When in Rome...

There was some tension in Jerusalem last week. I mean, there’s always tension, but there’s not always a hostage/prisoner exchange coinciding with a U.S. Presidential inauguration. So we went to Rome on a whim. Well, it wasn’t really a whim. 

We used the airline credit from our canceled Thanksgiving trip. While we were eating pizza (naturally) at a restaurant on a rainy day (every day was a rainy day) I spotted a man at the table next to us with the same square jaw and John Travolta-esque chin cleft that was a notable feature of my college-best-friend’s husband… who, I remembered, was of Italian descent. So even though I haven’t talked to this friend more than 3 times in the past 5 years, I had to take a stealthy picture of the unsuspecting restaurant patron and send it to her to let her know that I was pretty sure I found a long-lost cousin. Being my college-best-friend, she took it totally in stride and confirmed that the relationship was a possibility. Then she asked me about the ceasefire that had just commenced. “The one in Gaza or the one in Israel?” I asked. Like many others who have reached out to me in the past several months, she admitted that the news isn’t covering much of what is really going on in Israel. So I thought I would endeavor to paint a little picture of our day-to-day existence for the past month.

On Christmas Eve I was wrapping presents to the sounds of interceptor rockets, courtesy of Yemen. What does that even mean? 

Ballistic missiles (big, nasty, 50-ft-long, rocket-propelled explosive projectiles) that come from Yemen (or from their provider, Iran) take a couple hours to arrive in central Israel. This means that there is time for the Israeli military to prepare and to track the missiles, and there is time for their multi-layered air defense systems (Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and Arrow) to mobilize and intercept the incoming projectiles. There are interceptor launchers located all over the country of Israel, though I’ve never seen them. Some are quite close to our home. (Interceptors launchers launch interceptor rockets whose purpose is to detonate rockets and missiles in their air before they strike their intended targets on the ground.) When there’s an incoming projectile, be it rocket, missile, or drone, there are sirens that will sound off in the neighborhoods where an impact is expected, and we usually have a minute or two to make it into a bunker or safe-room. Within seconds, the interceptors will launch, which we hear as deep, resonant booms. And so on Christmas Eve, I wrapped presents, and felt the reverberations of the boom of the interceptors in the distance. I did have one fleeting worry that Noemie would not get to see that I bought her an Arabic Ud for Christmas. 

But the missiles were, as usual, intercepted. And Noemie got her Ud.

The Israeli airforce responded with retaliatory strikes in Yemen two days later, hitting the airport (where the World Health Organization’s Director was getting ready to board a departing flight, as it so happens. That certainly wasn’t going to improve those relations.) The Houthi-controlled seaport and oil refineries were also targeted. The day following Israel’s aerial attacks, there was another missile, and a terror attack near Tel Aviv, as an 80-year-old woman, a Holocaust survivor, was stabbed outside her assisted-living facility by a Palestinian man who resided in Israel. We heard sirens in Jerusalem again on December 28 as interceptors took out another missile from Yemen and rockets from Gaza. How does Gaza still have rockets and launchers? Why does Gaza continue to ask for further destruction? A fourth missile was on its way from Yemen early on the morning of Dec 31-- a week still hadn’t passed since Christmas—this one was also intercepted but the shrapnel, the size of a small car, made impact with the roof of a house in Bet Shemesh, just beyond the valley where David fought Goliath.

(Photo from Times of Israel)

 It is truly a bewildering reality to live in this area where you can talk about modern day missile attacks and Biblical events in the same breath. We rang in the new year with more rockets from Gaza, and another missile from Yemen was inbound three days later, then another missile five days after that... Before we would leave for our respite in Rome, there would be 3 more missiles from Yemen, with their accompanying red alerts and booms, and another stabbing attack in Tel Aviv. 

So we went to Rome. When the garbage trucks would come through the narrow alleys of the Trastevere neighborhood in the middle of the night, we would wake but say with eyes half shut, no, we are in Rome. It’s not a missile. 

 

We saw Michaelangelo’s Moses, a Puccini opera, Trajan’s column, and the Colosseum. 

And then Danny put a damper on that by reminding us what the Colosseum was used for. 

 

 

I would have loved to see the Villa Borghese gardens but the weather wasn’t right for it. The weather wasn’t right for anything- it rained almost every moment of every day! 

  

Since it rained every day, and I only bought canvas shoes, I was forced... FORCED I tell you... to buy new Italian leather boots. 

The highlight would have been the Vatican but by the last day of our trip Gigi had a pretty high fever so I stayed behind with her while the rest went to the public spaces of the Vatican complex. 

So they got to see La Pietà (which was smaller than expected,) but not the Sistine Chapel. And in the end I’m probably ok with having missed it. Catholic Church history and wealth makes me moody and cynical. Rome had traded the abuses done against Christians for those done in the name of Christ. Peter would be mortified to know what they’ve done to “honor” him. But the buildings are extraordinary...

 /

As we look towards bidding this summer, I’m starting to get nervous about our options. I realized while I was in Rome that I don’t want to live in Europe. I don’t want to live in places that welcome millions of tourists a year (like us, I guess) to pay homage to Man and the vain works of his hands, with monuments that defy God with their commemorations of ruthless acquisition of treasure and power. I think that’s what I loved about Swaziland and now Israel- there’s very little of the humanism that corrupted the blossom of Western culture. But where else can we go?

 

On January 19, three very frightened Israeli women civilian hostages were handed over to the Red Cross in exchange for 100 Palestinian prisoners, and the Middle East did not blow up. In the U.S., Trump became President and the world did not blow up. A Moroccan tourist stabbed four people in Tel Aviv the next day... but I guess that's just the way things are. "Congratulations!" our kids' former piano teacher in Bolivia texted us to celebrate Israel's agreement to stop military operations in Gaza and to increase aid to the Strip. "The war is over!" he proclaimed.

"Is it really over?" I asked. There are still 80+ hostages being held in Gaza. Iran is still building its nuclear program so they can wipe Israel off the face of the planet. Netanyahu and Hamas are trading accusations of breaches of contract. Is the war over? I'll believe it when I see it.