Band-aids – check. Bottled water – check. Tinned foods – wait. No sooner do I buy canned tuna, pickles, corn and peas and they’re eaten. Need to refresh that one. Flashlight – check. Portable radio – check. Now, this is a cool one. While not available in the groovy colours of the 1970s – bought it in a staid brown – the small, palm-sized handheld radio conjures up fond memories of those catchy songs from Billboard’s Top 10. Although the reason for the checklist is anything but fanciful. With the Islamic Republic of Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah threatening a major reprisal attack.
In the Star Trek movie Wrath of Khan, the Klingons said “revenge is a dish best served cold.” I can certainly attest to that. As can my more than 9.5 million fellow Israelis. It feels like an eternity since the ayatollahs promised mighty revenge for Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah’s military chief, Fuad Shukr, and Hamas’s military chief, Mohammed Deif, and the alleged Israeli assassination of Hamas’s politburo chief, Ismail Haniyeh. When Iran’s authoritarian regime said at a place and time of their choosing, they weren’t kidding. We are still waiting…. Actually, I think the Klingons were probably quoting Pierre Ambroise François Choderlos de Laclos, the 18th-century French novelist and army general who is credited with first analogizing revenge as a cold dish.
Speaking of proverbs, I think its origin is Chinese, some claim Yiddish. Regardless, whoever said “may you live in interesting times” was certainly cursing someone. Give me boring. Give me dull. Give me mundane. Give me monotonous. Give me colourless and bland. You can keep the gripping. The riveting. The fascinating. The stimulating. I just want to wake up to another simple day.
This waiting game is immensely stressful. It has the whole world on edge, with an alliance being built between Israel, the United States, Britain, France and Italy to thwart a second potential direct attack on my little shtetl. The first attack – of some 300 drones – was launched against Israel in April. We went to bed facing potential Armageddon and, thankfully, woke up able to just go to work, as Israel, with the help of its allies, knocked each drone out of sky before they reached Tel Aviv and Haifa.
Speaking of work, I am a self-confessed workaholic. And I find myself working even more during this very stressful period, where I fear my fate is out of my control. Will Iran attack? Where? And when? And how? No idea. No authority. No power. Simply unable to influence, in any way. Whereas work, which I am pretty good at, gives me all those things. I am largely in control, able to influence within my environment. Work gives me a calming sense and, if nothing else, allows me to escape into my purchasing processes and contracts. This is my own industrial and organizational psychotherapy. As good an excuse as any for my wife, when she again finds me tapping away at my keyboard at all hours or in another early morning or late evening Teams meeting.
As for preparations, I find myself obsessed with buying bottled water, toilet paper and Ajax. The first couple of items, you probably understand. But floor cleaner? I think it’s the Jewish mother in me. I don’t want to leave behind a dirty home. Kind of like Golda from Fiddler on the Roof, who insisted on sweeping their little Anatevka farmhouse before leaving. Although – and I say this loud and clear – we ain’t going nowhere!
Another quirk in dealing with the stress is that I love the music from the hippie generation. For the longest time after that dreadful Oct. 7, I wouldn’t – couldn’t – listen to music. I felt a very deep sadness. Maybe a type of mourning. But now, over the last few days, I find myself blaring my tunes. One of the first songs to pop up in my feed just after Iran’s rulers made their threat of retribution was “Bad Moon Rising” by Creedence Clearwater Revival. How foreboding can you get? “I hear hurricanes a blowin’. I know the end is comin’ soon.… I hear the voice of rage and ruin. Don’t go around tonight. Well, it’s bound to take your life. There’s a bad moon on the rise, alright.”
And, I find myself listening again and again – at pretty high volume – to the dark and wonderful song by our own Edan Golan, “October Rain,” otherwise known to the world as “Hurricane”: “Every day, I’m losing my mind…. Dancing in this storm, I’ve got nothing left to hide…. Baby, promise me you’ll hold me again.… I’m still broken from this hurricane….” And then, with hope: “Don’t have words. Just prayers. Even if it’s hard to see, you always leave me one small light.”
On another music note, I find myself chanting, to no one in particular, that snappy little line “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Now, why can’t we come up with something as catchy? With an impressive gene pool of great Jewish songwriters: George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Burt Bacharach, Carole King, Neil Diamond, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Amy Winehouse, Gene Simmons. Come on! And still, gornisht, nothing. No wonder we’re losing the global PR battle.
Please continue donating to the war and revival efforts. You may have given earlier, when hostilities first erupted and the Gaza war was headline news. Almost 10 months later, war continues – on several fronts. Sderot and Metula – and maybe Tel Aviv and Haifa – are Israel’s front line and Israel is the diaspora’s front line. Am Yisrael chai (yeah, that’s the extent of our solidarity anthem). Bring them home now!
Bruce Brown, a Canadian-Israeli, made aliyah more than 25 years ago. He works in high-tech and is happily married, with two kids. He is the winner of a 2019 American Jewish Press Association Simon Rockower Award for excellence in Jewish writing.