Except for one Shabbat, I have been rooted for the entirety of the current war in our home in the Upper Galilee.
This decision reflects rootedness, a desire to "hold down the fort" and a refusal to give Hezbollah a small victory by virtue of our fleeing.
It is not an attempt at senior citizen heroism, except to the extent that just living here now in Israel is an act of heroism.
So when friends from Jerusalem or the US express their concern for our safety, I try to play down the very real nuttiness of daily alarms without trying to sound cavalier.
However, the other night something happened that has made me change my demeanor, both with others and with myself.
Matan Jarafi, the CEO of Im Tirtzu, the amazingly impactful grassroots Zionist organization that I have the pleasure of serving as Chairman of the Board, invited me to join him to bring Pesach packages to various locations in Kiryat Shemonah.
Now unless you have been visiting other planets lately, you know that Kiryat Shemonah has once again become Hezbollah’s designated punching bag, with rockets and drones regularly aimed at the town .
Well, so be it. Matan was driving all the way up from the Center with a carload of treats, and who was I, a northerner myself, to not join him?
So full was his car that I followed him from my home to our destination. As we got out of our cars at the first stop, a rocket passed overhead, and of course we hightailed into the shelter in the group home we were visiting.
In retrospect, That rocket was the proverbial shot across the bow, or, in this case, the sky.
We went on to another group home and then Matan suggested that I return home while he made another stop.
En route to home, driving down Route 90, the main north/south road in the Upper Galilee, there was suddenly another siren. This was the first time I had experienced a siren in the current war while driving.
Thanks to tutoring from our daughter, I knew that the protocol was to pull over to the side of the road, turn off and exit the car and then lie down on the ground.
Of course, this entailed hurtling over guard rails and trying not to land in a ditch. In addition, the ground was wet from extensive and welcome rains; the idea of lying prostrate gave way to squatting on all fours with my head down.
I did notice that most all the cars were still moving, with only a lone policeman some 200 feet ahead of me and myself closely surveying the weeds.
Lying there on the side if the road is different from moving into one’s safe room. There is a sense of nakedness, of vulnerability that comes from the exposure. While in theory it all seems so unlikely, the lack of cover, of protection, makes the experience an eerie one.
I asked Hashem for his protection and silently apologized to my wife for kneeling in mud in pants she had just washed. I waited a few minutes, looked up and saw the cop preparing to re -enter his car. So, I followed suit.
As I returned to the road, I called my wife to tell her what had just happened. She said that there was a report she just received of a woman either from our village or close by who was just killed in a rocket attack.
While we were on the phone, about a mile south of my roadside visit, I noticed a huge number of police and emergency cars lining the opposite side of the road.
"I know where this woman was killed," I told her. “I am now passing the location."
I subsequently learned that she had followed the same protocol of leaving her car and lying down, but with horrific results.
What does one do with this? The woman was young, engaged to be married. My wife recognized her as someone who frequented a cafe we often visit. Her name was Nouriel Dubin.
There is immense randomness in this, as there is in all of life. But here the randomness is initiated by those with a mission: to kill as many innocents as possible.
If there is a "lesson" here, it is one of sadness for the senseless loss of a beautiful young woman, and immense gratitude that I am able to recount the incident.
So yes, there is danger here; danger, uncertainty and lethal hatred all around us.
But I end where I started. This is our home, our country, and we will not be frightened away from it. We will protect it and defend it.
Wherever you are, you and yours should have a meaningful, sweet and, yes, safe Pesach.
Douglas Altabef is the Chairman of the Board of Im Tirtzu and a Director of the Israel Independence Fund.