Sderot, and I said to him, “Wow, stay a little while.” But he got up to leave right away.

46:11 Speaker 9 That same day?

46:12 Speaker 6 Yes. I said to him, “How can you go back when everything is so horrific and frightening?” And understand, even a month later they found another terrorist in the city. Do you understand? The city was still under threat from terrorists. He told me, “They need me. The Chabad House has to respond now. There’s no question.” So I stayed with the children in Jerusalem, and my husband went back to Sderot.

46:33 Speaker 9 Wow.

46:34 Speaker 6 And what happened was that the Chabad House turned into an enormous emergency operations center. Huge quantities of supplies, food, and things for the soldiers. We had to help residents who were trapped, because people were still inside their homes. Not everyone had managed to leave, not everyone could get around, and not everyone had a car. So many people were stuck without medicine, and babies were stuck without formula or diapers. There was no supermarket, no Super-Pharm, no pharmacy, nothing. Just getting the residents out of the city took an operation of about two and a half weeks, until they managed to get everyone out. We received so many calls for help. And huge numbers of soldiers filled the city, gathering in all the schools. They needed help and food, tzitzis and tefillin, and we were getting—

47:22 Speaker 9 All the action of those first...

47:24 Speaker 6 Exactly. And we were getting calls from all over the world. Suddenly there’d be a call from Australia at two in the morning: “I’m donating a hundred pairs of tefillin for the soldiers right now.”

47:30 Speaker 9 Oh, wow.

47:31 Speaker 6 A pallet would be unloaded at the Chabad House, and then another would arrive—literally pallets of things. Diapers, wipes, canned goods, vegetables, fruit. People simply sent us supplies, and the Chabad House also bought enormous quantities, because we had to respond right then, nonstop. And there was something else, too: the murdered people had to be buried. But how could you hold burials? Rockets were being fired, and there was still the threat of terrorists, so the funerals were very, very small.

47:58 Speaker 9 Oh, wow.

47:58 Speaker 6 So my husband and father-in-law went out under fire, and it was terribly frightening. They looked for a quiet place, never knowing what might happen. It was real mesirus nefesh to bury all those holy people who had been murdered. That was another challenge, alongside all the work with the soldiers and everything else. I remember once my husband went to bring aid to a family, and he was suspected of being a terrorist because no one was outside. The security forces saw a bearded man near a building in the middle of the night and stopped him. That’s the level of tension I mean.

48:24 Speaker 9 Frightening.

48:25 Speaker 6 Very. The city was so deserted that not even a cat was out on the street. Slowly, they managed to evacuate the residents, but older people remained, people with disabilities, people who couldn’t get around. Not everyone evacuated. A few thousand stayed in the city.

48:39 Speaker 9 The whole time?

48:40 Speaker 6 The whole time.

48:40 Speaker 9 Throughout that entire period.

48:41 Speaker 6 Yes, yes. So they came to the Chabad House for whatever help and assistance they needed.

48:46 Speaker 9 Wow.

48:46 Speaker 6 And there were deliveries of hot food. People from all over the country sent us cooked meals. Soldiers would come and take individual packages. And even at the Chabad House itself—yes, it’s protected, but two days after Simchas Torah there was a direct hit at the entrance to the Chabad House. My father-in-law had been standing right there. He heard the whistle of the Iron Dome interceptor and ran inside. It landed in the very spot where he’d been.

49:10 Speaker 9 Wow.

49:10 Speaker 6 We have our famous Qassam menorah at the entrance to the Chabad House. It’s made from Qassam rocket casings, and its shamash is an Iron Dome interceptor.

49:21 Speaker 9 Oh, wow.

49:21 Speaker 6 It says, “Do not fear, My servant Yaakov.” That’s our symbol. The menorah wasn’t damaged, but there was shrapnel all around it. You can still see where the rocket landed at the entrance to the Chabad House. And rockets kept falling nonstop. So being at the Chabad House meant literally being under fire—under nonstop Qassam and rocket fire, and under the threat of terrorists, while the security forces were still searching the city and finding more and more...

49:50 Speaker 9 Did your husband travel there every day, or did he stay there?

49:53 Speaker 6 He came to Jerusalem from time to time, but he spent most of the time in Sderot with his father. I was constantly davening for him, because he was there, and I knew he really, really needed a lot of prayers to get through it all safely. It was very, very complicated. The city was empty, but there was still work to do there. Thousands and thousands of soldiers were in the city, along with residents who still needed help. The Chabad House basically turned into a branch of Rami Levy.

50:24 Speaker 9 Oh, wow.

50:24 Speaker 6 Enormous quantities of food and every product the soldiers and residents needed.

50:30 Speaker 9 And how were you managing in Jerusalem?

50:32 Speaker 6 Wow.

50:33 Speaker 9 Alone with the children. You had to start life over on your own for the time being. So much uncertainty—it’s just crazy.

50:41 Speaker 6 Wow.

50:42 Speaker 9 I mean, if we zoom out for a second, the whole country was living with uncertainty.

50:45 Speaker 6 Right.

50:45 Speaker 9 So all the more so for you.

50:48 Speaker 6 Think what it means to uproot children. Suddenly they find themselves in Jerusalem. It’s not as though you can just [unclear] the children. So when a good friend of my husband’s called and immediately offered us an apartment in Jerusalem, we went. At first I couldn’t really take anything in. All we could think about was getting out.

51:05 Speaker 9 Right. You had somewhere to go, so...

51:07 Speaker 6 Then I worked backward from there. We’d arrived in Jerusalem along with thousands of other evacuees from Sderot. So I said, okay, we’re here in Jerusalem—let’s open our eyes. All around us were more than ten hotels packed with evacuees and children, and we did a lot of activities there. I suddenly found myself in Jerusalem, a new city where everything was unfamiliar. The children still needed to recover and take in the fact that they were somewhere new, and we had to get our lives going again. What really helped me cope was doing things.

51:37 Speaker 9 Yes.

51:37 Speaker 6 The counselors from the Resilience Center are always saying: How do you deal with trauma? How do you build resilience? By doing things. When a person is active, when they feel they’re needed, that helps them cope.

51:52 Speaker 9 Absolutely.

51:52 Speaker 6 So while we were there, we ran lots of activities for children in the hotels. I gave women’s classes and Tanya classes, and we went around the hotels and met the women we were close with. The people in the hotels had everything in terms of supplies: meals, donations. Suddenly an entire hotel would be wearing Naot shoes because someone had donated them, or everyone would have coats because coats had been donated, or everyone would have huge bags of candy and games. Amazing people donated so much, but—

52:19 Speaker 9 They all had the same viruses and the same infections.

52:22 Speaker 6 Yes, they’re sitting in the lobby, and you know, it’s as if they have nothing to wait for. They’re just passing the day. And when we came and did an activity with the pesukim and Tanya, they told us, “Wow, thank you so much for not giving up on us. You’re coming here too.” That gave me a lot of strength. I mean, I’m sitting with a circle of women in one of the hotel lobbies, and there are singers and performances and all sorts of things, but they want Tanya. They want to connect. They come, and that’s what gave me strength in those moments. Okay, I myself am an evacuee with children—

52:58 Speaker 9 Say you come to give a Tanya class. Where are the children at that time?

53:01 Speaker 6 So my mother-in-law helped me too, my dear mother-in-law.

53:03 Speaker 9 Wow.

53:04 Speaker 6 And there was also something amazing: an organization called Sisters of Iron. It’s a Chareidi organization. I left my details with them; they were helping evacuees and the wives and families of reservists. Then these sweet volunteers got back to me, wonderful young women from Jerusalem. If they’re listening to this podcast, a warm hello to you, sweethearts! They came to help me with the children.

53:25 Speaker 9 Wow, how lovely.

53:27 Speaker 6 It was truly amazing, amazing, amazing.

53:28 Speaker 9 A lifesaver.

53:29 Speaker 6 A lifesaver. They came and helped me with the children, and it really helped. It helped so much, because you’re in a new place and you’ve been uprooted. This isn’t a move you prepare for, where you say, “Okay, we’ll be here for a few months.” You don’t know anything. You don’t know what will happen tomorrow, or even this evening—nothing. So it’s very, very complicated. And then we found ourselves going around to other places where evacuees were staying. The residents of Sderot were in more than 110 hotels.

54:01 Speaker 9 Wow.

54:01 Speaker 6 At the Dead Sea, in Eilat, Jerusalem, Tiberias, Herzliya and Netanya—all over the country. We found ourselves traveling from place to place, including Tel Aviv, and going to hold a 9 Kislev farbrengen together with the Chabad House in Eilat for all the evacuees there, meeting them where they were. So the Chabad House’s work was divided between all the activities for evacuees and keeping the Chabad House running.

54:26 Speaker 9 That’s incredible.

54:27 Speaker 6 Wow.

54:27 Speaker 9 And meanwhile, you’re somehow getting the children into schools in Jerusalem.

54:30 Speaker 6 Yes, some of the children went to schools in Jerusalem—wonderful schools that embraced us with so much sensitivity, truly. And then you try, more or less, to stabilize what you can. It’s very complicated. It’s very challenging, because my husband is there, and there’s a great deal of activity, a great deal of work.

54:56 Speaker 9 Are you alone with the children on Shabbos?

54:58 Speaker 6 Well, my husband came for Shabbos.

55:00 Speaker 9 To look after them.

55:02 Speaker 6 Yes. And a lot of things happened during that period—

55:08 Speaker 9 Well, presumably every week there was—

55:10 Speaker 6 Yes. One of the moving things that happened on 9 Kislev was that my father-in-law decided he wanted to print an edition of Tanya on the site of the police station that had been destroyed. The Sderot police station had been a large, heavily fortified, three-story building. It became ground zero. Nothing was left—just a flat expanse with those steel rods from the construction sticking out. It’s a huge site that has now remained as a memorial. My father-in-law said, “We need to print Tanya there in memory of those who were murdered, those dear police officers.” We knew them personally. These were officers we used to bring matzos to, read the Megillah for on Purim, and who accompanied the Chabad parades. I mean, we had a very, very close connection with them. One of the dear officers, Mor Shkuri, was a young woman. Tomorrow would have been her wedding date—the day she was supposed to get married.

56:03 Speaker 9 Wow.

56:03 Speaker 6 We knew her very well, and her mother, Ayala, who comes to our classes. Mor was an officer who fought on the roof of the station until her last bullet. She was texting her mother, calling her, speaking with her through it all, until she ran out of ammunition and a sniper shot her.

56:19 Speaker 9 Oh, wow.

56:20 Speaker 6 So we decided, at the last minute, to print an edition of Tanya. When? The very next day: Thursday, 10 Kislev, the Festival of Liberation.

56:31 Speaker 9 Yes.

56:32 Speaker 6 So my husband tried to feel out whether someone from the station—a commander, someone—might come...

56:39 Speaker 9 One of the survivors.

56:40 Speaker 6 ...come to the Tanya printing, but the answer was an absolute no. We were in the middle of fighting; there was no way they could come. So it was a very small Tanya printing, just a handful of people. Then, as they began printing the Tanya on this auspicious day, there was suddenly a commotion. A big excavator arrived, and they realized something was happening, though they didn’t know exactly what. It turned out that residents nearby had complained about a sewage problem. The excavator had come to lift the sewer cover near the police station, and out of the sewer came the decomposing body of a terrorist. We’re talking about 10 Kislev—from Simchas Torah until 10 Kislev.

57:23 Speaker 9 A month and a half already.

57:24 Speaker 6 Yes. And the body was booby-trapped. So lots and lots of security forces arrived, there was a huge commotion, and many news crews came to cover the discovery. They removed the terrorist’s body. Apparently, his plan had been to come out of the sewer once the chaos died down and continue fighting. But because the station had collapsed in on itself after that terrible shelling, he had died under the rubble. So there was a huge commotion right in the middle of the Tanya printing. They removed his body, and then where did everyone find themselves? At the Tanya printing.

58:03 Speaker 9 By chance.

58:04 Speaker 6 Then the station commander said, “Oh, wait, this is what he spoke to me about yesterday, so of course I should also—”

58:09 Speaker 9 They found the Tanya while they were searching.

58:10 Speaker 6 No, that’s the thing—they weren’t searching for it. It’s simply amazing. The Tanya printing had been planned at the last minute, spontaneously. There were five people: the printer, my father-in-law, my husband, and Rabbi Rosen, another shliach. There were only about five people. And suddenly it became a huge Tanya printing. All the news crews were covering the printing of Tanya.

58:33 Speaker 9 Wow.

58:34 Speaker 6 And the station commander and the officers all wanted to press the button to print the Tanya. They were so moved that they said they wanted a regular Tanya class at the new Sderot police station when it’s built.

58:45 Speaker 9 Wow.

58:45 Speaker 6 It was so moving. And the remarkable thing about this story is, first, the author of the Tanya made sure there would be a large Tanya printing there. That’s exactly how it felt.

58:54 Speaker 9 Absolutely.

58:54 Speaker 6 From a small, intimate Tanya printing, it suddenly became a well-attended event with all the top people and all the news networks—

59:02 Speaker 9 “All the top people,” in quotation marks.

59:05 Speaker 6 Exactly. Yes, exactly. And second, we saw something tangible here: when you add an act of light, you automatically overcome the darkness. Truly, truly, truly.

59:15 Speaker 9 Absolutely. I think there’s also that aspect of—

59:17 Speaker 6 We saw it with our own eyes.

59:18 Speaker 9 “We’ll print the Tanya even if it’s small.” Just do it—that’s the main thing.

59:21 Speaker 6 Do it, even if no one... I mean, we wanted a big crowd. We wanted the officers to come, and the friends of those who were murdered, and a commander. But no one could come—we were in the middle of fighting. It was outdoors, too, right in the street. And it simply turned into a large, well-attended, dignified Tanya printing. We saw with our own eyes how, when we add an act of light, we automatically overcome the darkness. That’s true of every small act we do. And that’s just one of the stories. There’s also the writing of a Sefer Torah. We went to all the places where— We started at the Chabad House, with an initiative from one of the donors who wanted a Sefer Torah in memory of everyone who was murdered. So we went to Nova, Re’im, Urim and Nachal Oz. In each place, people wrote a few letters, and soldiers wrote a few letters. With Hashem’s help, the plan is to bring it in after Simchas Torah this year.

1:00:18 Speaker 9 Wow.

1:00:20 Speaker 6 Yes, and there are many, many more stories. First, so many stories of miracles that we keep hearing from more and more families. My sister-in-law was also saved by a miracle. She lives in a neighborhood at the entrance to the city, and she got a phone call warning that the terrorists would probably be near them, because their neighborhood is right at the entrance, beside the road. So they made a split-second decision to leave home. They drove away at 8:01. At 8:03, the terrorists could already be seen on the cameras around their house.

1:00:53 Speaker 9 Oh my goodness.

1:00:54 Speaker 6 Just like that. She was saved by a miracle. And we hear so many more stories of entire families being saved—saved by extraordinary miracles.

1:01:06 Speaker 9 Look, if there were fifty people murdered, and the city has thirty-five thousand residents, that’s—

1:01:11 Speaker 6 Yes.

1:01:11 Speaker 9 It’s staggering.

1:01:12 Speaker 6 And they had planned for many, many more.

1:01:15 Speaker 9 Yes.

1:01:15 Speaker 6 And so we’re trying, how do you put it, to juggle everything during the evacuation, which is very, very challenging. I remember going home during Chanukah. I said, “I—” We had to leave our apartment and move to another apartment in Jerusalem.

1:01:35 Speaker 9 That was the first time you’d gone back—

1:01:36 Speaker 6 Yes.

1:01:36 Speaker 9 To Sderot since—

1:01:37 Speaker 6 After a month and a half, more than that, almost two months.

1:01:40 Speaker 9 Two months. Two months.

1:01:41 Speaker 6 Two months later. So I worked up the courage to go back to the city, and as I drove in, it felt like driving on Yom Kippur. There was nobody outside.

1:01:52 Speaker 9 A ghost town.

1:01:53 Speaker 6 The neighborhood was empty. Nobody was there. I went into the house feeling apprehensive, and you can imagine what it looked like, because everything had been left just as it was. What had grown in the fridge?

1:02:05 Speaker 9 Wow.

1:02:06 Speaker 6 The whole thing was just crazy. The house was so stuffy, and… it was very, very hard. I stayed one night and left quickly, because you couldn’t sleep—

1:02:17 Speaker 9 You went there without the children?

1:02:18 Speaker 6 With the children.

1:02:19 Speaker 9 Oh, with the children.

1:02:21 Speaker 6 It was crazy. The booms and the sirens and— So we went back, and I thought to myself, people took advantage of that ceasefire, when there was the deal and the hostages came back. People said, “That’s it, now we can go home for a bit and feel at home.” People wanted so badly to feel at home. It got to the point where people were staying in hotels but planning to cook their own food. Once, in one of the hotels, the fire alarm went off. They thought a fire had broken out. It turned out that one of the women missed homemade schnitzel so much that she’d brought an electric frying pan and was frying schnitzel in her room. People wanted home.

1:02:59 Speaker 9 Of course. Being a refugee, and…

1:03:02 Speaker 6 They wanted to feel at home. They wanted their own beds, their homes, even for a little while. And it brought home to me so sharply that we’ve been displaced for two thousand years, and we want to reach our real home. That longing for home—what is home? Our real home is in the Geulah, in the Beis Hamikdash. When we were evacuated, we truly felt it. Everyone wants their own corner, to smell the familiar smell of home, to have their own sheets and their own food. Everyone wanted to feel at home. So during that ceasefire, people went home, felt at home for a few hours, and then went back.

1:03:42 Speaker 9 Wow.

1:03:42 Speaker 6 Just to feel at home. It makes that feeling so clear. What does it mean to be displaced? We really are in exile. We’ve been displaced. All of us have.

1:03:50 Speaker 9 Exactly. No matter how comfortable the hotel is, you—

1:03:53 Speaker 6 You want to go home.

1:03:54 Speaker 9 You miss—

1:03:54 Speaker 6 You want your home. You want the comfort, your own little corner.

1:03:58 Speaker 9 Exactly. Wow, that’s beautiful.

1:04:00 Speaker 6 Yes.

1:04:01 Speaker 9 At what point did you finally decide to return? Was it a joint decision? Because you need schools, you need things to be functioning in the city.

1:04:09 Speaker 6 The city officially reopened on the third of March. I don’t remember the date—late Adar I. The city officially reopened, and residents gradually began returning, little by little. But they were returning to a wartime routine. It wasn’t as though we were going back to some kind of—

1:04:25 Speaker 9 “That’s it, it’s over…”

1:04:26 Speaker 6 No. We were going back to a wartime routine. And what is our routine now? Booms, sirens, fighting. We can really feel the fighting, and it isn’t easy. We’re living with fighting as our routine now. So it’s complicated, because when you evacuate, you think, “That’s it, this will end, and then we’ll go back to something different.” No.

1:04:56 Speaker 9 Right. I think at the start of the war, too, the feeling was that the IDF would finish them off and—

1:05:01 Speaker 6 But it’s not simple—

1:05:01 Speaker 9 Everything would be calm, and then suddenly you come back and it’s like, what’s changed?

1:05:04 Speaker 6 It’s not simple to finish them off in such a short time. It will take a long, long time. We pray and hope that, with Hashem’s help, the righteous soldiers, who are truly risking their lives and fighting, will do the job properly. And… I’m saying, it will take time, but we’re prepared for it to take time, as long as there are results on the ground. What country would allow a region of its own to be hit by missiles regularly? It’s inconceivable.

1:05:39 Speaker 9 Absolutely.

1:05:40 Speaker 6 You live with it, but when you step back for a moment, you say, “Wow, how can something like this even happen?” And unfortunately, since the Disengagement, the launches have increased and intensified. These aren’t those little Qassam rockets anymore; they’re much more sophisticated missiles. I have a friend in the city who was evacuated from Gush Katif. She says, “They’re firing at us from the places where we used to live.”

1:06:04 Speaker 9 How terrible. Oh my.

1:06:06 Speaker 6 Yes, it’s inconceivable. On Independence Day, there was a march of fifty thousand people who came from all over the country to say, “We want to settle Gaza again, with Jewish communities.” They came to the city to show support. There was this march, and I was watching it from home and seeing crowds, rivers and rivers of people coming in. I thought, “Wow, they’re taking a risk. There could be a siren now, and suddenly—”

1:06:31 Speaker 9 And there was a siren.

1:06:33 Speaker 6 Suddenly there was a siren, and everyone lay down on the ground, and there was chaos. Wow, you see? It’s complicated. Yes.

1:06:43 Speaker 9 Exile within exile.

1:06:44 Speaker 6 Take the Lag BaOmer parade, for example. We weren’t given permission to hold the parade, only the gathering in a protected space, and that was limited to three hundred participants. But we didn’t give up. We went around the Chabad House and held the parade. We said we— This time we didn’t even do—

1:06:56 Speaker 9 A commando-unit display.

1:06:56 Speaker 6 Yes, so we did— You see? But every event here has to comply with all the guidelines and instructions.

1:07:02 Speaker 9 Are there families who haven’t returned?

1:07:04 Speaker 6 Yes, there are families who haven’t returned.

1:07:06 Speaker 9 And that’s that.

1:07:07 Speaker 6 I don’t know if they’ll return, but they still haven’t come back to the city. Yes. They’ve now extended the evacuation almost until the end of the summer for those who haven’t returned. And those who have returned are brave residents who have come back into the…

1:07:22 Speaker 9 Are the schools operating, for example?

1:07:24 Speaker 6 Yes, the schools are operating.

1:07:26 Speaker 9 So there must be teachers who haven’t come back. It’s not really…

1:07:28 Speaker 6 Right, right. So—

1:07:29 Speaker 9 Everything’s operating in this in-between way, neither here nor there.

1:07:31 Speaker 6 On an emergency footing. Yes.

1:07:33 Speaker 9 It’s unbelievable. Wow. Listen, I feel bad sending you back to Sderot now. I almost don’t want to end this conversation. Remember we planned to meet about a month ago, and then there was all that terrible chaos?

1:07:44 Speaker 6 Right, it was very, very hard. A little over a month ago, fighting started again in the northern Gaza Strip, and we hear it very clearly. It got to the point where we couldn’t sleep at night and couldn’t do anything at all. And the worst of it was on Independence Day and Memorial Day, when they fired a lot. The municipality sent out a notice saying that the Memorial Day siren would sound, but if there was rocket fire during it—

1:08:14 Speaker 9 Wait, so they wouldn’t fire during the…

1:08:16 Speaker 6 If there was rocket fire, the siren would change to a Code Red alert. Do you understand the reality we’re living in? So we went into the safe room ahead of time for the siren, and there really was an alert during the Memorial Day siren. Do you understand? It’s just crazy.

1:08:30 Speaker 9 That’s unbelievable.

1:08:31 Speaker 6 It’s as though they know exactly when to fire, right during the Memorial Day ceremony.

1:08:38 Speaker 9 Wow, listen, you’ve given us so much strength. I really want to put things in order a little, so we come away with something concrete. First, there’s what you said about being on alert: taking that negative sense of alertness and turning it into something positive—let’s be ready at every moment for Moshiach to arrive and surprise us. It says, “The son of David comes only when one’s mind is elsewhere.” So can we be alert for something that comes when our minds are elsewhere? I mean, can we live with the sense that it could happen at any moment? It’s real. It’s here. It’s, as they say, right behind the door. And then there’s the idea that when you’re busy doing things, it simply saves you. It really does. I’ve experienced it in a different way, but that’s just how it works. Ultimately, when we’re doing things for others, it takes us out of our own egos. When I’m thinking about someone else’s problem, I can’t think about my own at the same time. There’s only room for one thought in my head at a time. Right now I’m giving the women’s class. I can’t be thinking about what will happen to me, when I’ll get home, what my house looks like. Whether I have things going on or not, my mind is somewhere else. I’m concerned about someone who’s crying to me right now, and I need to listen to her. And that simply saves us. It’s a gift we’ve been given, and I think that if we really take it in and understand how much it helps us to keep busy helping others—when I have problems, to think instead about someone else’s problems and how I can help them—it also helps me cope with my own problems. So it’s just amazing to hear

1:10:17 Speaker 9 that you did that and it actually helped you.

1:10:20 Speaker 6 Exactly. And you know, in Sderot we have so many psychologists and resilience therapists, and a huge, beautiful resilience center. They try to help the residents build resilience. And their whole motto is: keep doing things, act, get involved. That’s what gives people the strength to cope, because coping is challenging, and right now it’s challenging for everyone. Everyone is living with uncertainty now. All of the Jewish people are in a very, very difficult situation.

1:10:49 Speaker 9 Everyone needs a lot of resilience.

1:10:50 Speaker 6 Absolutely. And what helps is adding more acts of light. I can tell you that even in Sderot, we hand out Neshek every Thursday—Shabbos candles.

1:11:00 Speaker 9 The word “Neshek” in Sderot.

1:11:01 Speaker 6 Exactly. One day I found myself handing out Shabbos candles. I’d gone with my little ones to the shopping center, which had reopened after five months of quiet, when nothing had been open there. I said, “Wow, the shopping center is open now. It’s a big, beautiful center. Come on, let’s see which shops have opened; let’s go around and hand them out.” And suddenly there’s a siren, a Code Red. Now I’m out in the open. There’s nowhere to run. I just lie down on the ground with the children. And I say to myself, “Wow—our Neshek, Shabbos candles, against their weapons.”

1:11:31 Speaker 9 Wow, literally.

1:11:32 Speaker 6 It was so tangible. Everything was exploding over my head. Wow. And women would say to me, “Wow, you’re handing them out even now, when there are Code Red alerts? Aren’t you afraid?” And suddenly you find strength. You know, my three-year-old daughter comes over and hands her Shabbos candles, and I say to myself, “Wow, even during these tense times, you’re not giving up. You’re handing out Shabbos candles.” Then we thought about it and said, “Wait—in this city, they tried to extinguish the light. They had terrible plans. So right here, we’re going to add light.”

1:11:59 Speaker 9 Wow.

1:12:00 Speaker 6 And we encourage the women, the women in our community and those close to us, to go out and hand out Shabbos candles. Precisely now, when they tried to stop us from going out and—after all, what’s their goal? Their goal is to sow fear and panic among us, to divide us. That’s the cruel enemy’s goal: for us to be confused and unsettled. And we come and say, “No. We’re going to add light right here.” We dedicate the distribution of Neshek to the elevation of the souls of the women who were murdered—good friends of ours who were murdered, the policewoman and another good friend who attended our classes. And we’re saying, “Wait, they tried to take something from us. We won’t let them, and we’ll do even more.” So if we used to hand them out only at the shopping center, now we’ll add another shopping center. And now we’ll leave candles in apartment buildings too.

1:12:48 Speaker 10 Beautiful.

1:12:48 Speaker 6 Do you understand? That’s what we’re—what’s helping us cope right now is, first, adding more points of light. Because I think every single thing we do automatically affects the soldiers fighting there. We hear the loud booms from their fighting, and you say to yourself, “Wow, there are hostages a kilometer from here.”

1:13:12 Speaker 10 Oh wow, that’s unbelievable.

1:13:13 Speaker 6 I’m sitting at home, and there are hostages a kilometer from here. So what—what can we do? What can we do? We can add one more small thing. And that’s what gives the soldiers the strength to keep fighting. May Hashem protect them, because they’re in such terrible places. Truly terrible.

1:13:36 Speaker 10 It’s insane.

1:13:37 Speaker 6 And every woman who adds something, adds an act of light, and doesn’t let herself give up—because it’s very, very easy right now to fall under a dark cloud. It’s very, very hard, with the terrible news and stories we hear.

1:13:52 Speaker 10 Absolutely.

1:13:53 Speaker 6 And it’s very easy to fall into that. So we say, “Wait, what are my options? To fall, or to say: I’m going to add something now. I’m going to do more; I’m going to take something upon myself.” And truly, you see the blessing, you see the light, you see the salvations, you see the... We were privileged to see open miracles.

1:14:13 Speaker 10 To see its effect with your own eyes.

1:14:14 Speaker 6 Yes, with our own eyes. And I think what any woman can take from this, even if she doesn’t live in Sderot or close to the Gaza border area, is the knowledge that it’s challenging for everyone right now. It’s not simple or easy for anyone. But what can help is action—positive action, good action, action that brings light. Every woman has something to strive for and a way to move forward, something she can take upon herself and add. And you know what? We received such moving calls from all over the world. People took on good resolutions. Suddenly a school in France called me: “We’re shluchim, and we want to send you gifts, but also good resolutions.” We received a list of resolutions they’d taken upon themselves. “May Hashem protect you,” and...

1:15:02 Speaker 10 That’s amazing.

1:15:02 Speaker 6 I mean, do you understand? It’s like—

1:15:04 Speaker 10 You can actually see this idea that all the Jewish people are one body.

1:15:06 Speaker 6 Amazing.

1:15:07 Speaker 10 And a single act by someone in France—it has an effect. It’s part of it.

1:15:12 Speaker 6 People from all over the world contact us, and now they’re also coming to visit from all over the world. People come to the police station, they come to the lookout point—there’s a lookout point in Sderot overlooking Gaza—and they come to the Chabad House. They come to encourage us and give us strength. Every day there are visitors from all over the world. And I think that in this war, we’ve been privileged to see the mutual responsibility and the unity that has emerged. Suddenly there’s an awakening toward holiness.

1:15:38 Speaker 10 Absolutely.

1:15:38 Speaker 6 I can tell you that suddenly we started getting calls. I’m sitting there on Friday afternoon, getting calls from a woman staying at a hotel by the Dead Sea who needs Shabbos candles. Do you understand? Here’s someone who didn’t light candles before, and suddenly she wants to. There’s a spiritual awakening among the Jewish people—a desire for more. People want more. And there’s also this unity: everyone pitches in, everyone wants to help, everyone wants to do their part. It’s amazing. Suddenly we receive a delivery of hot food from Ra’anana. People sat and cooked, put in the effort, and wrote letters. It’s moving. It’s amazing. It’s special.

1:16:11 Speaker 10 Absolutely.

1:16:12 Speaker 6 And I say, this time has suddenly become such an eis ratzon, an auspicious time. May this unity remain. Do you understand? We see it on the ground.

1:16:21 Speaker 10 May we keep feeling that eis ratzon.

1:16:22 Speaker 6 Yes.

1:16:22 Speaker 10 Even at the beginning, there really was this high of “What can I do? What can I give?” And I truly hope we’ll always feel that way.

1:16:30 Speaker 6 Absolutely.

1:16:30 Speaker 10 And may it continue. Mushky, I want every woman to take—Mushka, sorry—to truly take inspiration from you to add light and do one more good deed. And may it be a merit, truly a merit for the residents of Sderot, that you have as much security as possible, and as much...

1:16:45 Speaker 6 Amen.

1:16:45 Speaker 10 May you feel Hashem’s protection tangibly. May you walk down the street without worry and without fear. And may it be a merit for the hostages and the soldiers. And come on—may we finally merit to see the complete Geulah.

1:16:57 Speaker 6 Amen, amen, amen.

1:16:58 Speaker 10 Soon. Really, really soon. Mushka, thank you so much for coming.

1:17:00 Speaker 6 My pleasure. And you’re welcome to come visit.

1:17:02 Speaker 10 Come on, it’s time.

1:17:03 Speaker 6 A magical place. Fire from all four directions.

1:17:07 Speaker 10 That’s very tempting.

1:17:08 Speaker 6 Yes.

1:17:08 Speaker 10 How many stars?

1:17:09 Speaker 6 The place, um, how should I put it, cast a spell on us.

1:17:12 Speaker 10 Yes, a magical place.

1:17:13 Speaker 6 Yes, a magical place in more ways than one.

1:17:14 Speaker 10 Wow.

1:17:15 Speaker 6 And yes, you can come visit. People really do come, and they’re so—people say, “Wow.”

1:17:20 Speaker 10 You’ve turned into a museum.

1:17:21 Speaker 6 “How do you live here?” Yes. “Wow, how do you live here?” I remember once, a group came and said, “Wow, it’s quiet here,” and suddenly there was a Red Alert siren.

1:17:29 Speaker 10 You have surprises, you’re saying.

1:17:30 Speaker 6 Yes, exactly. That’s how it— You never know. You wake up in the morning and wonder, what will we have today?

1:17:35 Speaker 10 Oh, wow.

1:17:36 Speaker 6 So if anyone’s looking for a little action, it’s never quiet where we are.

1:17:39 Speaker 10 Put Sderot into Waze.

1:17:39 Speaker 6 I say it’s like a little child. If he’s quiet, you go check what he’s up to. Maybe he’s emptying out a drawer. And if there’s noise, you know something’s happening.

1:17:47 Speaker 10 Yes.

1:17:47 Speaker 6 That’s what it’s like in Sderot.

1:17:48 Speaker 10 What a surprise.

1:17:49 Speaker 6 If it’s too quiet, you think, “Whoa, what’s with this silence?” It’s worrying. And if it’s noisy, well, it’s noisy and difficult and tough, but baruch Hashem.

1:17:57 Speaker 10 Wow.

1:17:57 Speaker 6 We strengthen ourselves, encourage others, draw encouragement, and hold on to the strength Hakadosh Boruch Hu gives us, to the strength the Rebbe gives us. We’re his shluchim, and we believe and trust completely that we have the strength.

1:18:12 Speaker 10 Absolutely.

1:18:12 Speaker 6 And even in moments of—there are moments, how do you say it, moments when you feel like breaking, moments that aren’t easy. So you draw on your strength, and sometimes you go away for a bit to recharge. As one of my friends told me, “I’m going away for Shabbos. I have to sleep peacefully for one night, without something suddenly happening.”

1:18:35 Speaker 10 You have to—you have to make arrangements for that. You have to think about it.

1:18:38 Speaker 6 You understand? I mean, I have a friend who lives in one of the moshavim near Sderot, and it’s amazing. They’ve never had a siren there. They hear some of the booms, but they don’t get sirens.

1:18:49 Speaker 10 They skip right over them, as it were.

1:18:50 Speaker 6 They skip over them. She says, “We’re right in the...” You understand?

1:18:53 Speaker 10 Among the popular ones.

1:18:54 Speaker 6 It’s a twenty-minute drive. You understand?

1:18:56 Speaker 10 Where is it? I’m curious.

1:18:57 Speaker 6 The moshavim near Sderot. You know, along Route 232, there are moshavim, and they don’t get sirens there.

1:19:04 Speaker 10 Who needs them?

1:19:05 Speaker 6 As they say, Sderot is the preferred target.

1:19:06 Speaker 10 Yes.

1:19:07 Speaker 6 So, with Hashem’s help, may we merit to add—

1:19:10 Speaker 10 Amen.

1:19:10 Speaker 6 Light. Each and every woman has the ability to add light, even with the difficulty right now, even with the challenge. Because it really is hard. I say, we can read difficult news and move on, or we can get up and do something.

1:19:26 Speaker 10 Absolutely. And we learn that action from you, truly. Wow, thank you, Mushka. Thank you so, so much for coming.

1:19:33 Speaker 6 My pleasure.

1:19:33 Speaker 10 May we hear good news.

1:19:34 Speaker 6 Amen.