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It's 11:00. I wasn't intending to start a report this morning. We still have a few tasks to attend to before leaving for Nir-Oz. There's a matza lasagne (gluten free) in the oven, which is the last of our cooking, everything in the sink has been washed, and we're semi-packed. I still want to wash the floor, but that will wait until after we eat our lunch. We want to get to Nir-Oz around 15:00 which will give us time to rest a bit and rehearse a bit before the seder. But I have a bit of time for an update, and there are things to report.
Since 08:00 this morning numerous missiles have been sent from Iran. One of these injured a number of people in B'nai B'rak. We've only had preliminary alerts. The one at 08:30 woke us, but I noticed that we'd had one at 08:00 that for some reason was silent. So we missed the first alert, but since that 08:30 alert the television has been on and we've been getting almost constant updates. At least for the past about 45 minutes things have been quiet. Hopefully I'll only continue this after our seder - with only festive things to report.
It’s 23:30, and I'm continuing this from Nir-Oz. Hila’s new housing – a brand new house that has six bedrooms – still doesn’t have an internet connection (she didn’t tell me in advance). It will apparently be set up next week. I have, however, made my phone a mobile hotspot, and I've now pasted the notes I made in Word into my mail so I can get this out tonight. You may be asking why tonight? We're staying in Nir-Oz rather than driving home. Tzippi doesn't want us to drive at night, and frankly that makes a good deal of sense. Tomorrow we'll visit the family where Eitan had his seder - a good friend whose family lives on a moshav about fifteen minutes from Nir-Oz, and since we've never met them we'll do that tomorrow before heading home.
We left for Nir-Oz at 13:45 and arrived at 15:00. The drive was uneventful. There hadn’t been any alerts in our general area since the morning, which was nice since lots of people were expected to be on the roads on their way to family seders and nobody wanted to be caught in alerts while on the road.
Our seder had fifty participants – about ten members of Hila’s kibbutz (her “ma’agal”, or circle) and family members whom they invited. Numerous ma’agal members went to their families rather than inviting them to Nir-Oz, which in the end was a good arrangement since the home command “allowed” only fifty people to congregate. Of course I’m sure that in numerous places there were seders with more than fifty people, and Nir-Oz is well out of an area that gets alerts, meaning that it's doubtful anyone would have checked, but we played by the rules.
At some point Tzippi noticed that at about 20:15 there had been an alert in the neighborhood of Hatzor. Tomorrow we’ll learn if anything developed beyond an alert.
The atmosphere at the seder was very positive. We used a haggadah that members of Nir-Oz had prepared for a larger seder that Hila’s group was going to join with. When large gatherings weren’t allowed that plan fell through. So members of Hila’s ma’agal used that as the basis of what we did this evening. Many of the parents were from other kibbutzim, and each of those has its own traditions, so in the end we had an interesting amalgam. Hila and another member of her group “led” the community singing, and Tzippi accompanied on piano. I sang HaLachma Anya which was duly appreciated. The general atmosphere was very festive, including some folk dancing at the end and everybody pitching in with cleaning up. There was an old-fashioned kibbutz feel to the entire evening, though I prefer a fuller haggadah experience.
About an hour ago Hila and I walked the group’s dog for about 45 minutes. We’ve been on Nir-Oz before so we’ve seen the destruction, and at night it was dark so I didn’t see much, but it was still a good, and still depressing tour, and I had a chance to hear from her about what’s happening with her ma’agal.
And now it’s midnight, and even though I can check the WhatsApp groups I’m on via my phone I haven’t seen any news beyond what we heard around 08:30, so I have nothing to report on that front. I'm now connected with my phone hotspot, but I don't want to exaggerate with my usage so I won't start searching for news now. And that being the case, I think I can send this considerably earlier than what I’m ordinarily used to, and we’ll soon go to sleep.
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