An Unplanned Tale as Day One of Hanukkah Lands on Two Months Since October 7th

It was a grey day in Tel Aviv as I wandered around looking for candles to light for Hanukkah. I left my menorah under the sink in Charlotte, trying to be selective as I packed for what I knew was an indefinite amount of time. If that meant buying a new menorah in Israel, so be it. With the war wrecking the Israeli economy overnight, I would gladly contribute as much as I could.

I bought my new menorah a couple of weeks ago from an old man in a shop, and have since gotten to know his wife and son who work there as well. I'd been passing the shop when it was closed for a week, eyeing a menorah in the window. Finally on a Friday after a long walk to the market I wandered into the store, intending to keep it quick as my backpack weighed a ton and I was sweaty and gross.

But the backpack was eventually put down, as I became engrossed in conversation with the old man, doing my best to understand his Hebrew and to ask him the countless questions I had based on what I understood. He had come to Israel from Iran, leaving on foot in the middle of the night with his wife and three young children. The look on my face must have been priceless because he was suddenly laughing and doing a dismissive flip with his hand.

I was actually thinking of that last scene in The Sound of Music, the movie my Dad bought a VCR to tape for me, that I watched every single day as a toddler. That scene of the Von Trapp family climbing a mountain to get to Switzerland from Austria as the Nazis' conquering of Europe was in full swing. (Years later in Austria, I would learn a fun fact about that scene - that the mountain used for filming actually went into Germany...)

Oh, the stories, the stories...of the people in this land, in Israel, moving from country to country, looking for a home. Pitching our tents and working, succeeding, contributing and giving back. Raising money for the needy, marching for the minorities, fighting for various rights, and yet low and behold, a day always comes when our bags are taken out of a back closet, and items are separated into what is truly needed and what can be left behind.

What must it be like to be an old man with that story, to have escaped a murderous regime and raised a family in Israel and built a beautiful store, and then in your golden years, wake up to sirens at 6:29 in the morning on the Sabbath and a holiday and learn ever since...of the horrors that occurred in the south...horrors of such a medieval nature you couldn't have dreamt them.

This wasn't supposed to happen here.

Today I wandered into the shop again, to buy the candles I left behind last time. It was the wife and the son again, and we exchanged pleasantries in broken Hebrew and English.

"Your dad's not here again - I keep missing him," I said with a smile, and the son started to motion toward his heart.

"He's sick," he told me. "He's in the hospital...they put...what you call it? A thing in his heart."

I believe the word he didn't know was stent, but before I realized that, I was gasping and asking if he meant he had heart surgery?

"No, no," he reassured me. "But it was 97%..."

I stumbled and looked for my words, mumbling to please wish him a Chag Sameach...a 'happy holiday' for me, when the wife did that same laugh with a flip of her hand.

"Hu beseder, hu beseder," she said with a smile and a shrug. "Ayn ma la-asot?"

(He's okay, he's okay...what are you going to do?) or the literal translation which makes those of us who learn Hebrew cringe and smile simultaneously: "There is nothing what to do."

And that word...beseder...that everything is okay...everything is 'in order'...is used so readily here, even though nothing is okay, and nothing feels in order at all...

As I've sat here for hours, inhaling the news of the day which was harsh, with a farmer in the north being killed by a missile from Lebanon and another two young soldiers killed in Gaza and the family members of hostages live in studio and the films of released hostages starting to be shown...

I feel the weight of the old man's story, which is really the story of Israel, and the weight we all feel, as the tension won't relent and the unknown won't stop looming and the world just stares and waits and judges and demands and...

The pressure...make it stop...

But I lit the candles in my brand new menorah, and I called my bank with the unknown charge, and I picked at the bread from the man at the bakery and I sat down to write...

Because...there is nothing what to do?

Melanie Preston is an American/Canadian/Israeli writer who took herself by herself to Israel in the month following the October 7th massacre to write about the war and the hostage crisis. To support her work, you can subscribe to her website or visit her GoFundMe page.