On October 1, 2020, I read in the Haaretz English edition, that the lockdown that commenced in Israel on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, on September 18, 2020, could take six months to a year.
Let me make it clear. I am a daughter of a Holocaust survivor. My father hid in Athens, Greece as a kid under a fake Christian identity that enabled him and his nuclear family to survive in hiding, from home to home.
One of the main points in my father’s survival story was his father’s early apprehension that something terribly wrong was going on. His intuition along with news coming in from Jews from Salonica empowered my grandfather Moisis Nahmias, to leave his hometown of Ioannina on time to save his nuclear family.
This alertness, along with one’s preparedness to act upon it, is one of the lessons that my father passed down on us, his children. To this day, my father upholds this attitude. He is apprehensive of situations. He tries to use his instincts and intuition to decide as to whether he needs to change his life’s course to ensure his life and his family’s survival.
It is with this sense of apprehension that my body was filled up with at the beginning of October, as I was reading the news about a possible extension of the lockdown in Israel to half or even a full year.
I thought to myself, “is now the time to flee?” “Is my family in danger by staying in Jerusalem?”
After pausing to relax, by taking a few mindful breaths, I realized that this was just an automatic response, triggered by the uncertainty and complexity of the situation. It occured to me that my father’s childhood experience must still be running in my genes, and remembered of a study I had read that supported this idea of trauma being passed down from generation to generation.
This week, the strict lockdown in Israel is being lifted. Slowly but steadily, businesses, kindergartens and eventually schools and cultural institutions will reopen.
With the lifting of the lockdown, a heavy weight is lifted from my chest. I feel lighter and happier. The regained freedom of movement soothes me and so does the fact that we can invite friends over to our home.
Am now looking forward to going out to nature with family and friends, on an excursion, breathe the fresh air and enjoy the gorgeous scenery of the Dead Sea shore, a thirty minute drive south from Jerusalem.
I look forward to dipping my body in the Dead Sea, and imagine its magnesium, iodine, sodium, calcium and potassium, beneficial minerals with exotic names, entering my cells to cleanse, break down and decompose the condensed worry and stress my body carried and experienced during this second Israel lockdown.
From Jerusalem with love,