Crowding in the Safe-Room

My husband and I spent a fair bit of this past Shabbat sheltering in a room decorated in pink, along with its principal seven-year-old inhabitant, her parents, grandmother, brothers, and two twenty-something boys who, like us, were houseguests. Incongruously for a little girl’s bedroom, it was also reinforced and outfitted with a strong door, a slidable steel plate window covering, and an air filter, making it a ‘safe room’ for protection from gas, falling shrapnel, and fragments of flying glass. Our configuration mirrored thousands of others around the land of Israel as alerts of incoming missiles from Iran kept sounding.

While I don’t have data, from my knowledge of Jewish-Israeli culture I doubt if many people sheltered alone. Israel is a family-centered country, in fact the only industrialized country that currently has an above replacement fertility rate. Getting together regularly with extended family is routine as is opening one’s home to relatives and friends of friends (our situation) newly arrived immigrants, or to those studying in the country whose families are abroad (the situation of the two young men with us).

Social connectivity is valued and expected. Should you be caught outside when a missile-alert siren sounds, it is completely normal to be invited into whatever house one is near to wait there until the all-clear sounds. Those living in older apartments without a safe room rush to a community shelter, forming a makeshift neighborhood family that shares snacks, games, and prayers.

As the United States’ population ages, I’m beginning to hear some forty and fifty-something individuals, sometimes those increasingly aware of their own parents’ aging, grappling with the question of who will help when they themselves age. Having focused on career and self-fulfillment over marriage and family, they are realizing that, unlike their parents, they don’t have anyone committed to their well-being. In the U.S., increasingly top-heavy with retired individuals rather than a growing younger population, as well as one raised to reject Biblical ideas such as honoring not only one’s own parents but the elderly in general, the future may look bleak.

There is no sugar-coating that spending an interrupted night with your entire family in the safe room or else getting up when necessary, including the middle of the night and moving everyone there, is exhausting and difficult. Dealing with sleep and routine deprived children while having to be the adult in the room, outwardly exhibiting patience and calm isn’t easy. For a few minutes you might imagine that if you only had to care for yourself and nobody else, the emergency would be easier.

But you would still have nights of interrupted sleep and days of suspended plans. Being alone with no distractions might well be scarier as you had more time to think about the millions who want you dead. And you would have fewer reasons to want to survive, to commit to the future. In the final account solitary confinement is a punishment. Being surrounded by loved ones, even when it has its trying moments, is a gift and a blessing. How wonderful it is to be able to see that truth. How beautiful it is to understand its implications without first needing to face life-threatening circumstances.

P.S. Modern culture aggravates the challenge of managing different areas of life so that they complete each other rather than compete with each other. My husband and I provide a practical approach to solve this problem in our book, The Holistic You: Integrating Your Family, Finances, Faith, Friendships, and Fitness.

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