The Siren

Three years ago, on Yom HaZikaron of my first year at Pardes, we were sitting in the Beit Midrash about four minutes before the siren. Suddenly a group of about 10 students start sneaking out, and for some reason I go with them. I find myself on the roof, looking out at the corner of Pierre Koenig and Rifka, and before I can say anything the siren starts.

The siren has always dug into me, the same as a shofar, pulling at my heart and making me feel like I'm both sinking and flying at the same time. But that year I just couldn't settle into it. It felt intrusive to be watching the tiny people down there privately mourning, and it felt even more uncomfortable that one of my rooftop companions was videoing those people with his camera, as if we all were up on that roof as tourists and not as humans who shared the country's pain.

This morning in school we held our ceremony, hosted by the 6th graders and including a videotaped siren. When the moment came, I stood, expecting the famous footage of Har Hertzl that most American schools use. And then on comes the video of my corner, our corner, Pierre Koenig and Rifka, the bus stop, Kinyon Hadar, and the falafel guy. You can even hear the wind rushing and roaring in the silence, the way it always does up there. Suddenly I was inside that moment, only dalet amot from the corner of the camera's eye, on that roof. That roof where I tutored Neima's kids, where I spray painted a model Mishkan, where I snuck up to spend time on my novel.

After the ceremony, the principal approached me, pleased as punch that she had sponsored a trip down memory lane to my 'old hometown'. "Can't you just feel like you're in Jerusalem?" she said. "Didn't you feel like you were almost there?" I was there, I told her, so close that I half expected to see myself in it, caught in a storm of secret anxiety over the making of that very video.

In truth, seeing that that video was like reading an old diary entry and smiling now at the worries I had then. Three years later, the siren (and the ceremony) is no longer for me, but for my students, and I am finally glad the video was made. Five thousand miles away now, that snapshot gave my students the experience of an Israel that is my second home. And it gave me back my lost moment of siren-mourning, three years old, and the gift of thankfulness, knowing where I've come since then.