I don't know if summer ever happened here. It got really hot, sure. So hot I had challenges like figuring out how to stay cool at night but still be properly attired to run into the stairwell if a siren went off, or lathering on sunscreen and packing a huge water bottle for the two funerals of soldiers I went to on Mount Herzl. Heat that made us want to stay inside the air conditioned gan all day instead of going to the park, though the real reason we didn't venture out to the park was because we knew we could never get thirteen small children to the nearest bomb shelter if rockets were shot in the direction of Jerusalem.
I spent my summer angry at social media, even when the people posting on it meant well. I spent my summer in awe of the tiny little country and the love and support I saw people giving each other and giving our defense forces. I spent my summer struggling with the concepts of national mourning and personal mourning and how to negotiate between them.
I attended Max Steinberg z"l's funeral for purely selfish reasons, to feel a part of something that I felt was too much bigger than myself to authentically experience. I thought "this might be as close as I get" and should take advantage of the opportunity, as morbid as that sounds. Just six days later I was back on Mount Herzl for the funeral of Moshe Davino z"l, whose mother worked two classrooms over at the first gan I worked at here. Every day on the way to my gan I would pass Ruchama who would cheerily say hi and ask me how everything was going. At her son's funeral I just kept thinking that this is what רחל מבכה על בניה sounds like. The sound of her crying echoed in my ears for days afterwards. At the shiva tent two days later I almost felt that she was comforting me, reminding me that we are all in this together.
Tisha B'Av, the saddest day on the Jewish calendar, was no challenge for anyone here. We were all so overwhelmed with the events of the past two months that none of the rituals seemed necessary. Reading Megillah Eichah was a poetic version of the news. That day a ceasefire was declared, and most of our soldiers returned home, though not enough of them. That shabbat at Torah reading one young man after another recited ברכת הגומל, the blessing for surviving a dangerous situation. The shabbat after Tisha B'Av is Shabbat Nachamu, a shabbat of comforting. נחמו נחמו עמי.
This summer I rejoiced like never before at any opportunity. A boy in my gan turned three and got his first hair cut. A girl in gan became a big sister. There were engagements, weddings, births, and significant birthdays. Good friends became parents. Hundreds of people moved to Israel to make it their home. The kids at gan, even when they were at their worst, comforted me with their laughs and smiles. I had tears of joy to mix in with my tears of sorrow.
Summer, if it did happen, left me exhausted.
This week gan started its fourth year in a new location with twice the kids and a larger staff. The preparations were exhausting. This week is exhausting. But I am exhausted because I am building something. Maybe what I am building can in the future help repair the destruction of this past summer. I am exhausted because the pressure to succeed in what we're building at gan feels that much greater.
I keep thinking back to what I wrote after Tisha B'Av in 2011, a few weeks before opening the gan. It is possible to teach kindness and justice. It is possible to instill the qualities in young children that we so desperately need them to have for our future.
