While sirens sound and shelters fill, life in Israel somehow keeps moving forward with creativity, connection, and quiet confidence.
In Israel over the past few weeks, an interesting phenomenon has been developing. New apps are being created in response to everyday needs that emerged during the war. While missiles are flying, people are not only running to shelters, they are also building solutions for daily life.
“Can I take a shower now?” This is a real question people are asking: do I have enough time to shower before the next siren? Here is how it works. You enter your location and how long you want to shower. The system checks real time alert data, gives you a risk percentage, for example a forty percent chance of a siren, and based on that you decide whether to take the risk.
Even the dating world is adapting. The Israeli startup Hooked added a feature showing which people in your public shelter are single. It began as a joke when users said shelters were becoming social spaces during alerts, and now they may even become places to meet. Who knows, maybe the war came to solve the challenge of singles in the Jewish world.
A wartime stress index is also turning life into measurable data. Users enter details like number of children, pets, nighttime alerts, and even Zoom meetings during sirens, and the system produces a personal stress score.
Another app calculates how much total time you have spent in a protected room since the war began. You enter your location, the system pulls alert data, and it gives you one clear number: total hours in shelter. Not an easy number, but a real one.
There is also an app that maps public shelters and helps plan routes while staying close to a bomb shelter in case of a siren. Navigation designed for missile threats.
While sitting in shelters, the Jewish mind is working overtime.
Happiness levels are also striking. Across the country there is a resilience that is not obvious. This week, the media reported something remarkable. Israeli young adults under age twenty five, the very group carrying the burden of the war, rank third in the world in happiness.
So what is so good for them?
A happiness policy researcher from Bar Ilan University explains that Israeli society is able to adapt to different situations without losing its resilience. This comes from strong social and family bonds, mutual responsibility, a deep level of faith held by many citizens, and the sense that life here has deep meaning. Perhaps specifically because life is so challenging and demands that we fight for it, these are the results.
New immigrants tell a powerful story as well. In the middle of missile fire from Iran and Lebanon, a special flight landed in Israel this week with over fifty new immigrants from France and Britain. More than twenty young families, eleven individuals, four babies, including one only five months old, and the oldest passenger, ninety two years old. They picked up their families, and moved to Israel during one of the most difficult wars Israel has faced in years.
No matter how much people try to explain this, we have to admit that this behavior is beyond logic. It makes no sense. Any normal person hearing about these immigrants might think they have lost their minds.
The President of the United States described it best. Netanyahu recently quoted Trump asking him in amazement, how is it that your rescue flights go in the opposite direction? Everywhere else people want to leave war zones, but in Israel everyone wants to return. Netanyahu responded that this is proof of the strength of the Jewish people and the power of their faith.
Free choice
The Rebbe explains in many places that Pesach was not only a release from slavery to freedom, but the choice of G-d in the Jewish people. A true free choice that depends on nothing external. The Torah describes this as “to take a nation from within a nation.” Not a people ready to be redeemed, but a people deeply immersed in Egypt, in its culture and in a low spiritual state, almost indistinguishable from the Egyptians.
Precisely this highlights the depth of the Divine choice. If the choice depended on merit, good deeds, or spiritual level, there would be no basis for choosing such a people. But on Pesach it became clear that G-d’s choice of the Jewish people depends on nothing of that sort. It is not the result of a reason, but an expression of absolute free will. It is not based on advantage or comparison, but comes from the essence of the Divine will.
This has eternal meaning. G-d’s choice of the Jewish people is beyond logic and therefore never changes. Even when a person is in their own personal Egypt, that choice remains. The Exodus reveals an essential bond that depends on nothing, and it is renewed every day for every Jew.
The Rebbe’s Response
Thirty six years ago, just days before Parshat Vayikra, a well known rabbi in Israel gave a very negative speech about Jews, speaking harshly and criticizing the Jewish people. At that time I was a yeshiva student by the Rebbe at 770. At that farbrengen, I stood across of the Rebbe and remember clearly how he opened in a surprising way, quoting the beginning of that week’s haftorah: “This nation I created for Myself, they will tell My praise.”
The Rebbe explained, “This declaration expresses the tremendous love G-d has for the Jewish people. The first part of the verse describes the very essence of a Jew, “This nation I created for Myself.” The Jewish people are G-d’s people, and through them He is King, because there is no king without a nation. A Jew, by their very being, belongs to G-d, created “for Me.”
G-d then adds another praise. The very existence of the Jewish people proclaims His greatness. The fact that the Jewish people continue to live and endure, like one sheep among seventy wolves, while great and powerful nations have disappeared, this itself is a praise to G-d. A Jew, simply by existing, tells G-d’s praise.
This has special meaning in our generation, after the terrible destruction the Jewish people experienced in recent times. Today, when we see a Jew alive, continuing the chain and building another Jewish generation, it is a living miracle of G-d, “they will tell My praise.”
From all this we understand the immense love G-d has for every Jew, a love not dependent on behavior or actions. From this we learn how deeply we must love every Jew and judge every Jew favorably. Even when encouraging someone to grow in Torah and mitzvot, it must be done with full love, respect, and sensitivity, because we are speaking about “This nation I created for Myself, they will tell My praise.”
This tremendous love of G-d for the Jewish people, this Divine choice that is beyond logic, awakens within every Jew a love and connection to G-d that is also beyond logic.
And this explains what we are seeing. Jews moving to Israel in the middle of a war, under fire, while people are sitting in shelters, with no logical explanation. It is a response to Divine love. We return that love in the same way, with a love that is beyond logic.
We are living in very precious moments. Let us use them to connect to G-d from a place that does not need explanations or justifications. Let us celebrate Pesach with joy and excitement as if it is the first time, and carry that joy through the entire year.
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