For the past several years, I've been putting out a light-hearted "18 Ways You Know Pesach is Coming To Jerusalem" piece to describe the frenetic days leading up to Pesach in the holy city. This year, there's a different feeling in the air.


For many Israelis who have lived for years in a cocoon of hopeful denial, the reality is finally sinking in that we are, in fact, surrounded by murderous enemies. It may still be hard for some to believe that Hamas rules in areas just outside our major cities - Bethlehem, a 10-minute drive from my front door, or Ramallah, twenty minutes north of

For many Israelis who have lived for years in hopeful denial, the reality is finally sinking in.

the Old City - but the effects of last summer's Hizbullah war have left an indelible mark on the country.


This Pesach, 122 families suffered through Seder night with an empty chair at their table. It's the seat their sons, daughters, brothers and sisters occupied last year, before they went off to war. For the families of the 119 soldiers who lost their lives defending the rest of us from the Hizbullah onslaught, and the three kidnapped heroes whom we still pray for, the heaviness of the loss is compounded by the bitter facts surrounding the tragic lapses in judgment by so many of our military and political leaders. With massive military training exercises going on, few doubt the inevitability of another war in the coming months or years.


Almost everyone who supported and promoted Ariel Sharon's "Disengagement Plan" now acknowledges that destroying 22 Jewish communities in the Gush Katif section of the Gaza Strip has done nothing to further us along the path to peace. The ceaseless daily barrage of Kassam rockets toward our southern cities of Ashkelon and Sderot, and the surrounding western Negev kibbutzim, has shattered any semblance of the 'enhanced security' we were promised by the 2005 Gaza pullout.


Almost all the former Gush Katif residents are still in temporary housing, more than eighteen months after their eviction. Many who moved into the vast and dismal caravilla camp of Nitzan, near Ashkelon, are unemployed and dealing with everything from possessions damaged from months in inadequate storage to emotionally overwrought teenagers.


Meantime, on Pesach, the extent of the dire poverty of hundreds of thousands of Israelis is exposed. Latest figures are that 1.6 million Israelis (out of a population of around 7 million) live below the poverty line. Families and the elderly form almost endless lines in every city around the food banks and soup kitchens that do their best to provide the basics necessary to celebrate the holiday. The Mesamchei Lev group distributed 46,278 pairs of shoes to 10,200 needy families the week before Passover, while all the other voluntary social welfare organizations report unprecedented demand for their services this Pesach.


In every Chareidi neighborhood during the week before Pesach, men and boys block the narrow streets with hand-trucks piled high with sacks of carrots, potatoes, oranges and cartons of eggs - all courtesy of the Kimcha D'Pischa funds that funnel donations from

The Old City is packed with groups of visitors from all over the world.

abroad to the Chareidi communities specifically for Pesach food.


The tourists, largely oblivious to our problems and cheerfully putting up with our current cold, grey spell, have descended on us with a vengeance. The intersection of Pesach and Easter means that the Old City is packed with groups of visitors from all over the world. Most visible are the busloads of Christian pilgrims from eastern Europe and Nigeria; the Jews arrive in much smaller family groups, excited to be in Israel for one of the three pilgrimage festivals.


So, as the popular Israeli expression goes, "We overcame Pharaoh, we'll overcome this, too." This year, as always, we are celebrating Pesach, the festival of our liberation and the birth of the Jewish people as a nation, in the hope that we'll soon merit a saner reality.