Hi! I’m Avishai Frankenthal. I’m 11 years old and in sixth grade. I made aliyah with my family this past November to Rehovot, and I would like to share with you my 11-year-old perspective of what it’s like living here during the war.
Imagine yourself doing daily activities – homework, talking with friends or eating dinner. All of a sudden, a loud siren blasts from overtop of a building. This means the enemy has sent a missile and it might be heading to your area. Right away, you drop everything and run to your home’s safe-room, which is called a mamad. A mamad is a special room that is stronger than other rooms in your house. It is built extra strong to protect you, just in case the missile falls nearby, chas v’shalom. Once you are in the mamad, you must wait until you get an alert on your phone that says it’s safe to come out. Usually, the wait is ten minutes. But now that we’re at war with Iran, a stronger force than Hamas or the Houthis, we have sometimes waited in the mamad for 20 minutes or more.
Fortunately, Israel has the Iron Dome, a missile defense system that tries to shoot down the enemy missile with its own missiles. When the army see an enemy missile heading towards Israel, they send a warning to Israel’s citizens that there might be a siren in the next few minutes. The siren goes off if the Iron Dome hasn’t knocked out the enemy missile and it is heading for an inhabited area. Once the siren starts, in Yerushalayim, we have exactly 90 seconds to get to safety – either the mamad or the closest protected area. The siren does not mean that the missile will for sure hit. It means that it might hit, or pieces of the missile might fall. Also, the siren is only sounded in places where the missile might hit. It won’t go off in places the missile couldn’t reach.
Sometimes, if you’re outdoors, you can sometimes actually see the missiles. The first time I saw one was the night of Lag B’Omer. My class was having a bonfire, and a friend’s dad got a warning on his phone that there might be a siren soon. A few minutes later, we heard the siren. I crawled under the table and covered my head with my hands. Then I looked into the distant sky and saw the light of a missile going down with another missile chasing it.
Another time was on a Friday night, shortly after we had finished the seudah. My older sister started screaming to look outside. She saw lights in the sky – it was missiles. Then the siren went off. We all rushed to our mamad. To get there, we have to go outdoors. As I went outside, I looked up and saw a glowing yellow light falling from the sky towards us. Fortunately, it didn’t hit us.
The third time, we were watching a movie and we got a warning on the phone that a siren might come soon. My brothers and I went outside to try and spot the missile. Across the street, a family on their balcony was pointing up – over our house. I crossed the street, looked up, and saw the Iron Dome missile shooting upwards. Then, we heard a distant siren. I went inside and my mother told me that there were sirens in nearby cities, also.
While in the mamad, we often hear booms. Most of the time, it’s the Iron Dome’s missiles blowing up the enemy ones before they can land. But sometimes, the enemy missiles do land. On the Shabbos of Parshas Beha’aloscha, June 15, early in the morning, there was a siren and we rushed to the mamad like usual. Then – BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! The whole ground shook. Missiles had hit Rehovot, targeting (and succeeding to hit) the Weizmann Institute of Science, one of the most famous research centers in the world.
Shabbos passed and Sunday came. My father took me and my siblings to a toy store to get a prize for staying calm in the mamad. On our way, we saw our school supplies store, Daf-Ram. The entire storefront had fallen and was being held up by a light attached to the ceiling of the overhang. We walked along the main street, Herzl, and saw shattered glass all over the sidewalk from other stores.
A few days later, we walked to a makolet (a small shop) to get ice cream. I saw the street to the mall was closed off by police. My father told me the reason was that a missile had landed there – just a ten-minute walk from our house!
Since the war with Iran started, the country is in a state of emergency. We’re not supposed to go far from a mamad. Schools and libraries are closed. No big gatherings are allowed. For the last week, I’ve been having classes on Zoom just like during Covid-19! I stayed home and had online classes throughout the day.
This is history in the making. I was in first grade when Covid-19 hit, and I’m now in Israel, living the October 7 war, and this episode with Iran. Sometimes I imagine being a grandfather (or, as we say in Israel, saba), and my grandkids calling me on the phone (or whatever communication device we’re going to use in 50 years), saying, “Saba, I need to do a report in school about Covid,” or “Saba, can you give me information about the October 7 war? We’re learning about it in school.” To kids in 50 years, learning about this will be the same thing as me learning about the Six-Day War. I am living history.
But don’t read this article and leave thinking, “No way! I’m not making aliyah. It’s too dangerous in Israel. I’ll just stay safely in chutz la’aretz waiting for Mashiach to come.” That’s exactly what Bnei Yisrael did wrong in last week’s parsha. Israel is our home. Tovah Ha’aretz Meod Meod! (Bamidbar 14:8).
Hope to see you here!
– Avishai Frankenthal
