A few day ago, I was having lunch with some friends from abroad along with some people who live here, when the friends from abroad asked, “Are you worried? Are you scared? How do you think it’s going to play out?”

One of the people who lives here said, “I’m very worried about our son getting called up. For me, personally, I’m not scared. I’m terribly worried about the future. And there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.”

I thought immediately that that probably captures the sentiments of many people here. Of course we’re worried. And if our kids have been called up or might soon be called up, we’re more than worried. For ourselves, not so much. For the country, a lot.

Still, really, where would we rather live?

As I was walking home from that lunch, I asked myself how, exactly, that sense of “there’s nowhere else I’d rather be” gets inculcated in people here. It’s a complex process and highly nuanced, but it’s a result in large measure of the countless inputs we get all day long, every day, that remind us that there are things happening here that it’s hard to imagine could happen anywhere else.

Today, we’re sharing three such glimpses from recent days.

The background to the photo above is in this Times of Israel article, an edited screenshot of which follows here:

Yishai Urbach, z’l, was married just two months ago, and was killed on Thursday. It’s unspeakable.

Though the injured soldiers are not named in the article, there’s a photo of one of them that’s making its way around Israeli social media (I don’t know who took the picture, but someone pointed out to me that it was also posted here).

It turns out that despite his injuries (I don’t know if he’s the seriously injured or the moderately injured — I suspect the latter, but I can’t be sure), he insisted on being at Ubach’s funeral. So the hospital got him set up for the trip to the cemetery in Zichron Yaakov, and someone snapped the rather surreal shot of the funeral that appears above.

The men standing nearby are, I assume, other soldiers from the same unit, who were not injured.

If ever a photo spoke volumes.

If you would like to share our conversation about what Israelis are feeling and expressing at this unprecedented moment in our history, we invite you to subscribe today.

Galgaltz, Israeli army radio, has an extensive array of programs in addition to the music that it plays. This interview, with a Haredi soldier (who is called A, instead of using his full name), tells of his experience at Benji’s House, a place that cares for Lone Soldiers (those without families because they’re from abroad, or who cannot go back to their families for an array of personal reasons).

The emotional interaction between Hadar Marks, the (secular) interviewer (herself a much admired and very well known Israeli phenomenon) and the Haredi soldier (whose face is not revealed for obvious reasons) has touched everyone I know who’s seen it.

This is the original Instagram post, which appeared right around Passover, but we’ve downloaded it and reposted it here so we could add subtitles. There’s a bit too much slang to translate the subtitles absolutely precisely, so in a few small places, we’ve approximated in ways to communicate the essence.

Finally, humor is also part of Israeli resilience.

The issue of the Houthis firing at the airport, though, is no joke. The Israeli Hebrew press reported over the weekend that the Houthis actually threatened airlines that were flying to Israel that their planes could be hit elsewhere, too, if they did not stop flying here. Whether or not that is the case (it was a very reputable source, so I’m inclined to believe it), it’s gotten harder to get here and also harder to get out, and with El Al once again having the bulk of the routes to itself, prices have skyrocketed.

A band called “The Solomon Brothers” (they’re very talented—see their website here) posted a humorous video to Facebook about the difficulties of getting here and the exorbitant prices one faces if you can even snag an El Al ticket. (We posted the video above because some readers have had trouble with Facebook links.)

The airport incident was far from a joke. Still, it’s good to laugh. It’s actually astounding how much people here continue to laugh, given everything we’re facing.

When this is over (whenever that is and whatever that looks like), the story of Israeli resilience is going to be one of the main stories.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit danielgordis.substack.com/subscribe

Three faces of Israeli resilience