No matter who you are in Israel, Shabbat is different.  Of course, the religious Jews experience the day as a holy one – prayers, family, meals, rest, a holy entrance into the rest of the week.  But most people are not religious Jews, and they too experience a different day.   Perhaps, if you are not Jewish, it is the most busy day, the opportunity to squeeze a week’s wages in one day.  We, like most secular people here, find this a day of family and catching up. 

Catching up for me also means seeing friends, sleeping late, and maybe thinking.

But lately Friday night also means a particularly tough missile from Yemen.  That’s why I sleep half dressed.  Last night before 4 a.m. the phone woke us to warn us to get to shelter, and we made it from deep sleep to the basement just in time.  It turned out to be fine, but we couldn’t get back to sleep.

so i started thinking of the whole idea of democracy and how it demands dialogue, especially of antithetical ideas, and how bombing and attacking Jews all over is not a way to achieve democracy.  And how the universal attacks indicate that democracy may not be the wave of the future.

And once I accept the fact that I may well be wearing a burka in the most optimistic of my dreams, I will be able to enjoy my Shabbat.