I met them in June during the last war with Iran. In a communal shelter between Frug and Dov Hoz in the center of Tel Aviv.
Yael, a sweet British girl from a quiet suburb outside London. Zev, a Bnei Akiva boy from Johannesburg. They found each other in Tel Aviv's growing religious Anglo community. A party. Another one. A first date and many more. A wedding in Johannesburg. A decision to build a life here. And then a war.
During those long days, we spent dozens of hours in that concrete room. We played games on our phones. Compared high scores. Saved seats. Gave nicknames to the regulars. Claimed favorite dogs. Waited between sirens.
War compresses everything.
There were six of us who became a kind of crew. Dinner plans dissolved. Routine disappeared. All that existed was the countdown between alarms.
Now it is March. Much colder than June. Time passed; it always does. Yael is due in two weeks. She will be a mother. Zev will be a father and their baby will be an Israeli.
Living here and building a life here is a deep and serious ideological commitment. It must hold when the shelter fills up and routine collapses, and when your child is about to be born into uncertainty.
Maybe their baby will carry a trace of London. Maybe something about Johannesburg. But the roots will be here.
For Yael, the shelter looks different when you are eight months pregnant. The stairs feel steeper. The margin of error is thinner. Like the rest of the country, she has no routine and no certainty about tomorrow. Except for a baby waiting to enter this world and become a part of this nation.
In my five years here, I have been laughed at for my Hebrew. A few weeks ago, on Shenkin St., a couple turned around at my friend's American accent and laughed quietly. Small. Maybe harmless. Maybe we sounded ridiculous.
For immigrants, life here swings between the absurd and the sacred. Between fear and belonging. We mispronounce words. We search for vocabulary. We do not glide through life here; no one really does anyway.
There are days you feel welcomed. And days you are tolerated. And yet when the siren sounds, we run down the same stairs. Family and friends ask if it is worth it. Why stay?
Because this country was built by people who once sounded foreign. Russian. Moroccan. American. Ethiopian. British. South African. There has never been one way to sound Israeli. Only one decision: To stay.
